NC State Student AMA Chapter Hosts First Regional Conference: Accelerate your Marketing Career

April 5, 2019 superuser 4-min. read

NC State AMA Conference Committee members, Left to right: Patrice Nealon, Poole College senior lecturer in marketing, and student team members Melanie Flowers, Yusuf Ali (Mahmoud), Parker Lee, Tyler Couse, Jake Mills, Steven Crowell, and Rebecca Maguire.

The NC State University student chapter of the American Marketing Association hosted its inaugural Regional Conference – Accelerate Your Marketing Career – on March 30, 2019, at the SKEMA Business School’s U.S. campus, located at NC State University’s Centennial Campus. The conference provided opportunities for student AMA members and their international SKEMA student colleagues to learn from marketing professionals and compete for cash prizes.

The conference drew 85 AMA student chapter members from five universities in the southeast U.S. region: Florida State University, West Virginia Wesleyan College, High Point University, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC State University, and SKEMA.

Participants heard from the following speakers.

Owen Pierce, account strategist with Google who spoke about the future of digital marketing, a presentation that had the audience analyzing topics such as online security.
Kevin Snyder, an inspirational speaker and author who challenged the students’ perspective on what an honest path to success looks like with his presentation, “Discover Your Career Path.”
Charles Oxendine, a State Farm Insurance agency owner who presented an elevator pitch workshop to help students gain confidence in marketing themselves to future employers.
Andrew Kocha, a co-founder and marketing manager of Reunion Marketing who taught the participants about the value of tracking their professional goals in his presentation: “Web Analytics: Are You Tracking Your Business Goals?”

Three competitions, modeled after those in the AMA International Collegiate Conference, provided an opportunity for participants to test their knowledge and skills and win cash prizes.

Marketing Strategy Competition

Students were challenged to develop a marketing strategy for the sale of BomBoard, a high-performance jet ski, including target markets and marketing mix. Winners were:

First place, Zuzanna Szulc and Leah Percal, Florida State University, $250
Second place: Courtney Buhl and Dan Cusick, NC State University, $150
Third place: Jon Delgado and Adriana Ortiz, NC State University, $100

Reunion Marketing Digital Strategy Competition

•First place: Leo Pinon, Darius Dubois, and Florian Peyssonneaux, SKEMA Business School, $500 — First place: Leo Pinon, Darius Dubois, and Florian Peyssonneaux

Students were asked to develop and present a social media strategy for the dental industry, including an analysis of Reunion Marketing’s current social media offerings, a definition of success, brand experience strategy, and a summary of its the social media profile with target audience information and specific posts for various social media platforms.

First place: Leo Pinon, Darius Dubois, and Florian Peyssonneaux, SKEMA Business School, $500
Second place: Tristen Adams and Thomas Armstrong, NC State University, $300
Third place: Allyson Meade and Brittany Connor, NC State University, $200

Perfect Pitch Competition

Participants had the opportunity to pitch themselves for an account manager position at the Creative Marketing Solutions Marketing Agency.

First place: Ryan McAtee, NC State University, $250
Second place: Leah Percal, Florida State University, $150
Third place: Talia Bender, NC State University, $100

“The NC State student AMA chapter members are incredibly thankful for the speakers and judges who devoted their Saturday to students,” said Parker Lee, chapter president and conference director. “We also are thankful for the students who committed their weekend to this professional development opportunity. The conference has received overwhelmingly positive feedback and our chapter is looking forward to continue improving as we plan for future conferences.”

“Our first conference was truly a collaborative event,” said Patrice Nealon, senior lecturer in marketing at Poole College. “With the support of numerous industry partners, PCOM support, SKEMA, and an outstanding AMA student leadership team, the conference was a great success. Throughout the day, I received numerous feedback about the truly welcoming atmosphere our students created for our guest universities and how much they were enjoying the opportunity to talk to companies such as Google. We really do have awesome students!”

“The NC State AMA Regional Conference gave us the opportunity to engage with other young marketing professionals from North Carolina State University and other colleges across the country. We also had the chance to apply our digital marketing skills in a real-life case study and to demonstrate our value in front of experienced marketing professionals,” said members of the SKEMA team.

“It was a pleasure to watch our international students connect with individuals across the nation as well as listen in on an amazing line up of motivational guest speakers. You can see clearly the AMA takes great care in providing excellent resources and opportunities for its members. A big thank you to NC State for thinking of us when selecting our venue,” said Gisa L. Rollin, development director at the SKEMA Business School – U.S. Campus.

The NC State AMA’s Conference Committee members were Patrice Nealon, Poole College marketing senior lecturer in marketing, and Melanie Flowers, Yusuf Ali (Mahmoud), Parker Lee, Tyler Couse, Jake Mills, Steven Crowell, and Rebecca Maguire, NC State AMA student members.