Professor of the Month: Ode Amaize

Ode Amaize
Professor of Advertising and Integrated Marketing Communications

School: Canadian University Dubai

Location: Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Ode Amaize is an interdisciplinary, teaching-award professor whose teaching and research interests in media planning, creative advertising, cultural branding, studying marketing and advertising through literature are augmented by his efforts at promoting the arts and humanities as a performing and recording artist as well as a researcher. This has been the case since completing his doctoral dissertation at the University of Texas at Austin: “Inducing College Students’ Opera Attendance: An Experimental Investigation of Affect;” and his recent initiation of the CUD READS program, and recordings, including the recent seminal narration of W.B. Yeats’ The Second Coming, commemorating the centennial of the poet.

He has served on the marketing, communication, and music faculties of various universities in the UAE, United States, and Taiwan; and in Russia, as a Fulbright Senior Scholar, performing and lecturing on marketing the arts, arts administration, and music business management at the Moscow State Conservatory. He is currently a Professor of Advertising and Integrated Marketing Communications at Canadian University Dubai, UAE, where he has been recognized by the Dubai Culture and Arts Authority with the “ten-year UAE golden visa for persons with specialized talents”.

We asked Ode a few questions. His answers are below.

WHAT STUKENT COURSEWARE HAVE YOU USED?

I use Stukent's Mimic Pro Simulation, Mimic Social Simulation, "Essentials of Social Media Marketing," "Media Planning Essentials, Visual Focus & Visual Media Marketing," "Advertising: Selling in Today's World," and "Consumer Behavior: A Marketer's Look into the Consumer Mind."

WHAT TEACHING TIPS WOULD YOU SHARE WITH OTHER PROFESSORS?

Without much verbiage, I find, in Stukent, a teaching and learning soulmate --- one that recognizes traditional pedagogical approaches and seriously encourages student-centered learning. Stukent, as a business and integrated marketing communication pedagogical tool, enables me to wholeheartedly practice my teaching and learning philosophy as espoused by Edward Thring (1821-1887):   

Because of this philosophy, as well as my interdisciplinary marketing communication and arts backgrounds and strong belief in teaching through literature, I am able to encourage my students to resourcefully and capably employ Stukent’s learning materials as "tools" in developing real-life campaigns that address important social issues, and, in the process, gradually sensitizing them to the tenets of critical consciousness as espoused by Paulo Freire (1921-1997).

Over the years, in building on consumer behavior theories, assignments and projects provided in various consumer behavior textbooks, including Stukent’s, I encourage reading literary works and leading branding texts that enable students’ deeper appreciation and understanding of consumer behavior concepts of perception, learning, motivation, decision making, which may not be captured via traditional surveys and experimental research methods, as a basis for developing advertising and integrated marketing communication campaigns. For this purpose, I have employed several literary texts, including, but not limited to, George Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984; Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen; Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns. Here are two examples:

1. Based on some of the axioms and strategic principles of cultural branding as espoused by Douglas B. Holt in “How Brands Become Icons – Principles of Cultural Branding” (2004), promote an identity brand of your choice, across three periods in Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis (1915) to identified target markets. 

• Prepare and submit a Plans Book and a PowerPoint presentation.

• Marketing the humanities to the worker bee and more

2. Using Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 (Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?) as inspiration and guide, write a “personification” copy about a brand.  Here are two contrasting examples about brand Dubai: 

   
   

Develop a Social Media Campaign to promote a socio-cultural issue: 

• Microsoft PowerPoint Presentation (please refer to attachment)

• YouTube: Kunouz Al Arab: Promoting Arabic Arts and Letters among Arab Youth

• Instagram:  Promoting Arabic Arts and Letters Among the Youth

Develop a Social Media Campaign (pre-during-post) under the auspices of CUD READS: Currently under development by two students as a graduation project, this is a short story writing test inspired by COVID-19 to promote reading and storytelling among UAE youth.  

Apply and Demonstrate Knowledge of Communication Theories and Research of Media Use and Media Effects in the Context of a DEBATE about Polemical Socio-Cultural-Political Issues:

• “Are electronic media making us more (or less) illiterate?”

• “Prevalence of mental health disorders in the youth: To what extent is Social Media to blame?”  

• “Torn between Climate Crisis and Human Rights Violation: is News Media Coverage to Blame?

  
  

In addition to the edifying Expert Sessions at the end of Stukent’s textbook chapters, I employ the talents of representatives of leading advertising and integrated marketing communications firms like Ogilvy and Leo Burnett in Dubai as co-authors and co-supervisors of students’ work. 

In our CUD Department of Communication and Media, our advertising program is accredited by the International Advertising Association (IAA), and our public relations program is the first in the MENA region to obtain the Certification in Education for Public Relations (CEPR) from the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA). Stukent’s materials help our students in maintaining these industry standards and in preparing and succeeding in obtaining various industry professional certifications (Google, HubSpot, etc.), several of which are mandatory in some of our courses.

WHAT ARE YOUR HOBBIES AND TALENTS?

Aloneness (not loneliness) and critical thinking.

Thank you, Ode, and congratulations!

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