The Graduate Baruchian

By Danielle Hemsley & Justyn Makarewycz

Snow, slush and ice were no match for Zicklin Graduate students on a mission to learn, network and further develop their professional development with a visit to a full-service, interactive agency specializing in transforming brands and growing businesses.

On Friday, March 8, 2013, a group of 30 MBA and MS students visited the Dumbo Brooklyn offices of Huge, which has developed groundbreaking work for clients such as HBO’s HBO GO mobile apps. During the 2 hour visit, agency Engagement Director Alyson Navarro gave an interactive presentation about the company’s structure, capabilities and culture. The presentation included insightful videos on Huge’s projects, and students had plenty of opportunity to ask questions. Attendees learned about Huge’s ethnographic research techniques and projects that the agency has worked on with big brands such as Target and Four Seasons.

One of Huge’s areas of expertise is creating personalities, or personas, for their clients to relate to their market. Huge works with many big name brands such as Target, Gucci and Samsung to name just a few. They also work with non-profits such as American Student Assistance (ASA), the nonprofit organization that created SALT to educate students about finances and how to take charge of their money during college and beyond. Navarro’s presentation included videos on Huge’s work on saltmoney.org for ASA, which showed just how the agency created a personal story, through their ethnographic research findings, for ASA to advertise directly to their target market.

During the presentation, one student asked when small companies come to Huge with a minimal budget how is that handled. This gave Navarro an opportunity to discuss the “consultant’s triangle” with time, quality and money triangle in their own corners. Huge believes that when you want something done cheaper, you have to compromise on time or quality. Ideally you want to find the perfect balance of the three.

The graduate students’ visit ended with Katie Yeskel, Campus Recruitment Manager for the agency, giving students a tour of the office.

Site visits like these provide Zicklin graduate students with a unique opportunity to gain special insight about a company by seeing the inside of offices, talking to current employees and really learning more about a company. This visit happened thanks to the hard work of Yeskel, ZiMMA (Zicklin Media & Marketing Association) leaders Bethany Atchison and Michael Friel, as well the GCMC.