Posted Sept. 3, 2015
Message from Russ Mischner, 2000 advertising alumnus
Photo by Lewis Zeigler, college staff
Past and present students within the advertising track at the School of Journalism and Mass Communications are familiar with Professor Bonnie Drewniany’s office collection of brand memorabilia. It is legendary — and to me would not be complete without a set of personalized Coca-Cola bottles from this Summer’s 'Share a Coke' campaign.
As a 2000 USC graduate, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to learn from Bonnie as part of her Creative Strategies in Advertising course – a hands-on class that really brought to life the advertising world and how it all works with real-world situations, from creative brief, through ideation and execution. Analyzing the top advertisers from the Super Bowl was a core part of the course curriculum. Fifteen years later I can still clearly remember the top brands from that year, what worked well and why. It was a topic that Bonnie took very seriously … and also made seriously fun.
Over the past year I feel equally as fortunate to be able to reconnect again with Bonnie – now on the other side – from a professional standpoint with my current role in Integrated Marketing Content at Coca-Cola. I was able to visit with her and her students recently when our team at Coke was invited to receive the annual Cocky Award and share our overall approach and learnings from the 2015 Super Bowl. And the visit of course was even more personal for me, since I could very literally relate to being in the same chairs of the students in the room not that long ago.
It was professors, role models and friends like Bonnie (as well as the late Jon Wardrip & Alan Fried) that made my experience at Carolina such a special one.
Russ Mischner
Senior Manager, Integrated Marketing Content
Coca-Cola