GSB alumna lands on Broadway … in advertising, of course

Alumni , Areas of Study , Marketing Stories | Nov 30, 2012 | Nicole Gesualdo

by Balt Heldring (GSB ’14)

For years, people from all over the world have come to bask in the streetlights of theater’s biggest stage: Broadway. From the TKTS ticket booth to the New York Times building stand hundreds of advertisements for plays and musicals, many of them created by the advertising agency Serino/Coyne.

Catherine Migueis (GSB ’12) has had the unique opportunity to work with Serino/Coyne for the past six months as an interactive content assistant.

As a business administration major and theater minor at Fordham, Catherine had longed for a chance to work in the theater industry. She got her first opportunity at a nonprofit theater company, where she was an intern for a year in the marketing and general management departments. From there, Catherine found her way onto Broadway, so to speak, holding an internship at a digital marketing agency that specialized in client services for shows on the Great White Way.

“I learned a lot about marketing for the commercial theater, specifically interactive marketing,” she said. “It was a wonderful program that trusted interns to work hard at many different projects. They even let us put together an interactive marketing plan of our own — priceless firsthand experience.”

Though internships were extremely important in helping Catherine land her job at Serino/Coyne, not a day goes by when she doesn’t apply the knowledge and skills she learned at the Gabelli School of Business. Topics from her Marketing Research course, for example, helped her to create a survey for a show opening in previews, the phase in which it is tested in front of an audience. Catherine was able to give extensive input on the layout, content and specificity of the survey.

“It’s a great feeling to realize you have a collection of knowledge that is exactly applicable to a real project you are involved in!” she said.

In fact, many of the qualitative skills she learned at the Gabelli School, such as public speaking, communication and writing, have been extremely valuable early in her career — and likely will be moving forward.

Today, while focusing on interactive marketing initiatives, Catherine works with popular Broadway shows including Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Book of Mormon and The Phantom of the Opera. Her work ranges from analyzing site traffic using Google Analytics to designing layouts for digital newsletters for different shows.

“My job keeps growing as I go,” she said, “which is very exciting, because it allows me to keep learning and challenging myself each and every day.”

Photograph courtesy of Brett Gullborg on Flickr’s Creative Commons.