December 2022

I had no idea what to expect when I took on the role of Managing Editor in this quarter's Applied IMC (AIMC). I was thinking, "what did I say yes to?!" when reviewing information left for me to start planning for the class. Little did I know, this would be one of the most beneficial experiences I would have at WWU.

Some of my passions include graphic design, UI design, web design, and branding - all areas that I got to explore when creating my personal website in Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) Fall 2022.

I had a vision when I designed my creative brief in Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) Fall of 2021. I wanted to create a personal brand that felt very "Alana" - it needed to align with my values and goals, express my aesthetics and design taste, and support my future career direction. Although I only had one academic quarter to ideate and execute my brand, I am so happy with what I created.

Over the past 3 months, I experienced life as a product manager for the podcast: Marketing by the Minute. I was selected for this role in my Applied Integrated Marketing Communications class where we were tasked to build a product or service to improve our own marketing department. My team decided to rebuild and improve a podcast from the previous quarter. During this time, I oversaw a team of 5 content creators. I learned so much about how to manage a team and what tools/practices are used to help managers succeed.

This fall I managed a team of content creators in my Applied Integrated Marketing Communication class at WWU. Our project was to develop a product for the marketing program. This process started with learning about creative briefs and creative strategies.

If you are like me, you have probably thought to yourself what does a manager even do? Doesn’t a manager just tell their team what to do? What’s so complicated about that?

As it turns out, team organization is much more complicated than I realized and there are several tools that are used to hold a cohesive team together. In my Applied Integrated Marketing Communications class at WWU, I had the opportunity to learn what it takes to be a manager. In this role, I oversaw a team of 5 other students where we rebuilt a podcast talking to alumni of the marketing program. During this time I was finally able to make use of the practices I had learned about and implement them in a real-world environment.

What I Did

This fall I managed a team of 5 content creators in creating and running a Tik Tok social media campaign. We built this campaign based on the needs of our client (marketing program), executed, and analyzed our work. We collaborated every week with each other, brainstorming using sticky notes to eliminate group influence. During our production we practiced the sprint development life cycle in two-week increments. How we started the sprints were with the practice of lean meetings and the use of Kanbans. These helped me and my team stay organized and allow for tasks to be pulled by individuals instead of pushing tasks on to them.

Why?

This falls under my efforts of differentiating myself, getting out of my comfort zone, and building confidence. In this blog I’ll talk about the three biggest benefits of creating a speaking explainer video for your personal brand and how it can excel you in your career search.

Pre-Personal Brand

Before taking IMC in the summer of 2022, I tried to grow my brand as a photographer by solely showcasing my work. On the surface this is all I knew and what I was taught from others. Constantly reaching out to brands for work hoping they would like my style and would hire me. The problem was they knew nothing about me and my vision, all I had was my work to show and they didn’t know who they were hiring as a person/brand. It makes sense why this wasn’t successful –– what if my values don’t match theirs? What if our visions don’t match? These were questions that are highly dependent on whether I’d be a good fit or not.

Creating our product, Marketing by the Minute, from pre-production, production, post-production and finally promotion was so much fun that I decided to take on the role of Product Manager this quarter, where I managed my own production team through Agile project management. Here are a few lessons I learned as a Product Manager.