Today we’d like to introduce you to Professor Andy Rohm and Professor Matt Stefl, Marketing faculty within LMU’s College of Business Administration.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Professor Andy and Professor Matt. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
In 2012, the advertising industry was suffering from a talent shortage. Advertising agencies in Los Angeles were finding that their entry-level hires lacked the necessary skills to hit the ground running once hired. On top of this, these agencies were poaching entry-level employees from their competitors to fill the talent gap. But these were employees that agencies had spent significant resources training and developing, only to have them learn on the job and then leave for another agency.
The M-School @ Loyola Marymount University answered the challenge from the advertising industry and ThinkLA, the preeminent advertising association in greater-LA, to provide a new breed of job-ready creative marketing talent. As a result, the M-School was born, with the mission of creating a world-class creative marketing education for undergraduate students within LMU’s College of Business Administration.
Our #1 goal was to fix the way advertising and branding was being taught at the undergraduate level. To do so, we created a totally new curriculum at LMU in areas like adaptive (paid search and paid social) media, brand strategy, growth marketing, and full-funnel content creation and an innovative new way of learning that integrated the world-class industry talent that exists a stone’s throw from LMU’s campus.
We named it the M-School, where the M stands for Modern and Marketing (or Magnificent!). It’s been an amazing ride ever since we launched the program back in 2012!
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
As with any new and innovative idea birthed within a larger institution or company, we faced a lot of challenges. Addressing these challenges forced us to think smart and strategic and to act quickly in a test-and-learn mindset. To do this, we adopted a start-up mentality within a 100+ years old university, with all of its existing systems and processes. Along the way, we likened this approach to kicking a stone along an uneven road–sometimes the stone goes forward, sometimes it veers off to the side, sometimes it doesn’t move at all. Our mantra soon became “what stands in the way, becomes the way.”
The idea behind the M-School was to transform the way we taught students about the new and fast-changing world of creative marketing, including branding and advertising. We created new courses and forged hundreds of new industry connections. Along the way, our M-Schoolers began getting great internships and full-time job offers, many of these coming from our industry partners. They got to see our students in action in class sessions in what we soon realized constituted “micro internships.”
And it worked! Feedback from industry is that M-School students are better prepared than students from other universities. But, these initial successes in turn created even more challenges. We began to see significantly more M-School applications from students than we had openings or capacity to admit to the program. The questions became “How do we satisfy the demand from the 80+ students who typically applied to the 24 or so openings in the program?” And “How do we manage the overwhelming interest from the dozens of prospective industry partners who expressed interest in mentoring, guest speaking, and even helping to create and host course sessions?”
From the teaching angle, we also had to constantly reinvent (and still are) the M-School curriculum to keep pace with the rapidly evolving marketing industry. One year, it’s Google’s new search algorithm, the next it’s Snapchat, and the next it’s TikTok. The M-School curriculum is not one where we can simply dust off a course syllabus year in and out. And, we’ve thrown out the textbook and replaced it with class sessions co-taught by industry pros, sessions oftentimes held on site at the respective company or agency.
So, over time and by continuing to kick that stone down the road, we’ve learned how to manage the sheer volume of interest from LMU students across our different schools and colleges, including Marketing, Studio Arts, Film and Television, and even Computer Science. We’ve doubled in size and added two specialized tracks: 1) a Strategy track for students interested in the planning, strategy and management side of marketing and 2) a Content Creation track for our more maker-minded students. We’ve also continued to grow our industry contacts and partnerships, which has helped us to continue to provide amazing internship and full-time opportunities for our students.
And, we’ve even initiated a student-run internal agency, called Agency-M, to create a rad social media presence for M-School to reach our multiple stakeholders, including students, parents, alums, industry partners and even M-School and CBA donors. Follow us on Instagram @lmumschool.
Please tell us about M-School @ Loyola Marymount University.
The M-School @ LMU is a specialized pathway within the College of Business Administration’s Marketing major, designed for undergraduate students who want to pursue a career in the creative marketing field (this includes students interested in advertising, media, digital marketing, brand management, content creation, and for that matter any career where creativity, critical thinking, collaboration and communication skills are important).
Our unique ‘secret sauce’ of courses and connections is made up of close industry partnerships with firms such as Facebook, Google, Team One, Ignited, 98LA, Deutsch, TBWA\Chiat\Day, Dollar Shave Club, and many others. Our sauce also includes the industry-informed development of new and relevant courses, continued career connections, and our dedication toward inspiring the next generation of future proof and real-world ready creative marketers.
In fact, we’re most proud of the M-School projects that we’ve created, such as the Marketing For Good (M4G) project where students work on products and campaigns and receive real funding to help make their respective ‘worlds’ or communities a better place. Past M4G projects have helped provide hygiene products to lower-income and homeless women in LA, promoted the adoption of rescue dogs and cats and created a children’s book with a modern twist on the “birds and the bees” story. The Marketing for Good initiative is directly aligned with our CBA mission to develop future business leaders with moral courage and creative confidence to be a force for good in the global community. We also build in reality and relevance in our projects with clients such as Beyond Meat, Dollar Shave Club, the Los Angeles Department of Public Health, Taco Bell, Nestlé and several local and regional non-profits.
To do all this, we base our curriculum on the development of what we call the 4Cs: Creativity, Critical Thinking, Collaboration and Communication, with an added dose of ambiguity baked in to prepare students for the complexities of career and life after college.
What sets the M-School apart is our always-changing curriculum, our close industry connections, and the resulting career opportunities that arise for our students.
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
Matt: Going to a focus group at the ad agency Ogilvy & Mather for Mattel Toys when I was nine years old. My dad worked at Ogilvy and I thought it was the coolest job ever.
Andy: Learning to sail on Lake Michigan when I was a kid. It helped me to become comfortable with the unknown, to take risks and become more self-reliant. Plus, as a Pisces, I loved being in or near the water, and this is what I love about living in the South Bay.
Contact Info:
- Address: M-School, College of Business Administration, One LMU Drive, LA 90045
- Website: m.school
- Phone: 310 338-7412
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lmumschool
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