AMA hosts annual marketing conference

By KAREN SHENG For The News-Letter

The Hopkins chapter of the American Marketing Association (AMA) hosted its third-annual Regional Marketing Conference in Charles Commons on Nov. 7. The event featured speakers from LinkedIn, Pandora, Ogilvy & Mather, Spoon University and McCormick & Co. along with a marketing case competition and opportunities for students to network with professionals.

The conference started with breakfast, a chance for students to network with both alumni and marketing professionals who were invited to the event as well as other Hopkins students.

“We wanted to bring students and professionals together so they could network pretty easily because it’s sometimes hard to be always reaching out to professionals and not getting responses,” Vice President of Programming for the Hopkins AMA chapter Chrissy Schnabel said. “We wanted to bring them face-to-face so they could talk and get to know each other. Hopefully people are making connections not only with professionals but also with each other.”

A presentation by Vice President of Local Sales at Pandora Leon Van Gelder followed.

Next were the case presentations by 15 teams of three to four students. According to the president of the Hopkins AMA chapter, Krista Grubb, teams from around the East Coast participated, including those from the University of Pennsylvania, Shippensburg University and Hopkins.

The case that the teams presented was released a week before the competition, and this year’s subject was Spoon University, a food media company aimed towards college students which has a Hopkins chapter.

“The case is like a two-page document that basically poses a problem that the company is facing and asks students to use marketing in an effort to fix the problem,” Schnabel said. “Students are encouraged to do market research and use everything that they’ve done in their marketing classes to put it on a presentation and present it to several different judges. One of the judges is the CEO of Spoon University... If you get to the top three then you present again in front of everyone.”

Spoon University CEO and co-founder Mackenzie Barth was also one of the speakers at the conference.

During the case presentations there was also a presentation by LinkedIn Advisory Partner and principal of Intero Advisory Colleen McKenna on how to best use LinkedIn, a career-oriented social network, to build a personal brand and reach out effectively.

“She’s the one who taught us how to market ourselves and better position ourselves on LinkedIn,” Schnabel said.

Sophomore Chloe Soares was a member of one of the top three teams in the case competition.

“It’s been really interesting. The LinkedIn speaker in particular was really, really great. She was really informative and really helpful,” Soares said.

A presentation by Dory Giannos, a Hopkins alumna and account manager at marketing company Ogilvy & Mather, followed. Giannos discussed how she built up her skill set by taking marketing and advertising classes at Hopkins, managing public relations for her sorority and participating in the varsity tennis team. She talked about her internship at the marketing agency Colangelo and how it contributed to her résumé, work experience and exposure to upper-level management.

The speech focused on the process of launching and promoting the startup Chemours Company, a spinoff of the chemical company DuPont, and the thinking that went into building the website, advertisements, logo and launch of the New York Stock Exchange.

Afterwards the finalists of the case competition were announced with two of the teams being from Hopkins.

Lunch was also another chance for students to network with professionals and alumni.

Senior Jasmine Kingston, who was on one of the top three teams, has routinely been a finalist in previous competitions.

“For me personally this was a huge networking opportunity in addition to a way to practice skills for marketing. I’ve done the case studies in the past and every year I’ve gotten new feedback and new information about marketing so it’s just huge,” Kingston said. “In the past I’ve been offered some internship opportunities just from competing in the case competition, but networking is huge. Networking, as well as being able to have face value for all of these companies, is great.”

Senior Joseph Weinstein-Avery agreed with Kingston.

“I’m very interested in marketing as a career... Hopefully I’ll be able to shake some hands and get some contact info,” he said.

Grubb, the Hopkins AMA president, said that networking, as well as gaining exposure to and experience in marketing, was one of the major focuses of the conference.

“I actually got an internship off it last year so it was definitely great to meet people from other schools but also the speakers who do have direct insight into potential jobs and internships,” she said.