NYU Master's in Marketing: Thom Kennon

Insights about the graduate marketing degree program from social and digital marketing professor @tkennon

"So tonight we're here with Thom Kennon, SVP of Strategy at Y&R. He is the Social Media & the Brand professor. Thom we have a few questions for you. Tell us a little bit about your work experience."

Thom:
I started out many many years ago in database marketing -- the direct side of the marketing world. And cut my teeth in the 80s in segmentation and list overlays and merge purge and personalization and lots of mail and outbound of telemarketing. And moved into digital when digital was born - developed a small boutique agency in the mid90s and followed that into a little bit of a global play with one of the large holding companies. And then left digital behind as a total focus in the mid 2000s and then went to work for one of the big global search marketing companies -- led strategy and account management for them for a couple years. Then I got a little bit bored with just search -- although search to me has changed everything and will always be near and dear to my heart -- but back into the world of marketing and advertising and the last five years have worked at one of the big holding companies doing emerging channel strategy and activation planning.

"Great, can you tell us a little bit about the classes you've taught in the NYU MS - Masters in Integrated Marketing program?"

Thom:
Yes, for the past two years I've been lucky enough to have taught students like yourself and a mix of wonderful young professionals in two classes: Social Media for the Brand and Digital Marketing.

Great and tell us a little bit more about the key lessons that your students take away from your courses.

Thom: I would say in particular that Social Media for the Brand - and in fact I would argue that the content and the approach and philosophy and hopefully the takeaways of it apply to the Digital Marketing are very very similar -- [and I think you've had both of those classes Jessie, so you'll know this to be true]. I think the key takeaway I hope is that my students are leaving this classroom with -- is the idea of that the nature of brands: and how people engage with them, and how people find them, and how people fall in love with them or how people fall out of love with has changed forever over the last seven, eight or nine years. Because of the emerging channels - such as search which is massively consumer initiated and changes the rules of marketing forever -- more and more social, which relies upon a brand having to be found and shared out in a world where they've lost control essentially that we're used to - from straight push advertising. And now increasingly, mobile -- and what I think is this idea of mobility-ness, which means that brands have now just changed forever but the way people use, explore and find value from products and services and brands have changed forever.

"Ok great, and what do you consider to be the greatest strengths of this graduate marketing program at NYU?"

Thom: Well I would have to say, from where I'm sitting -- my many years at my career -- I've had the opportunity and the honor to hire a range of different folks in different pursuits -- the planning, the account management or the technology end of our business and I was never one to focus too much on MBA types. To me, we had training on everything from the ground up just like anybody else. I was very much more inclined to look for people who had humanities background or educational credentials -- arts and literature -- critical thinkers that could approach marketing in the ways that I think are necessary. My understanding is consumer behavior -- first and foremost -- and understanding them and how that behavior can be shaped or changed now. So to me, a program like this is miles ahead of a typical MBA program for the quality of a candidate that would send back to agencies, like myself, for consideration to hire. And I would argue in an increasingly technological environment, that the focus in the integrated approach that at this particular program has here at MSIM is what I would say is an invaluable experience to get a full, not just a wide broad understanding of the marketing channels and disciplines, but also a relatively robust and deep appreciation for the mechanics of those channels and the strategies and activation programs that you might get out. So I would argue that I'd rather find a resume for a candidate coming from a program like this than I would from your typical high end MBA program.

Okay thanks for your time tonight Thom.

And if you'd like to learn more, please visit www.nyumarketing.com

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Education

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• NYU
• marketing
• digital
• socialmedia
• gradschool