Matt Hanson currently serves as the Director of Digital Marketing and Co-Founder of V as in Victor, Marketing and Design. For the past 13 years, Matt has managed successful B2B and B2C marketing programs for many Fortune 100 companies, magazine publishers and e-commerce startups.

 In addition, Matt has been teaching advertising and e-marketing at Purdue Calumet for the last eight years. Since overhauling the advertising campaigns curriculum, the program has been recognized for the last two consecutive years as one of the top 15 advertising programs in the country according to the American Advertising Federation via NSAC.

 Matt is also an active member of the Board of Directors for the March of Dimes – Northwest Indiana.

 Matt’s most valued Purdue Calumet experience:
 “Purdue Calumet gave me the foundation to help build my career with professors that really wanted to see me succeed. The ability to get a first class education at a local university is terrific.”

Matt’s advice to current Purdue Calumet students:
“Stay connected.  Education is the foundation of any successful graduate, but the connections you make along the way are just as important. Make sure to keep your connections close, and constantly strive to make new ones.

Continue to evolve. Just like life, your profession isn’t going to stand still. Those that continue to learn, embrace, and evolve within their profession will maintain their edge. I look back 13 years ago and I think, ‘How in the world did we function without some of the tools we have today?’”

For SMALL BUSINESSES

Purdue University Calumet’s Small Business Institute (SBI) is pleased to announce that, as part of PUC’s experiential learning initiative, free consulting assistance is continuing to be offered each semester to small businesses of the NW Indiana region. 

Senior students of Management enrolled in the “Small Business Consulting” course are grouped up with faculty members and advisors to form ‘consulting teams’. Each team consisting of 3-5 members is assigned a ‘client company’ and by the end of the semester is required to produce a formal consulting report focused on the key issues/problems identified by their client company. Already over 100 small businesses have availed of this free consulting service. There is no financial cost to the client companies. 

Small businesses selected as ‘clients’ will have the following characteristics:

(a)   Should be located within driving distance of the PUC campus

(b)  Must have been in operation for at least 2-3 years, full-time

(c)   Have a physical location, i.e., not a home-based

(d)  Must have full-time employees

(e)   The owner(s) must be ready to commit to work seriously with the consulting team assigned to their business. The quality and usefulness of the final consulting findings and recommendations depend largely on the cooperation, involvement and support of the ‘client’ business owners.

Interested business owners may please contact Prof. Jamaluddin Husain, SBI Director, School of Management, at jhhusain@purduecal.edu or call Dr. Husain at 773-531-4000.

Alpha Mu Alpha is the national marketing honor society. This national honor society is part of the American Marketing Association, the key professional association for marketers. Since its inception in 1937, the American Marketing Association (AMA) has remained committed to the advancement of excellence in the field of marketing.

Induction into this honor society acknowledges outstanding scholastic achievement on a highly competitive basis. Students are eligible for this honor if they are seniors majoring in marketing or retailing and have a GPA of 3.25 or greater. Because of their high scholastic achievement at Purdue University Calumet the following students have been approved for membership

Marketing:

Cory Saxma, Griffith

Berenice Mendoza, East Chicago

Dina Frigo, Highland

Samantha Bartucci, Steger, IL

Stephanie Smith, Dyer

Lauren Korda, Schererville

Christopher Poniski, Dyer

Nicholas Paulauski, Merrillville

Retailing:

Elizabeth Diane Alvarez, Griffith

James Keenan, Schererville

Mary Eagan, Dyer

Ashley Fleishman, Highland

Professor Firlej has designed the course to incorporate the Google Online Marketing Challenge in order to give the students an opportunity to creat an effective online marketing campaign.  This hands on experiential learning component of the Advertising course requires the students to first familiarize themselves with the theoretical aspects of advertising campaign strategy and exposes them to the endless creative possibilities of the advertising field.  The students are then matched up with a local small to medium sized business and each student team is responsible for desigining a promotional campaign centered around the specific needs of each company. 

Students are responsible for researching the industry in which the company operates and working closely with the business owners to come up with a cohesive promotional strategy.  Each team and its respective client is issued a $200 Google Adwords Campaign budget through the Google Online Marketing Challenge competition.  The PUC teams compete with other student teams from all around the world for the most effective Google Adwords Campaign that utilizes Google Analytics to measure the increased effectiveness of the website, measured by increased website traffic.  Students are judged on the originality of their campaign, their pre and post campaign reports and ultimate impact on the company business. 

Professor Firlej is pleased to report that PUC students have been competing with some of the best business schools around the globe and have been distinguished as the regional winners since the inception of the competition.  Regional winners in 2008 were: Chris Kozlowski, Enrique Cook, Mark Heneghan, John Fladeland.  Their client was: Butterfly Social Club in Chicago – an organic, hip bar in Chicago.  They chose to do a bilingual campaign (english, spanish).

Many students have landed careers in the very competitive field of advertising as a result of adding the Google Adwords experience to their portfolio.  So far over 30 businesses have participated in the Google Online Marketing Campaign with students in MGMT 42800 centering around Google Adwords.