By: Giselle Rhoden
The American Marketing Association has a new chapter at Bellarmine University, and members are ready to show others that marketing is not just for businesspeople.
According to the group’s Engage page, AMA “provides students with resources aimed at preparing them for careers in marketing-related fields.” Dr. Carla Childers, advising officer of AMA and associate professor in the Rubel School of Business, said she wants this new RSO to be a resource for students on and off campus.
“We are so excited to introduce marketing in this manner to all the Bellarmine students,” Childers said.
Childers also said AMA brings together “three different entities: faculty, professionals in the marketing industry and college students.” With 65 chapters across the U.S. and Canada, Bellarmine is another chapter that teaches students how to create, communicate, deliver, and exchange information that has value for customers, clients, partners and society, according to AMA’s website.
The Bellarmine AMA chapter plan states that students have the opportunity to meet local marketing professionals in industries like banking, sports administration and entertainment.
“I usually go by what the students want,” Childers said. She encourages AMA members to share what they are interested in and does her best to find professionals from those fields to discuss their experience and insight.
The AMA also has competitions where chapters develop marketing strategies for certain items and certain brands. “There’s all kinds of avenues for things for different students to do,” Childers said.
Members can also attend the annual American Marketing Association International Collegiate Conference in New Orleans. This year, the conference is a four-day, online event. All AMA chapters and their members are invited, and it features keynote speakers like Carly Zipp, Head of Global B2B Marketing at TikTok.
“Even just the schedule for the things that they have on the schedule for the virtual conference…it’s just unreal,” said Sam Rickert, a junior and president of Bellarmine’s AMA chapter.
AMA is not an RSO only for students interested in marketing. “It’s [marketing] universal. It’s not specific to one type of career,” said Dalton Bishop, a junior and the AMA’s vice president of membership.
Rickert said: “Marketing is part of everyday life…We were at a career fair… and an art major approached, and she was like ‘Well, why would I want to join this?’ and I said, ‘Well, are you looking to sell your art?’ and she was like ‘Yeah’ and I said, ‘This would be your perfect chance to learn the best way of marketing your art.’”
Bishop has also noticed how much marketing affects his everyday life. “I work at Bluegrass Karting and Events,” Bishop said, “and I see myself marketing like every time I work there. I’m not some high-end businessperson, but I market for my customers to come back and have a good time and enjoy themselves and do different things.”
AMA members are planning to have resume workshops, interview prep and other forms of professional development next year. Rickert also said the chapter wants to help students network in college, which can be difficult.
“Even though you might not care about marketing…you care about your future,” Rickert said.
Childers said she had a vision for AMA after she started working at Bellarmine in 2020. Before Bellarmine, she was the adviser for the AMA chapter at Ohio University for 12 years. She is also a member of the national council. Childers said, “I wanted to continue that relationship by starting a chapter here at Bellarmine.”
AMA became an RSO last semester. “We had to do some really grassroots recruiting,” Childers said. She talked to her students about starting AMA, and many of them—including Rickert—were excited to form a chapter. Students did virtual presentations in other business classes to get more students involved.
Rickert said, “It’s been a lot of…start-up work.”
Students can sign up to be part of AMA on Engage, and they can join the national chapter on AMA’s official website. The annual membership fee is $29. Meetings, for now, have been virtual, but Childers and Rickert said they are excited to start having in-person meetings and events in Fall 2021.
“It’s one of those things where we have the best of both worlds. So, we can have some fun and all that other stuff, but when it’s time to work, it’s time to work. That’s really the two things that drove me to join,” Bishop said.