Andy Deaza, art director with McCann Worldgroup, speaks with students at Morgan State University.
There are many definitions of advertising, but Andy Deaza, art director with McCann Worldgroup has a unique way of defining it. “Advertising is the intersection between consumerism and culture.”
Morgan State University students got a real taste of the advertising business, when two advertising professionals from McCann Worldgroup visited the School of Global Journalism and Communication (SGJC), Oct. 17. Deaza and Chavonne Hodges, diversity and inclusion manager, spoke to Strategic Communication advertising and public relations classes providing insight into how the advertising business works and what it takes to get a job in the business. Although this was their first visit to Morgan, they both said they would love to come back.
Deaza, a Bronx native, started as a fine artist, but he quickly realized, “that direction wasn’t going to move me out of my mother’s house fast enough.” Before coming to McCann, he worked at JWT, Arnold NY, Lowe, NY and FCB. At McCann, he has handled creative for accounts such as General Mills, Verizon, Weight Watchers and USPS among others.
Deaza stressed it was important to get more people who looked like him into the advertising business. He speaks at high schools in the New York City area encouraging young people to consider careers in advertising. He has served as an advisory board member for ADCOLOR, a nonprofit organization that celebrates and champions diversity in the advertising, marketing, media, public relations and entertainment industries.
At 26, Deaza is quickly moving up the ladder to become a creative director. He developed his passion for advertising at an early age, and interned at several agencies learning everything he could about the industry. He attended Miami Portfolio School in Florida, a school for creative people who want to go into advertising.
SGJC Dean, DeWayne Wickham, meets with Chavonne Hodges and Andy Deaza with the McCann WorldGroup, a global ad agency in 120 countries.
Student feedback to Deaza’s visit was overwhelmingly positive. Several students expressed a desire for him to spend more time at the School and also sought advice for their own creative class projects. Ariel McNeil, a junior, said “I hope he will be able to come back and offer workshops that will help us build our portfolios. Seirra Battle, also a junior, said of Deaza, “After listening to him, I have become more interested in the field and encouraged to take advertising more seriously.”
Deaza and Hodges met with SGJC Dean DeWayne Wickham and other faculty about the challenges and opportunities for minorities in the field of advertising. Wickham encouraged them to return to Morgan and explored the possibility of Deaza conducting an extended workshop for students.
Deaza and Hodges’ trip to Morgan was sponsored by the Advertising Educational Foundation and McCann Worldgroup, a global advertising agency network, with offices in 120 countries. Morgan State University’s School of Global Journalism and Communication, created in July 2013, is the nation’s only School at a historically black college with a primary mission to train the next generation of journalists and mass communicators to compete in a global environment.