KOREATOWN : Marketing Students Put In Driver’s Seat

A Los Angeles City College marketing class skipped school recently to see what life is like in the real world of advertising and promotion.

As part of a nationwide internship program sponsored by General Motors, 30 students in marketing professor Barbara Ching’s class assumed roles in a mock full-service advertising agency hired to promote a car dealership.

The class was funded by New Century Cadillac and Pontiac in Glendale, and worked with a $2,500 budget. The agency conducted market research, designed an advertising and promotional campaign, put together a detailed book of plans and presented their project to the client the same way a real-life advertising agency would.

The class project culminated in a recent all-day promotional party at LACC, replete with the latest Cadillac and Pontiac models parked on the campus quad.

The program is administered at four-year universities as well as two-year colleges, but Ching said it proved especially helpful to her students, giving them an edge that will help them compete in the job market against more privileged college graduates.

“Even if they came from an inner-city high school in the lower 25th percentile, this helps them compete with students from a CSU (California State University) or a UC (University of California).”

Linda Alexander, 41, served as the class’s public relations director. Unable to afford college when she was younger, Alexander now holds a 4.0 grade-point average and was recently accepted to both USC and UCLA. She hopes to study communication arts and become an advertising professional.

Most of Alexander’s classmates are either older students like herself, or students with limited resources. She believes the hands-on experience will especially benefit those whose responsibilities will lead them directly from LACC into the job market.

“Many of the people in my class have families and jobs, and chances are they’ll be in the working world quicker than most 18- or 19-year-olds,” she said.