A May 13 Brandweek article highlighted Sean Tiner (Master of Communication Management, '09) for his marketing savvy and called him "a prototype of tomorrow's marketer."
"If you want a peek at the sort of person who'll be running the corporate marketing department in a few years time, you might want to spend a few minutes with Sean Tiner," according to the article. "Tiner, 24, is a grad student at USC's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Annenberg has been minting communications professionals since 1971, but Tiner's approach to his major shows just how different a budding marketer of today is from those of yesteryear.
"Tiner's currently writing a thesis he calls 'Thinking Beyond Web 2.0: Leveraging the Ego of Generation Y to Build Business.' For him, the term marketing is no longer defined solely by advertising platforms and demo-appropriate messaging. The field's far more global than that—a nexus of social, cultural and creative identity. Tiner's blog gives self-marketing advice to wannabe marketers, though 'wannabe' clearly isn't how Tiner would describe himself."
"There's so much competition today for getting dream [marketing] jobs," he said. "So you need to market yourself in a way that shows the right and left sides of your brain are working."
Tiner's strengths include experience in the visual arts and writing business plans. He tells recruiters that he understands how to get a Web community excited about a brand to help it connect with potential customers.
"My passion's opening a lot of doors for me," he said.
The article said: "Tiner may be a prototype of tomorrow's marketer—but that begs the question: What's the definition?"
It continued: "For his part, USC student Tiner says his School's doing an "incredible job" preparing students for careers, in large part because of its emphasis on Web 2.0 in the coursework. Of course, 'we're still trying to figure out what Web 2.0 is,' Tiner said."
