Courtesy of Imani Agbionu

INTERVIEW BY MADDIE GIERBER STAFF WRITER

Student: Imani Agbionu

Why did you choose your major?

I chose marketing because I do like the route the marketing [industry] is going, where it’s becoming really social media-based, and also the outreach that it does with consumers, and it’s a challenge. I like competing with people. I feel like marketing is a global concept and it’s so vague that it can go with any business. It doesn’t matter where you work — you know you can market any business or any industry that you enter. 

What goals do you have for your career?

I plan on expanding my knowledge by getting my master’s [degree]. I’m going to major in strategic media or some kind of communication. I am looking forward to doing something that’s in the communication field. 

If I can have, like, a talk show or have a big podcasting show, I would love that. Or if I could be part of a major magazine and be a writer. If anything, I think I would prefer being a writer. In the future, like I say, I’d either like my own talk show or my own podcasting show. And be part of a major magazine company or even open my own magazine company. That’s really all about entrepreneurship, which is separate classes that I am willing to take. 

What areas of marketing are you most interested in?

I’ll do really any topic that catches a reader’s eye — I think fashion is the main one now. I really want to get into small brands because I feel like small brands matter a lot. I noticed that a lot of the time big brands — you can say — steal from small brands. It’s so much, I’ve learned about what they do to small brands, about stealing, so I would really want to market small brands and make them big. I will market really anything that can be marketable. It has to interest me, really, or it has to interest the public.

Why do you believe this field is important?

Without the marketing we wouldn’t have anything. We technically wouldn’t have any of the merchandise that we have. I mean, the only reason that people find out about clothing websites, or find out about jewelry, or find out about TV is still marketing, so if you don’t have good marketing, if you don’t have a good person behind that campaign, your merchandise is not going to be sold. So when you market or advertise your stuff in a way that is going to catch the consumer’s eye, that’s when you’re going to get money so the marketing definitely matters. It really depends.