Final American Advertising Award Winners - Interview w Jared Greer
Jared Greer is a second-year student in the M.A. Advertising program. He recently won one of the American Advertising Awards, arguably the biggest and most comprehensive competition in the advertising profession, drawing more than 25,000 submissions annually in regional AAF Ad Club events. The goal of the American Advertising Awards is to honor and promote excellence in the creative spirit of advertising.
Greer was awarded the Gold ADDY and 'Best of Show Advertising' ADDY for the student category of 'Television Advertising’, in recognition of a television ad he created that raised mental health awareness. Kennedy Fisher, a classmate and fellow M.A. a cohort member of Greer’s also received this award. Professor Octavio Kano-Galvan assisted Greer and Fisher in the making of the film, and they submitted it on Kano-Galvan’s advice. Greer is “grateful to have worked with and share this award with them”.
Upon graduating, Greer plans to work for an advertising agency in order to gain exposure to a wide array of notable brands and hopes to apply the lessons learned, skills gained, and relationships formed towards opening his own agency in the future. Between his first and second year in the program, he held an internship with an agency in Dallas which “revealed his love for the agency environment.”
Greer has held numerous internships in the advertising industry, in both the client and agency spheres and in a variety of disciplines, including sales, marketing, social media, and digital strategy. The flexibility in his course schedule provided by the UT M.A. Advertising program has enabled him to develop an expansive skill set and learn the different facets of the advertising industry, thereby preparing him for a wide range of internships. Greer has been impressed by how relevant the skills he learned from seminars have been in his work, whether it is presenting techniques or developing marketing plans. He states that “the program and those involved provide great expertise concerning each facet of advertising and equip graduates to act as mini-agencies in their own right, as they gain holistic experience.”
Greer is a great role model for advertising students on how success in the classroom can be translated into the real world. He strongly recommends that students talk to professors about submitting their work to the American Advertising Federation for the ADDYs as there is great work produced within Moody that deserves to be recognized on the professional level.
