Photo by Nathan Latil/UM Communications

By James Lumpp

In the intersession last August, several lucky graduate and undergraduate students at the Meek School took a brand new course — Integrated Marketing Communications 556: Multicultural Marketing Communication.

They spent two very full weeks learning about the ins and outs and different dimensions of that important business activity from visiting professor Mickey Brazeal.

Brazeal is an associate professor at Roosevelt University in Chicago, where he heads up their innovative integrated marketing communications sequence.

This wasn’t the first time he had helped us. He played a major role in designing Ole Miss’ IMC programs, which just completed their third year, and graduated the second cohort. He has also made presentations on IMC topics and spoken to classes.

He graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln and a master’s degree in advertising from the University of Illinois, where he was a James Webb Young scholar.

Brazeal spent — and survived — 28 years in the rough-and-tumble Chicago advertising agency business. He started at Marsteller, which was later bought by Young & Rubicam.

Then he worked his way steadily up the career ladder through McCann-Erickson, eventually migrating to Grey/Chicago, which was bought by LOIS/EJ — first as group creative director, then later, as executive creative director. He worked for IMC legend, designer George Lois. While Brazeal was there, billings increased from $45 million to more than $200 million.

In 2000, he shifted into full-time teaching.

Clients and campaigns to his credit were created for Internet startups Stamps.com and Drugstore.com, Armour Meats, First Alert, Jewel Food Stores, Osco/Savon, Eli Lilly, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, and BASF Crop Protection products, among others. He also has worked on several international consulting projects and campaigns.

His awards list is lengthy — with Addies, Tellies, Effies and

more, plus the Gallagher Report’s award for “the most obnoxious TV commercial we’ve seen this month.” Brazeal has quite a sense of humor, too. When he was honored a few years ago by Nebraska’s Journalism Alumni Association, he told about some of the new initiatives then being worked on at LOIS. They were among the first to see the potential and get involved in He covered all aspects, both international and intercultural. Pretty much the same principles apply, but most of us hadn’t really thought about their application in so many different situations, each with their own set of unique nuances. Professor Brazeal was very dynamic, very thorough, with plenty of interesting experiences to draw upon from his travels and from living and teaching in the diverse Chicago environment.” It’s a tough business, very competitive. You have to learn to write very well. In order to succeed, you’ve got to have a passion for it. “ interactive advertising in a major way, and in something that was relThe students here impressed Brazeal, too. He found the best of atively new at the time — customer relationship marketing, or CRM, them to be as good as any he’s taught in Chicago, including at Northwhich today is a major IMC focus worldwide. western, Illinois Institute of Technology and Roosevelt. Brazeal also showed prescience in his 2009 book “RFID and the What advice does he have for those who aspire to an IMC career? Customer Experience.” The letters stand for Radio Frequency IdenOn a panel at the Meek School’s Overby Center in 2011 he said, tification, a method of connecting consumers in stores with promo“It’s a tough business, very competitive. You have to learn to write tional information and offers they may be interested in as they come very well. In order to succeed, you’ve got to have a passion for it.” close to a particular product. RFID, it turns out, also included a When he got into advertising, he said, “The thing that was the mechanism for faster customer check-out, and an improved system of greatest surprise to me is the level of intensity. It’s not routine. It’s inventory and distribution controls. A seemingly unlimited number not easy. It’s really, really intense people working at a really, really of other applications have now evolved. intense pace. You need to decide if you can make that kind of comHe sees the future of IMC as becoming increasingly dominated by mitment. CRM, which is really “the idea that rather than focusing on persuad“The other thing I would say is there are lots of people who are ing people to commit to a particular behavior, you think more in smart; there are lots of people who are hard working. Not everybody’s terms of ‘acquiring and retaining’ customers over a long period.” brave. If you are going to get the attention of people in a media-inIn earlier times, he explains, “marketing communications — tense environment where everybody’s just about seen everything, it’s particularly advertising — was built on what I see as ‘persuade and probably not going to be with some kind of reasoned argument. It’s discard.’ I scoop you up in a television commercial and I just perprobably not going to be with the recitation of a lot of data. suade the hell out of you for 30 seconds or 60 seconds or 10 seconds, “You can’t bore people into buying stuff, and you can’t reason and then I drop you back in the bowl. And then I scoop up another people into buying stuff. What you have to do is force an emotional chunk, I persuade you fiercely for a little while, then I drop you back response. And the only way you’re going to get that done for a satiatin the bowl. ed audience is to do something a little unusual. Do something a little “That’s kind of what happens to long-term advertising campaigns. bit brave. If you cannot show stuff to your management that will I did a campaign that went 11 years with the same kind of stuff, and make them think, ‘I don’t know if I really want to do that,’ you’re not by the end of it, I don’t know a lot about who I reached. I know that going far enough. You can always go too far and pull it back. But I persuaded a bunch of you a bunch of times. The CRM approach you’ve got to be brave to do this for a living.” would be I’m going to attract and retain. I probably am going to use Professor Brazeal is obviously smart, intense, hard working and a promotional device, the sales promotion thing, to get you in the brave. door. But the part that really matters is I must know who you are We hope he’ll visit Ole Miss again soon and help a new group of well enough to know what you want in order that I can keep you. students figure out how they can develop the skills and utilize all And that you’ll consider and buy my product multiple times. This those virtues as tomorrow’s IMC professionals. wasn’t really feasible before computing got cheap, but it’s certainly feasible now. And you see more effective influences on consumer behaviors because of that.” The author is an assistant professor in Integrated Marketing Communication. He was vice president/research director, Sawyer/Riley/Compton (advertising agency), Atlanta; corporate vice president, Fletcher/Mayo/ Brazeal’s Ole Miss students were full of praise for the multiculturAssociates (advertising agency), St. Joseph, Missouri, Kansas City, al marketing course. Andrew Anglin, then a second-year graduate Chicago, Atlanta; and advertising/promotion representative, DuPont, student and now a marketer at Disney reported, “It was just superb. Wilmington, Delaware.