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- All Subjects: Marketing
- All Subjects: Creative Project
- Creators: W. P. Carey School of Business
- Creators: Department of Supply Chain Management
500 Days of Summer, released in 2009 and written by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, is an American film told through the perspective of Tom Hansen, the male lead. It is a story that begins with a third-person narrator, explaining that “This is a story of boy meets girl.” The narration then finishes with a warning that “you should know up front, this is not a love story” (Neustadter & Weber, 2009). As the movie continues, however, it becomes increasingly challenging to believe this warning. Tom sees Summer Finn, falls in love, and their relationship ends with him broken-hearted. It is only natural for the audience to view it as a story of Tom’s failed love, and without a deeper analysis, to perceive Summer as the antagonist. <br/> This tendency to view the movie as a love story motivated me to question why the discrepancy between the beginning narration and the common audience perception occurs. My thesis addresses this discrepancy by focusing on the idea that the natural gravitation towards the belief that 500 Days of Summer is a love story exists due to the unreliable narration given by Tom Hansen throughout the movie. I wrote three songs, an interlude, a duet, and a solo, based on the themes and lead characters of the movie to help validate the warning provided in the beginning and provide a deeper insight into Summer’s version of the story.
The following research questions spurred the curiosity for this knowledge. These questions are:
1. How does Arizona State University market its study abroad programs?
a) How does ASU most effectively market its study abroad programs to students—what marketing tools are needed and used?
2. How do other college and universities throughout the United States market its study abroad programs?
b) How do they best market its study abroad programs to students—what marketing tools are needed and used?
3. How has this new digital age shaped the marketing environment today?
4. How do you develop relevant marketing strategies for a specific study abroad program in order to increase participation?
Before answering the preceding questions, this thesis first examines the origin of international education and its history.
Additionally, the author of this thesis created a series of questions that was sent via SurveyMonkey.com to various college and university study abroad offices, directors, advisors and marketing specialists throughout the U.S (a total of 18 schools from various parts of the region responded to the 37 question survey). This in turn allowed the author to answer a large portion of the above research questions. See attached documents (Appendix A) for a list of all the questions asked via survey, as well as each school’s response.
After a thorough analysis of the above research questions, the author focuses on the development of marketing strategies to help promote a specific faculty-led study abroad program at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication (the official name for that program: “Cronkite Euro: Social Media Across Cultures: The European Perspective”). It is the analysis of the above research questions that in turn helped the author create marketing strategies that were tailored to this specific faculty-led study abroad program.
These marketing activities included the expansion of Cronkite Euro’s social media presence, specifically by creating an Instagram account for the study abroad program (@asucronkiteuro). Another major marketing activity included the expansion of Cronkite Euro’s online presence. The author of this essay completely revamped the study abroad program’s website so as to adequately keep up with the tech-savvy, digital natives of today (www.asucronkiteuro.com). The importance of implementing these specific marketing strategies will be later discussed in part IV of the thesis.