February Monthly Meeting

Hello Comm Club! Just wanted to remind everyone to come to our first general meeting of the spring semester. It is tonight, February 23rd at 7:00pm. We will be in the MCC Department (239 Greene Street on the 7th floor).

We are excited to see everyone and hear your ideas about events for the spring semester! We already have some amazing stuff planned including free studio tours, show tapings, movies, and more.

Special guest and former Comm Club President Aaron Azpiazu will be there talking about Campus Movie Fest, an exciting event taking place later on in the semester. You definitely don't want to miss hearing about it, it is a fantastic opportunity!

Looking forward to seeing you all! And as always, there will be FREE food provided!

Bi-Weekly Interview: James Polulach

James Polulach is a relationship manager for Kaplan, the well-know test prep company that has “helped millions of students achieve their educational and career goals.” James has become a good friend and partner of the Communications Club, helping to sponsor events and provide us with test-prep course giveaways. We sat down with James to discuss how he’s built relationships with students and clubs across NYU and how Kaplan has created unique and custom sponsorship programs at universities. The interview has been edited and condensed.


How did you gain the position of relationship manager at Kaplan?

I play football (the Australian kind) and one of the people I played with worked for Kaplan. He recommended me for a position in Brooklyn that I didn’t end up getting. Then the position to work with universities in Manhattan came up and I got it. I’ve been with Kaplan for about 2.5-3 years.

What schools do you work with?

NYU, Columbia and Yeshiva

What different kinds of student clubs at NYU have you worked with?

All different kinds. Pre-professional, cultural, ethnic. I’ve found great ways to work with all different kinds of clubs.

Which clubs have you built the best relationships with (besides Comm Club of course)?

I’ve worked very closely with AMSA (The American Medical Student Association) and Beta Alpha Psi (the business fraternity). Those organizations naturally have many students who are interested in graduate school and test preparation. I’ve also had the pleasure of working with clubs like Psychology and Applied Psychology (another Steinhardt club).

What’s the ROI (return on investment) that you see from your partnerships with student organizations?

Helping host events is a great way to tap into our market and also help each club get their point-of-view across and showcase their club. Kaplan created the industry so I’m not necessarily worried about direct ROI but continuing to invest in our brand by helping other clubs.

What are the best forms of communication that worked with reaching out to clubs?

Email campaigns are definitely the best. Making sure that people are sending out emails, reaching out via Facebook, and updating their members about upcoming events is really important.

What events does Kaplan have coming up?

We will start running more events again in the spring, when it’s not cold out. There will be large practice tests for clubs and we will be working with Wasserman for some events. There will be a big pre-law event in April.


What’s going in Kaplan’s corporate world?

On a corporate level we’ve acquired other test companies that have similar preparation styles and that work well with the Kaplan brand. We’re always making sure Kaplan’s messages are being communicated effectively and that we continue to run events and build relationships with students.


You can follow Kaplan on Twitter here: http://twitter.com/KTPA_Careers


Edited by Sara Saldi

October 30th MCC Graduate Conference Open to All Students

Hey Comm Club!

The MCC department's graduate conference is occurring on October 30. It is an open event for any student interested in attending! There will be a number of informative panels with topics that include media activism, vision and sound as a commodity, and the politics of memory. Think you might be interested in attending? Want to find out more information about the day's events, panelists, etc.? Check out the schedule below:

Event Time:
Friday, October 30, 2009
9:00 AM - 6:00 PM

Location:
Helen Mills Theater
137 West 26th Street

Schedule:
9:00 Doors open & Coffee served

9:15 Welcome
* Marita Sturken, Chair
* Rod Benson, Director of Graduate Studies

9:30 Panel I – Vision, Sound and/as Commodity
* Jamie Berthe, “Deconstructing Tarzan or Reconstructing Racial Hierarchies?”
* Melissa De Witte, “Memory and the Spectacle: Phantom and fantasy in a new economy of the image”
* Jennifer Heuson, “Soundscapes of the Black Hills: An acoustemology of the American West”
* Faculty moderator: Martin Scherzinger

11:00 Panel II – Politics of Memory
* Lisa Gitelman, "Daniel Ellsberg and the lost idea of the photocopy"
* Hatim El-Hibri, “Sectarianism, Maps and Beirut: From the French Mandate through the end of the civil war (1920-1991)”
* Christine Weible, “How the creation of museums and memorials at the site of the ex-ESMA is impacting collective memory of the Dirty War in Argentina”
* Scott Selberg, "Cognitive Fever: Remembering Alzheimer's at the National Library of Medicine"
* Faculty moderator: Nicholas Mirzoeff

12:45 Lunch served

1:30 Brian Larkin, Anthropology, Barnard College, Columbia University, “The Mobility of Images and the Ethnography of Value: Cinema in Nigeria”

2:45 Break

3:00 Panel III – Media Activism
* Victor Pickard, "Crises and Opportunities in the Ongoing Struggle for Public Service Media"
* Evan Brody, “(De)scribing Disease: Capitalist HIV imagery and cultural memory”
* Dwaipayan Banerjee, “Media Activism in its Local Place: Lessons from Bhopal”
* Marco Deseriis, “The Faker as Producer: Politics of fabrication and the three orders of the fake”
* Faculty moderator: Allen Feldman

4:45 Reception & Drinks served

If you have any further questions, please contact us at nyucommclub@gmail.com

Compiled by Caitlin Pirraglia, Edited by Sara Saldi

Comm Club and WIC Host Professional PR Panel

This past Wednesday (Oct. 21), Comm Club and the Women in Communications Club had the pleasure of co-hosting a professional public relations panel at Kimmel. We really had a phenomenal turnout and we hope that everyone got as much out of the event as we did. We heard from professionals across a wide range of industries and were really able to get a great sense of what it takes to make it in PR. Also, Quinn & Co., one of the firms that participated, covered us in their blog!

Update: Here's a short, clip from the panel. Enjoy!







The panelists:

· Katie Elliott, Account Supervisor, Travel and Digital Media Specialist, Quinn & Co.

· Emily Franklin, Digital Media/Senior Account Executive, Real Estate, Quinn & Co.

· Danielle Culmone, Digital Media/Account Supervisor, Real Estate, Quinn & Co.

· Jenna Hudson, Executive Assistant to the President, FerenComm

· Kate Brennan, Junior Publicist/Assistant to the SVP, FerenComm

· Claire Coveney, Content Manager, Perks Consulting

· Maureen Haley, Account Executive, Development Counsellors International

A small selection of the most informative and helpful Q&A:

What advice do you have for securing a job/internship in PR?

• With the economy, you have to remember that although a job may be hard to find, an internship can turn into a four-month interview where you will have the chance to prove how valuable you are to the team

• Remember to write thoughtful thank you cards after an interview. This will really make you stand out since you went out of your way to handwrite something personal and snail mail it.

• Stay busy at your internship. Your supervisors will notice if you are slacking or not putting in 100% effort.

• Go to as many networking events as possible. Meet people. Research different firms. Most importantly make sure you enjoy what you are doing!

What are the best and worst parts about working in PR?

• Best: Communicating well is not easy for everyone. Helping clients by formulating effective communications message so they can promote their brand is extremely rewarding. Also, working with clients that reach across national markets is very exciting.

• Worst: Pitching to journalists can be very hard. Some of them are mean and some of them will never call you back. It’s also always very difficult to leave your work at work. PR professionals are extremely busy and managing your time effectively often becomes the hardest part of the job.

How has social/digital media changed the way PR works?

• There are so many different channels available now to communicate client’s messages. This can especially become harder to manage when people within the PR agency are new at using the tools. Communications agencies across the spectrum are now getting up to speed within their own structures and for the client work they produce.

• The fact is that although there are all these new channels your goals are still the same – to effectively communicate and drive results for the client. The more channels the better but you always need to remember that the same diligence is needed in every execution.

If you’re interested in learning about any of the internship programs at the panfirms, please don’t hesitate to let us know! nyucommclub@gmail.com

Compiled by Natan Edelsburg, Edited by Sara Saldi

Our Second Monthly Meeting Updates

Hey everybody! First, we want to thank everyone who came to our second monthly meeting this Wednesday. We had a great turnout, and we loved how enthusiastic you all were! For those of you who couldn’t make it, here is some of what happened:

• First we discussed the Media, Culture, and Communication Undergraduate Conference. This is a conference that occurs in the spring every year. MCC freshmen are required to attend, but everyone is welcome. This year, Comm Club was approached to help plan the event. This is an awesome opportunity, especially for the freshmen, because we have the ability to make this mandatory conference really cool. We started brainstorming some ideas for topics, speakers, and an interesting format. We always need more ideas and help. If you’d like to help out with this, please email us at nyucommclub@gmail.com
  


• The second order of business was about the blog (the one you are reading right now!). We really want to get some new writers and expand our subject matter. This blog shouldn’t just be about NYU Comm Club happenings – it should be about the world of media! Please contact Sara Saldi at sjs491@nyu.edu if you have any interest in writing a blog entry for us (or even start a column!). It can be as fun as an article about your favorite TV show or as serious as an interview with one of your professor. Remember, having your writing published looks great on your resume.
  


• Now that we have our budget, we can really start planning events. At the meeting, we tried to get a feel for which events people were most excited about (an NBC studio tour was one example. A cupcake branding taste test was another). Though these events were ideas proposed by the E-Board, we are always looking to hear about what YOU guys want to do. Always feel free to approach us with ideas.
  


• Abi and Natan briefed us on the Social Media Society, a professional society focusing on the world of social media. The Comm Club was able to attend the launch of this brand-new society (click here to read one of our past blogs about it). We hope to form the first student chapter of the Social Media Society. Abi will be keeping us posted!

If you have any further questions about what happened at the meeting, please email nyucommclub@gmail.com.

The next Comm Club Meeting will be Wednesday, November 18th at 7:30. Be there!