Grady students heading to Brazil to study and intern

Tom Reichert, ADPR Department Head, Ze Schiavoni, CEO of S2Publicom, Bryan Reber, ADPR Assistant Department Head

   Grady College students will participate in a new UGA Language Flagship program with Universidade Estadual Paulista, or UNESP, the State University of São Paulo. AdPR Department Head and Professor Tom Reichert and Assistant Department Head and Associate Professor Bryan Reber visited São Paulo in October to help set up internship opportunities for flagship AdPR sudents, raise awareness of Grady College/AdPR in Brazil, as well as explore study abroad, research and professional opportunities for Grady students and faculty. 
   The Language Flagship program is an initiative of the U.S. National Security Education Program, which has the goal of increasing the number U.S. students in reaching language proficiency at a professional level by the time of graduation. Dr. Robert Moser is the director of UGA's Portuguese program and was instrumental in securing the renewable federal grant exceeding $1 million. The UGA delegation to Brazil include Moser as well as representatives from UGA's Franklin College, International Education, Alumni Relations and the Office of Special Events to help foster relationships with UNESP. 
   As the largest country in South America with one of the world's fastest-growing economies, Brazil has become a place of interest for its energy and momentum. With more than 200 million citizens, and its hosting responsibilities for the World Cup and Summer Olympics in the next few years, there are many opportunities in the AdPR industry for travel, study and research.

I love that the program focuses on immersing the students in Brazilian culture, language and way of life throughout the year.  - Emily Escoe

    One of the goals of the trip was to help establish internship opportunities for students interested in the program. Emily Escoe, a senior from Toccoa studying public relations and Portuguese, will be the first Grady student to study abroad this spring in Brazil, after having passed the rigorous Portuguese proficiency exam. Her year abroad will include a semester of coursework followed with another semester spent working at a major-relevant internship. Currently five Grady students are on track to take the proficiency exam and apply for the program.
"Public relations is a major and growing field in the country, so I am excited to learn about the profession from a different perspective," Escoe said.
  As mentioned, Dr. Reichert and Dr. Reber developed contacts with leading advertising and public relations agencies, such as Corporate Image, Almap BBDO, Studio2publiccom, Ogilvy & Mather, Rapp, as well as the Museum of Portuguese Language. 
   As for Escoe, she says she is excited about the benefits of the program's immersion into a new country. "I love that the program focuses on immersing the students in Brazilian culture, language and way of life throughout the year. We will be taking courses taught be UNESP professors, rather than UGA professors. We will be living with other Brazilian students as opposed to living together as a large group. The second semester, we will be spread out across the country learning in a real Brazilian workplace setting," Escoe said.  "Will I be thrown out of my comfort zone and accidentally say or do ridiculous things? Sure. But I know that I will learn so much more Portuguese and about Brazilian culture in this way as opposed to going on a traditional study abroad program."

AdPR Intern Spotlight: Jefferson Hopkins

This past summer, Jefferson worked in New York as an Advertising and PR intern at Tom Ford.

What is Tom Ford?

Tom Ford is a leading menswear and womenswear fashion designer. He is also an Oscar-nominated director for his film A Single Man.

What were your responsibilities at Tom Ford this summer?

As a PR and Advertising intern, I was responsible for all of the "hard labor" tasks that you don't necessarily need a degree to do. I packed clothes for celebrities, ran clothing and accessories to photo shoots throughout the city, represented Tom Ford by meeting with magazine editors and stylists that my bosses didn't have time to meet with and took pictures of products for Mr. Ford.

What valuable information or skills did you learn at your internship?

Treat everyone you meet with respect. You never know what someone does or who they know.

Did anything you learned in your Advertising classes aid you in your internship this summer?

Mots of the stuff I did at Tom Ford required on-site training and can't be taught in the classroom. Dr. Reichert's emphasis on sex in advertising did, however, lead me to Tom Ford and I am grateful for that.

What was the best part of your internship experience?

The best part of working at Tom Ford was learning how things work in a fast-paced, ever-changing environment. It was great to see how much work it is for a company to do everything in-house. The advertising team did the creative and media planning all on their own and Mr. Ford photographed the campaigns himself.

Three Ad professors teach First-Year Odyssey seminars

As part of the new First-year Odyssey Seminar Program, Drs. Reichert, Hamilton and Kreshel are teaching seminars focusing on different topics in Advertising. The new program, designed to introduce first-years to academic life at the University of Georgia, gives students the opportunity to engage with faculty and other freshmen in a small class environment.

Dr. Reichert is teaching a seminar entitled, "Sex in Advertising: History, Content, and Controversy." In this class students will learn anything and everything about sex in Advertising: What is it? Does it work? and Why is it used to appeal to young people? The class will also discuss some of the most controversial advertisements of all time from Calvin Klein to Victoria's Secret to Abercrombie & Fitch.

Dr. Hamilton's seminar, called "New Devices, Old Needs: The Cultural History of Communications Technologies," explores how essentially new communications technologies satisfy basic human needs that are quite old in comparison. The class will discuss many communications technologies, from the crop of Internet applications and social media back to radio, telegraph, photography, and further. Students will investigate these technologies and what people at the time had to say about them in order to explore relationships between communications and society.

Dr. Kreshel's seminar is called "Advertising and the Commercialization of Everyday Life." Students will learn some of the "basics" like what advertising is, advertising in the context of a "chaotic" media culture in which technological innovation accelerates the development of new media platforms, and how the concept of an "audience" is changing. They will also look at some of the controversies that arise in looking at advertising as a vehicle of social communication, focusing mostly upon how the logic of the marketplace has found its way into institutions and ideas never intended to be traded as marketing commodities.

Faculty Agency Immersion

Six Grady ADPR Faculty members travelled to Columbus, Ohio this week to spend two days at sbc Advertising, an award-winning ad agency. The Grady team lead by Department Head Dr. Tom Reichert, included Dr. Karen King, Dr. Joe Phua, Dr. Elli Roushanzamir, Dr. Karen Russell and Dr. Jeff Springston, spent time with a variety of sbc's advertising and public relations professionals during the visit.

sbc professionals who participated included Karen Raidel and Elizabeth Hestand from Consumer Planning, Joe Sano and David Smith from Interactive, Scott Mylin and Lance Dooley from Creative, Jim White from Media and Zach Bingham, Keri Drake and Mary Garrick from Public Relations. The Grady faculty attendees were overwhelmed with how generous sbc professionals were in sharing their time, expertise and best practices.

This trip was made possible by sbc Executive Vice President/General Manager, Matt Wilson, whose daughter Becca is a senior ad student at Grady.