A team of undergraduate students in the UNM Anderson School of Management’s advertising campaigns course took first place and a $5,000 prize in a national fintech marketing competition sponsored by EdVenture Partners.
The team’s challenge was to identify the right branding, messaging, marketing channels, and product strategy for an all-in-one financial app aimed at helping young adults take control of their finances. To address the challenge, students in the class developed a campaign (The smart way to spend, save and invest your money) which included digital video and social media activations across multiple platforms.
Students who were part of the team included Justin Abel, Nicholas Havens, Mateo Iliohan, Carlos Lopez, Kieron Magee, David Martinez, Noah McDonald, Kai Nakamura, Jennifer Nguyen, Dominique Ortega, Cassandra Ruiz, Zachary Weiss and Devin Wolfel.
The $5,000 cash prize will support the Rick and Debbie Johnson Marketing Lab, a state-of-the-art learning studio for students enrolled in advertising campaigns and social media marketing courses at the Anderson School.
Professor John Benavidez states that student success begins in the classroom. “Our classes prioritize hands-on experience with marketing research, strategy development and creative execution, giving our students a competitive edge. Numerous judges have commended our students for developing highly effective messaging strategies and creative that are data-driven.”
The win builds upon UNM’s long history of excellence in competition-based learning. Since 2005, the marketing program has earned eleven first-place honors, five second-place finishes and two honorable mentions in national collegiate marketing competitions.
“The number one thing is we have always received outstanding support from UNM in order to succeed,” said Benavidez in crediting the success to UNM’s investment in the Rick and Debbie Johnson Marketing Lab. “The Marketing Lab gives students access to the same tools used by blue-chip multinational corporations, advertising agencies and media companies to conduct in-depth analysis of markets and develop integrated marketing communication campaigns.”
The Rick and Debbie Johnson Marketing Lab reflects the hands-on experiences available in this state-of-the-art facility that fosters learning valuable business skills like negotiation, persuasion, motivation and more. Rick and Debbie Johnson were owners of the state’s best-known and longest-lasting advertising agency, Rick Johnson and Company founded in 1977.
The name comes from the fact that out-of-the-box ideas and thoughts can be concocted in a lab. Benefactor Debbie Johnson says the Marketing Lab is modeled after a conference room in the Johnson ad agency called the “creative kitchen,” wherein the creative staff “cooked” strategies and ideas.
For more information, visit Rick and Debbie Johnson Marketing Lab.
Sasha Barrett moved from Ukraine to Boise when he was 10.
The University of Montana graduate student has visited home since then. His trip this summer has taken on extra urgency. He wants to make a documentary about artists and their experiences during the war with Russia.
“I know it’s special that I’m going there,” he said. “I’ve gone there many times. I just want to capture it as much as possible. … I’m going there with the country changed forever, and I’m corresponding with a lot of artists that are working there, that continue their studio practice. I’m interested in talking to them.”
“War is a catalyst,” he said, that will change everything, including art, “when your city is occupied by an enemy force.”
In following the developments, he said many people’s art is incredible, albeit different, and in some cases “their content changed completely.”
He’s raising money on GoFundMe (see box) to help with the expenses. He envisions a short documentary — perhaps 30 minutes, along with other materials such as a photo slideshow that he can turn into a presentation.
Sasha Barrett shows one of his newest ceramic projects, an interpretation of D30 Howitzer ceramic rounds and a Soviet Howitzer missile box that a friend shipped to him from Europe. A lot of Barrett’s work touches on the ongoing armed conflict in his come country of Ukraine and the resiliency of his people during the war.
He’s never made a movie before — he’s been seeking out tips from filmmaker friends and art professors, and doesn’t expect to make any money off the project.
He wants to show Montanans the reality of daily life for people just like them in dramatically different circumstances.
Last week, a friend in Kyiv told him that he’d only slept a few hours because of the Russian shelling.
“They just try to get the country to fall into submission because they’re losing really terribly on the actual battlefield,” he said.
Barrett says he’s “undoubtedly nervous” about the trip, but some of the wariness is about running into restrictions.
“I’m nervous about being stopped somewhere, and then not being able to go and see the people and see my family, which won’t happen because there’s people going into Ukraine,” he said.
A postage stamp with a tractor pulling a tank and words written in Ukrainian hang on the wall of Barrett’s ceramic studio at UM.
One of his tools for getting his work out there, his Instagram account, got hacked recently and he’s been unable to get it unlocked. He built up 4,410 followers, who were treated to a post about Bitcoin. (He’s now at “therealsashabarrett”).
The account was also a means of selling work, and he’d also used it to fundraise for Ukrainian causes, including cups with the Ukrainian flag, war-time stamps and more.
Artwork, finished and in progress, related to the war fills his studio on campus. After 15 years as a potter, he’s branching out into sculptural and narrative styles. Before, he decorated pots with wheat — a symbol of his home country, and a decorative flourish that lends itself well to brushes.
“Since getting to grad school, I have this freedom to make work on a different scale (with) the facility, resources and materials,” he said. He’s looking at the “aesthetics of war,” such as the color palette of camouflage broken up by a colored flag patch.
Barrett’s ceramic work is on display at his studio at the UM Art Annex. The Ukrainian-born artist will embark on a month-long trip to his home country in July where he will meet and interview artists about their experiences during the war
Now, there are shelves of gray cups with a blotchy Ukrainian flag, seemingly more urgent when the color has run down the side. On the base of another mug, he sculpted a small pile of ceramic sandbags — an allusion to Ukrainian statues and monuments that have been lined with such material to protect them from shrapnel. He’s made some of his own by hand, and might cast full-sized ones in the future.
A friend mailed him a vintage crate designed to hold shells for a Soviet Howitzer. He dug up images and specs online and hand-threw his own ceramic munitions. He says that after a life with no military affiliations, he now knows more than ever about these details.
Sasha Barrett, a University of Montana graduate student from Sumy, Ukraine, specializing in ceramics, is raising money so he can travel back to his war-torn country to film a documentary about Ukrainian artists who continue to live and work in Ukraine despite the ongoing conflict with Russia.
Barrett was born in Sumy, situated east of Kyiv and close to the northeastern border with Russia.
He moved to Boise, Idaho, with his mother and stepfather when he was 10. He studied at Boise State University, spent time at UM through an exchange to be closer to the clay community here, then Pittsburgh for school, and returned here for his MFA. In 2019, he was named an “emerging artist” in Ceramics Monthly magazine.
He still speaks the Ukrainian language and has been home before, most recently around 2018.
He’s befriended artists online to interview for the movie. The subjects include Misha Birchenko, who plays drums for Nadya Dorfeeva, a pop singer who Barrett said is like the Billie Eilish of Ukraine. There’s a graffiti artist who goes by the handle Shumshumok, and Yeva Kafidova, a 2-D artist, and Yuliya Makliuk, a potter. He’s also been in touch with a tattoo artist and wants to talk with a painter.
His plan is to travel to Krakow, Poland, at the beginning of July, and then cross the border, making his way west to east, stopping in Lviv, Kyiv and Sumy, where he still has family. Due to its proximity to the border, the area around the city has been shelled heavily, but so far they’ve stayed.
Sasha Barrett made a ceramic plaque with engraved FaceTime screenshots from conversations with family and friends who live Ukraine. Barrett’s upcoming work will focus on the Ukrainian people living during the war.
“I do want to hear about their experience, especially my uncle. He’s been in a tank or a trench the last year,” he said.
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EL PASO, Texas (KVIA) — In the early 1990s, Glamour Shots photography studios were booming with business.
At its peak, there were over 350 studios across the United States. Fast forward to 2023, and only two studios remain. One of them is located in East El Paso, and the other is in New Jersey.
Glamour Shots was known for transforming people into models, providing unique makeup and hairstyles, followed by a glamorous photo session.
With changing fashion trends and advanced technology, hundreds of locations were forced to close their doors, but the El Paso location is still booming with business.
The store owner, Leonora Campbell, told ABC-7 she takes tens of thousands of pictures each year, and customers continue to return.
ABC-7’s Rosemary Montañez and photojournalist Jerry Najera dive deep into the Glamour Shots world to uncover the secret to success for the El Paso photography studio.
And they introduce you to the woman who won’t stop until it’s picture perfect.
You can scroll through a slide show of the Glamour Shots photos sent in by ABC-7 viewers here.
‘Picture Perfect’ airs Wednesday, May 24th on ABC-7 at 10.
A new exhibition at the State Library of Victoria showcases images from the library’s extensive photography collection, alongside new commissions, to provide a unique perspective on Victoria’s social history.
MIRROR: New views on photography, which is open now, features 141 photos by some of Victoria’s most renowned photographers including Destiny Deacon, Maggie Diaz, Rennie Ellis, The Huxleys, Alan Jordan, Viva Gibb, Julie Millowick, Wolfgang Sievers and Mark Strizic.
The photographs span 80 years, and according to the Library, offer moments of reflection on Victoria’s social history through compelling images of people and place.
Connected by the theme of ‘Mirror’, the images have been handpicked by State Library Victoria Curators, Jade Hadfield, Kate Rhodes and Linda Short.
In addition, new commissions by five individual respondents and two collectives of well-known and emerging poets, playwrights, storytellers and authors including Alice Skye, Jason Tamiru and Prithvi Varatharajan, further tap into that theme, with new perspectives on the photographs presented through text, poetry, song and performance.
These commissions have been woven into three impressive large-scale projections. Additionally, two small ‘cinemas’ within the galleries display the full set of 141 photographs in a digital take on the traditional Library catalogue.
Mirror: New views on photography is on at the State Library Victoria until January 28, 2024. You can find out more about the exhibition here.
Brigitte Lacomb
Brigitte Lacombe has mastered the art of the celebrity portrait. The New York-based French photographer has shot everyone from Patti Smith to Robert De Niro and Meryl Streep, and all with an effortless click of the shutter.
Lacombe sees her portraits as the result of her friendships with her subjects—she “lets them be themselves,” as she puts it. The photographer, who has been based in New York City since the early 1980s, has a small photo studio in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where she shoots intimate portraits of stars.
Her work was recently on view in a group show called Face to Face: Portraits of Artists by Tacita Dean, Brigitte Lacombe and Catherine Opie at the International Center of Photography in New York. It showcased some of her best black-and-white portraits—thoughtful shots of New York icons like Joan Didion and Fran Lebowitz. It also showcased her work as a film-set photographer, as she has worked on Martin Scorsese film sets for over 25 years, from The Wolf of Wall Street to The Departed, and more.
Brigitte Lacombe
The photographer has had museum exhibitions at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington, and her photo book oeuvre includes Lacombe Cinema/Theater, from 2001, a portrait book of celebrities, including shots of Leonardo DiCaprio, John Malkovich, and Diane Keaton. A documentary about Lacombe’s life and work was released in 2019, called Brigitte, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival.
Lacombe speaks about her early days as a press photographer, shooting the stars, and the first time she visited Hollywood.
Penta: How did you arrive in the U.S., after living in Paris?
Brigitte Lacombe: I was living and working in Paris, working for magazines at the beginning of my career. I met Dustin Hoffman at the Cannes Film Festival and photographed him there. He invited me to come and shoot on the set of his next movie, which was All the President’s Men. They were shooting in Washington, D.C. I was on the set, and they were going to Los Angeles to shoot in a studio. My mentor had a family there, so I stayed with them. It was my first time in California. That was 1975. I stayed for three months and got to know the film scene. I met Steven Spielberg and Brian de Palma. Everyone knew each other in Hollywood.
Was this the first time you shot on film sets, correct? What a peculiar job, very behind-the-scenes.
Yes. You’re not documenting from the point of view of the film camera. Set photography is different. I would be invited by a filmmaker or an actor or the film studios and develop the relationship. With director Martin Scorsese, it became a real friendship, and I have been working on his projects for 25 years. I would visit his sets several times for specific scenes. I’m almost part of the team with his films, even though I’m not. I’m welcome at the invitation of the director.
You also do portraiture, and you’ve shot a lot of your friends. Have there been any highlights of your career?
I love what I do, and I shoot every day. I love the reportage part because there’s diversity. You don’t have any control in the situation: You come in, and you adapt yourself to that situation. You find your way within that, as opposed to portrait photography. As I do portraiture, I control everything from the location to the light to the mood, and the music, and who is in the room. I start shooting and it becomes a collaboration with the person I’m photographing.
Was it hard breaking into photography as a woman in the 1970s?
For me, it might have been an advantage. I was one of the first women photographers around. I stood out. I was also extremely lucky in the first important meetings I had. I was open to jumping on location. I came to the U.S. to work on a movie set where I didn’t know anyone. I jumped at the opportunity. I’m still like that. I’m ready and open to some new offers. A job, a place to go, whatever. It’s a combination of being a woman and being ready for any experience, in a way. That’s my life.
Brigitte Lacombe
You’ve shot public figures like Meryl Streep, Robert De Niro, Marc Jacobs, and Margaret Atwood. What is the essence of a good portrait?
I let people be themselves. That’s the essence of a good portrait. People I have photographed are all extraordinary people. One of the most extraordinary I’ve ever shot is
Nelson Mandela.
Meryl, who I first shot 35 years ago, became a friend. Every person is different, that’s part of the attraction to me. That’s how I can keep doing it. It’s not repetitive. Each portrait is a new person. I seek out my subjects myself because I’m interested in them and their work. I’m meeting people I’m interested in.
Where is your studio in New York City and what makes it special?
I have a studio I use for portraits when people come by themselves. It’s in the Lower East Side in downtown Manhattan. It’s in a historic building and it’s a north-facing studio with classic light. It’s not for a big shoot. It’s a small place with great light. It’s basically shoots for no specific purpose but I want to do a portrait of them. I invite them. It’s not where someone comes with a stylist, hair, and makeup, and all that. It’s a sitting portrait in a studio. But when I do big shoots, I rent a bigger studio. But I make a mock studio everywhere I go in the world—whether it’s a corner in a museum or anywhere in the world, I’m doing portraits. It’s easier in my studio, than anywhere else.
What’s your favorite arrondissement in Paris?
I love Paris. I have a place in the seventh arrondissement in the left bank of Paris. So, I know that area best. I go back very often. I love the beauty of the city, its history. It’s a different scale than New York. I have traveled all my life, I travel nine months out of the year. For Paris, it’s my place. No matter how long I have been away, Paris is my place. It’s a place I love to come back to.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
