Know Your Brand

By Delilah Scrudato


          “At the time, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do; when I got hired I had no idea what I would be doing, but I was like, hey it’s a job, right?” On March 8, students of Saint Thomas Aquinas College got a treat when former graduate Stephanie Schilling joined them to share some helpful information about the communication industry. Stephanie was invited by Dr. Durney to speak in his communications seminar class, where she enlightened prospective colleagues about the business.
          As Stephanie walked in, her smile lit up the room and her confidence was beaming like no other. Stephanie holds an important position at A&E and she worked hard to get there. She started out as a commercial operations coordinator at Lifetime Network, where she would enter commercial codes into a system to allow commercials to run in specific time periods.
          As Stephanie’s first job in the communications industry, she said “I didn’t feel that I was using enough creativity entering data into a computer,” which is why Stephanie used her “brand” and worked her way up to Ad Sales Partnerships Manager on A&E Network (Lifetime and A+E Networks which includes A&E merged several years ago).
          She now often concepts ideas for integrated commercial vignettes, rather than copying codes for them. She creates these so-called vignettes, which are short co-branded blended “commercials” that integrate advertiser’s brands or messaging with content from A&E series. Brainstorming ideas for vignettes is one of the many tasks Stephanie does as a partnership manager for A&E. Stephanie also works with the Ad Sales department, which sells advertising space to advertisers in the cable “upfront” season, where companies spend large budgets to secure advertising space for the year.
          Starting out, Stephanie didn’t know she would later be a successful partnership manager. But what Stephanie did know was her brand. “Know your brand,” she kept saying throughout the class; knowing your brand is like knowing who you are and what you have to offer.
          Stephanie has this way about her, where she can make anyone sound professional in an interview. Stephanie gave an example: “if you took orders at your local pizza joint and you were going for an entry level job in which you’d need to have experience in customer service – play up that experience you had on the phone at the pizza place. You dealt with customers on a daily basis; try to remember any problems that you helped to solve with botched orders or customer complaints and use those stories to your advantage when you’re interviewing.”
          Another tip she shared with the class is to “always ask questions. This way you’re always challenging yourself to learn something new.” The more knowledge one holds, the more knowledge one has to pass off to others.
          “I always hang out with the IT guys because you can always learn something from them,”  Stephanie said. She told the class how she used one of her advantages to help the Senior Vice President of Ad sales with a major presentation. Thanks to Stephanie’s time spent using Power Point for her job in Partnerships, she was able to help him with slide transitions, animations and other aesthetics with his presentation – something that was simple for her but may have taken him a lot of time and frustration.
          Stephanie looked at the class with a broad smile and said, “This isn’t something that’s part of my job description, but I was absolutely happy to help him with his presentation – it shows that you are willing to go above and beyond your position and increases your visibility within the department; you’re a person who says yes when others may not.”
          Stephanie has valuable information in her head and she knows how to use it, just like she knows her brand, but more importantly, she knows how to share it.