Catalyze Your Marketing Journey With This Award-Winning Student Organization

By Alainna Jayce Gonzales

Whether in business, medicine, or arts, marketing can elevate your career. Thankfully, UNLV's American Marketing Association student chapter catalyzes students' success in marketing. With nearly 30 awards under their belt in just six years, AMA is taking the marketing industry by storm. In an interview with UNLV AMA’s president, Christen Smith, she explained the significance of marketing for future professionals, the impact AMA makes in a student's marketing journey, and the pathways to getting involved in this award-winning student organization.

1. What is AMA in your own words?

AMA is a marketing organization that allows students of all majors to experience professional development opportunities, grow as individuals, and get ready for their future careers.

It’s a good way for students to learn how to market themselves as marketing is needed in every field. We have a lot of collaboration within the business school as well as outside of UNLV. We collaborate with a lot of different companies and go to conferences.

2. Why should marketing students join?

Marketing students should join because we have real-life work experience through our consulting team and our case team. 

If you are part of our consulting team, we work with companies within Las Vegas and also outside of the city. We help them with their marketing efforts. We work with both nonprofit and for-profit companies. It's a really great way to know how to do social media marketing, complete research surveys, look at the competitors, the market – all of that, which is awesome. 

Our case team is a competition that we do every year and you work with a group of students. You create a 20-page marketing plan for a real-life company such as Amazon Prime Student or Wall Street Journal. Those were some of the past sponsors of the competition. Then the case competition competitors are able to go to New Orleans, Louisiana and attend the International Collegiate Conference (ICC).

If they want to be a general member, we have a lot of socials, workshops, tours, and guest speakers throughout the year.

3. Would you recommend non-marketing students to join?

Yes, we recommend non-marketing students to join. It’s great for all different majors to market themselves. We’ve had people studying hospitality and computer science join our student organization. They’ve been part of our case team and even presented at the International Collegiate Conference. So, everyone of all majors are welcome to attend our meetings and be part of our organization.

4. What does AMA offer to students?

We have three different pathways where students can join. 

The first one is the general membership, where you can attend our meetings and events typically every two weeks. And those will include guest speakers, workshops, and general updates about AMA. There will also be socials. We like to hang out and have fun together, but also develop professionally and academically. 

The second pathway is the consulting team, and we work with real-life companies. Some of the past companies we've worked with include the Mob Museum and some women clinics within the valley. Currently we're working with a food pantry. It’s a great way to also earn real-life experience because you're connecting with those clients; you're trying to help them with their social media. Maybe they need help with research or survey designing. It's a great way to learn. 

Our third pathway is the case team. The case team works on the International Collegiate Conference annually. There's always a case sponsor. Some of the past sponsors were Wall Street Journal, Amazon Prime student, Pods, the storage company, Vitamin Water, and Mary Kay Cosmetics. We'll work on a 20-page marketing plan for them. If we make it to the finals, we get to present at the International Collegiate Conference in New Orleans in April 2025.

Students can do all the pathways if they want to. But, they could just do one pathway. You don’t have to attend all the meetings but we do encourage you to. 

5. What makes AMA different from other student organizations?

We are different as we have a lot of connections within the business community. We have been around for more than 10 years at UNLV. We've won the collegiate case competition. We have students that have won scholarships. We are a top 5 chapter internationally. So we rank top 5 out of 320+ AMA chapters. I think that's what makes us different – our award-winning status. 

6. Why is student involvement important?

Student involvement is really important because that's where you meet like-minded people that are going to push you to be better. They're going to want you to develop professionally and work on yourself. You just need people that are going to do amazing things for you. “AMA”zing things for you. And that's where I've met some of my best friends. A lot of the officers on the officer team are some of my very good friends. I've ended up doing competitions with them, hanging out with them outside of school – not club-related either. 

7. As a member, how many hours a month should a student expect to dedicate to involvement in AMA to make membership worth it?

If you are a general member, and you just want to come to our meetings and socials, expect about an hour to two hours a week. 

If you become a national member, you pay the $29 and you get access to a whole toolbox of things from the National AMA. That includes SEO training and a bunch of different webinars and workshops that you can attend. You could do one hour at the general meeting, and then another hour where you can look at the different training's and webinars that AMA has. 

8. Is there a cost to join?

To become an official member of AMA and put it on your resume. It's $29. It lasts for 12 months.

9. Tell me about your experience in competing in the International Collegiate Conference.

I started in my freshman year. I was one of the five people at UNLV AMA to present at the 2022 conference in Chicago. We placed third place that year. The case competition sponsor was Amazon Prime student. I loved my team, we did an awesome job collaborating together – so that was very memorable. 

My second time going to the international Collegiate Conference was in April 2023. I got third place in the perfect pitch competition out of 250 other competitors. I also got a scholarship. We do have scholarships through AMA. I got $2,000. But some of the scholarships can offer up to $5,000 if you win first place. So it's a great way to also make money for tuition and educational expenses.

During 2022-2023, I became the UNLV AMA President. We won 2nd place out of 75+ schools in the national case competition. Also, I won AMA Student Marketer of the Year. This means I was named the top marketer out of 14,000 students based on my involvement and commitment to AMA. Our Executive Vice President won 2nd place in the Research Poster Competition as well. 

10. What did you learn?

There were tons of workshops. The last conference focused on artificial intelligence like ChatGPT, and using them to your advantage when you're posting social content. 

You also get to network with students from around the world. It's so awesome getting to know people with this common interest in marketing. It's good to build your LinkedIn network and meet other people that want to do similar things as you professionally. You put yourself within that situation at the conference and you come back with so much more knowledge and a bigger network. Maybe you win a few competitions, you bring home prize money, you develop as a person, both personally and then professionally.

11. Why is it important for marketing students to participate in competitions?

I'll give an example – perfect pitch. You might be in a situation where you are going to a career mixer, or you are at a job interview. And they're going to ask you, “why do you think you're fit for this company? Why do you think you're fit for this role?” In AMA, I've had to do this several times. It gets you thinking on the spot about, “hey, like why am I a good fit for this role? Why should I do this?” So that in the real world, you're already ready to answer those questions, you already know what you're going to say. 

It also helps develop your resume. You have competitions and different prizes that you can put on there. Job recruiters are going to be like, “Wow, what is that?” Then, you'll be able to explain it. So these competitions really develop your marketing skills like how to market yourself, present yourself in a more professional manner, and work on your creativity.