Former UGA students speak about advertising's trend toward digital multimedia

Reunited after 17 years apart, University of Georgia graduates Lisa Ryan Howard and Suzy Deering gave a joint speech about advertising’s trend away from traditional media and toward digital multimedia to more than 60 students and faculty members filling the Drewry Room in UGA's Journalism Building.

Howard serves as the vice president of digital and multimedia integration for the Condé Nast Media Group, which publishes monthly magazines such as Vogue, The New Yorker and Gourmet, as well as produces Web sites. Deering, the Executive Director of Sponsorships and Media at Verizon Wireless, joined Howard in the first Hearst Foundation-funded speech at Grady College. Both professionals agreed about the importance of understanding multimedia and emerging technologies, as all forms of marketing and advertising are heading toward a more digital future.

“The publishing industry has changed drastically,” Howard said. “We’re no longer just selling magazines. We’re selling solutions to our clients’ problems.”

Though magazines have actually grown in audience size in the past few years by 17.9 percent, Howard described the struggle to continually adapt to a changing media climate.

“It’s so much more than just that printed page,” Howard said. “It’s about taking our assets and coming together with our clients’ objectives. All the content we create ourselves.” Condé Nast has striven to become a company with a premium brand in determining content for their advertisers.

Deering works for Verizon Wireless, just one of Condé Nast’s clients, as their executive director of sponsorships and media. She monitors consumer reactions to Verizon purchases, such as their advertisements with Condé Nast. However, she leaves the advertising content decisions to experts like the magazine publisher.

“We know what our core strengths are, and we live and learn every day,” Deering said. She realized that delegating content choices to a publishing group such as Condé Nast would actually save Verizon time and money.

“It used to be that media was the last part of the picture. That’s changed,” Deering said. Most marketing and advertising strategies now incorporate multimedia techniques, and Deering stressed the importance of it all coming together as one campaign.

The two companies worked together on a campaign called “Movies Rock.” This strategy included distribution of print ads that featured popular movie characters clutching Verizon phones. It also guaranteed Verizon customers access to exclusive movie content through their phones by using V-Cast technology. Verizon’s Web site featured exclusive movie rights that allowed visitors to vote for their favorite of 10 movies. Condé Nast garnered the rights for popular movie songs, all exclusively granted to Verizon Wireless.

Advertising major and junior at UGA Danielle Pascual attended the speech and came away with more than she had expected.
“I was at the speech for my advertising strategies class but I thought the speakers were really good,” Pascual said. “I was really impressed at how high their positions were and how freely they came to speak at Grady College.”

She was also impressed with Howard’s interactive and 3-D virtual tour of what Condé Nast has to offer. “You usually think of Condé Nast as just print magazines so it was cool they put it in a digital media format,” Pascual said.

Deering’s presentation was not quite as interactive, but her PowerPoint presentation informed students about the client-driven side of advertising in multimedia. Both Deering and Howard were featured in Advertising Age’s “40 Under Forty” list of top young professionals in the industry.