As a student studying Communications, one of my biggest pet peeves is people who don’t see the value in what I’m studying. Many communications students have heard it, “Why do you need to study how to communicate? What are you going to do with that?”
There are schools, jobs, departments even companies and industries dedicated to it; what do you mean what am I going to do with it? Both my Proforma internship and my on campus job with John Carroll’s Sports Information Department have allowed me to better understand the importance of communication and answer those questions.
Why I Chose Communication
John Carroll gives students interested in marketing two tracks to study; one through the Business School and one through the Communication Department. I am a Communication student with an Integrated Marketing Communication Track. I started off as a business marketing major and quickly realized that courses like marketing campaigns, event planning and market research were more appealing to me personally than economics and accounting, so I went the communication route.
Why is Communication Important?
There were many people who tried to tell me that I had to have a business background to understand marketing, and while that may be true for some jobs, I had more of an interest in taking a creative approach than a strategic business one. Maybe I’m biased, but I have become a firm believer that the placement and promotion of a marketing campaign or message is just as, if not more, important than the actual product and pricing.
A product or service can only be successfully marketed if you’re communicating it in the way it was intended to be to be marketed. Your messages should be tweaked to appeal to a variety of target audiences. As the person in charge of communicating a brand, company or department’s message you are given a lot of power to influence others with your message, no matter what it is. You have the power to make or break an audiences experience with your brand, company or department.
That seems like an important job to me.
