Joe Phua making an advertising impact

Joe Phua, assistant professor of advertising in the Advertising and Public Relations Department at The University of Georgia's Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, is making an impact through advertising.

Phua is the co-principal investigator on a $1.7 million grant funded by the United States Department of Agriculture to improve the nutritional habits of low-income Georgians. The team is led by Jung Sun Lee, a faculty member in the College of Family and Consumer Sciences.

The researchers’ goal is to help Georgians eligible for SNAP benefits — the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — establish healthy eating habits and a physically active lifestyle through evidence-based, behaviorally focused and culturally appropriate nutrition education and obesity prevention interventions. Read more about the USDA grant.

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Phua also received a seed grant from the UGA William A. and Barbara R. Owens Institute for Behavioral Research (OIBR) in the amount of $5,000 to examine cigarette advertising on social media and its impact on at-risk youths. 

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Phua's article "Following celebrities' Tweets about brands: The impact of Twitter-based electronic word of mouth on consumers' brand intentions" was named one of the Top 3 most-cited articles of Journal of Advertising for 2014 by Taylor and Francis Publishers. Read more.

UGA doctoral student publishes brand Twitter analysis in Journal of Interactive Advertising

Congratulations to new Grady Advertising doctoral student Eun Sook Kwon for having her article "Follow Me! Global Marketers' Twitter Use" published in the Journal of Interactive Advertising. Eun Sook Kwon and Dr. Yung Jin Sung (University of Texas at Austin), a Grady Advertising doctoral alum, explored how social media have grown into powerful marketing communications tools in the global economy.

Kwon and Sung undertook a content-analysis of the Twitter use of 44 different brands including Starbucks, BlackBerry, MTV, Coca-Cola, Nokia, and McDonalds. They found that marketers try to introduce human personality characteristics into their brands by using human representatives, personal pronouns, and verbs in the imperative form. The analysis also showed that information like brand names and redirecting cues frequently appear in tweets for these brands. Overall, the researchers discoverd that marketers tend to exhibit brand presence and personality through their Twitter accounts, which allows them to build relationships with current and potential consumers.

Read the full article here.