Final Reflection on My LSM

We Made It

My Liberal Studies major has shaped my educational experience at Bentley. It has affected the elective courses I have taken and provided opportunities that served as a creative outlet. The material I have studied in my Media Arts and Society themed courses have complimented my marketing curriculum. I entered college with a fire for experiential marketing, a love for creativity and art, and enthusiasm to grab on to everything my Bentley experience had to offer. Looking back, I am thankful that I pursued a LSM concentrated in Media Arts and Society and it positively contributed to my business studies. I think the skills students develop in the LSM exemplify what Gloria is talking about when she says Bentley students are “nimble.”

            Reflecting on the courses I took for my LSM, they were some of my favorite – particularly the ones that also fit my marketing major. Promotional strategy was one of the first classes I took for my LSM and for my major in marketing. The course drew strong ties between marketing and different media channels. It exposed me to a lot of different channels of communication. The course’s focus on integrated marketing communications challenged me to analyze my marketing and communications ideas more deeply to understand the implications of selecting a certain channel. Promotional Strategy is still one of my favorite classes I took while at Bentley.

            The other LSM course that overlapped with my marketing curriculum that I really enjoyed was e-Marketing, or Digital Marketing as it should be named. I was able to take the class with an adjunct professor who actually works in the industry. Professor Chapman taught from a different perspective than a lot of my other professors. Instead of teaching principals from a textbook, he used real-world examples and industry news to guide our class. His marketing input seemed more in line to what I would experience in the real world. Class discussion was heavily focused on social media marketing. Both current capabilities of social media marketing and what the future might have in store. In class, we talked with industry experts in marketing technology and with VP’s of prominent agencies. My e-Marketing class contributed a lot to overall value of my LSM and drew connections between my liberal studies and my business studies.

            What stands out most about my educational experience and LSM coursework is that I enjoyed my major-related classes the most. I think that this proves the LSM was a nice diversification to my business degree, but is limited to a supplemental status. My business degree is stronger with the LSM, but I am happy I did not chase and Bachelors of Arts.

            The factor I am most appreciative of my Liberal Studies Major for. is the real world experience I gained in areas related to my studies. I think that one of the coolest things that I did with my LSM is take on an internship while I was studying abroad. I originally chose the MAS concentration because I love art and was looking for a creative outlet. I quickly realized that Media Arts and Society had many more elements than painting a landscape or taking a pretty digital photo. The major is more about media studies and media’s impact on society. However, with my internship in Belgium I was able to mesh art with modern media production.

            At my internship with the Accessible Art Fair, I was able to meet artists and get up close in personal with prominent works, while also developing skills that related to my career aspirations. One of my main responsibilities was creating videos about the artists to promote the art fair. This digital media production was an experience closely tied with my LSM and also a nice case study for my advertising capabilities. The media production I did for the Accessible Art Fair is on my LinkedIn and a sample of work I can use when applying for jobs. The other relevant experience I took away from my internship for my LSM is event production experience. I want to work in experiential marketing which is event planning for brands. Thanks to my work with the AAF I can now speak about my contributions assisting with an international event and the biggest art fair in Brussels.

            The other real-world experience I took away from my LSM is my culminating project. For my culminating project, I created a detailed marketing plan for a consumer brand. My original intentions for the project was to analyze a brand and create a marketing strategy that incorporated experiential marketing and a few forms of media. I had analyzed brands before and made recommendations in my Promotional Strategy class. In promotional strategy I analyzed PopTarts—a brand I had worked on before at one of my previous agencies. I figured for my culminating project I could do something similar for a different account I have worked on like Kashi, AirFrance, or Apple. I had a plan to analyze a consumer brand and make an experiential marketing plan for them. Then I had a breakthrough.

            I am the Campus Traditions Chair for the Bentley Campus Activities Board, which means I planned Homecoming, Super Bingo, and Spring Day this past year. I made the breakthrough that I needed to start viewing the events I planned for Bentley through the lens of experiential marketing. When I began to think critically about it, I realized that Spring Day – the event I was responsible for planning during my last semester of college – is the biggest aspect of experiential marketing that Bentley executes for their students. I also realized that keeping students happy and engaged is a major factor in retaining students at a university. I concluded that Bentley should put even more focus on satisfying their students because happy student make great advocates of a school.

            Once I began to view Spring Day through the eyes of an experiential marketer, I started to realize how many connections existed between what I was planning and the events that I helped execute in my experiential marketing internships. Having the knowledge of a marketer helped me to design a more engaging and social Spring Day. For my LSM culminating project, I pulled out my best business chops and created a professional, detailed marketing plan.

            To begin designing my culminating project I drew from skills I developed in my previous classes. Most fundamentally, I used the marketing plan format that I leaned in my e-Marketing class. The Marketing Plan format included the elements: executive summary, situational awareness, target consumers, goals and measures of success, marketing strategy, tactical programs and implementation, and resources. Working with that framework, I created a detailed plan. Professor Chapman from my eMarketing class also instilled the importance of content creation into all of his students. He inspired me to create a website (blog) for Spring Day. The online media helped to define what Spring Day was, communicate my vision to the entire campus, and serve as a source of information. My culminating project gave me the opportunity to take something I do for fun (plan events for Bentley) and turn it into a professional business marketing plan. It is a piece of work that I am proud of and can talk about in future job interviews.