This class was one of the most useful, interesting, and industry-applicable classes I've taken here at UCLA. However, there are a few things you should know going into the class:

BASICS:
Exams - 1 Midterm, 1 Final (not cumulative) about 75 questions in 90 minutes all from textbook readings, not difficult at all and reasonably written, each worth 150 points
Assignments: a few independent assignments to turn in worth 300 points
Group project: you brainstorm and market a product with a group of 5 students and turn in group submissions, total worth 400 points
Participation: Attendance isn't factored in to your grade but she definitely encourages participation and seems to play favorites with those who speak up more

CONS:
- Not the most flexible or understanding, often got exasperated with students asking questions and would send rant emails or blame students for things out of their control
- Unclear instructions and isn't super inclined to clarify them, which really shows when she grades
- Tough grader, she really goes through each assignment and docks points even if you followed the syllabus completely. This is where you really need to go to office hours and ask her what exactly she wants out of each assignment. Beware she might be impatient with you

PROS:
- She clearly knows her material very well and is a very experienced marketer, no-nonsense and gets down to business teaching you things that will actually help you in the real world
- Even though she docks points frequently, she provides constructive feedback that actually helps you improve your marketing skills
- Super interesting class content and guest speakers
- Very engaging project structure and class design
- Great networking experience with students who want to pursue marketing or a similar field

Overall, I would still take this class again no hesitation. She can sometimes be a frustrating instructor but she means well and truly wants to help students be good marketers. Definitely go to office hours, ask questions, and engage with her because she has a wealth of knowledge and that way you'll get the most of her experience/class. Don't be afraid to run your work past her or ask for clarification because you'd rather put up with it in office hours than have points deducted from your grade.

I will discuss the overall class and professor (positive and negative). The Assignments/Exams/Group Projects are a total of 1000 points:

!! PLEASE READ TO THE END IF POSSIBLE !!

Positioning Statement - 100
Creative Brief - 100
Press Release - 100

~GROUP WORK~
Market Research Survey - 100
Group Written IMC Plan - 300

~EXAMS~
Mid-term - 150
Final - 150
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TOTAL: 1000 Points
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Negative: I will be 100% honest, she is not the best professor I've had since I came to UCLA. Based on the earlier reviews, they said that she is nice to everyone. Yes she is but to a certain extent. A couple of students went to her office hours (which would be on Mondays & Tuesdays but in this case, the assignment was literally due on that Monday). I was present at that time because I also had questions to ask her. She gets mad at us because we are asking questions at the last minute. Well 1) You should have changed the time for your office hours to a different day if YOU knew especially that we were going to ask questions before turning in the assignment. 2) You can't get mad at us for asking questions. We are STUDENTS and you are the PROFESSOR/LECTURER who clearly has more experience that we do. The Appendix (located in the syllabus) tells us the directions to each assignment. So, it's like she hands the syllabus to us and says "Good Luck!" I know we have our assigned groups to help us but at the same time, you should be the one clarifying!! Clearly, this shows that she EXPECTS us to be experts on "Integrated Marketing Communications" when we have at least 20% of knowledge about the subject. ANOTHER problem I had was the lateness of responding to emails. (Also, that she doesn't want to help us anymore.)

This is one of the emails that she sends us: (This was on a Thursday, a few days before the IMC Plan is due)

"Hi Teams - I wanted to let you know that I am no longer previewing IMC Plans in depth. I may be able to answer a few questions here or there, but that's it. I also wanted to share that you should all be reviewing every section with every member of your team...Bounce your questions off each other -- work as a TEAM. Ten sections need to flow and you should all be helping one another.

I am getting the impression that many of you may be working in silos. I know you guys are crazy-smart, yet I find myself course correcting many more students than ever before in previous quarters, even over Zoom, with this exact same project. Are you all truly reviewing every briefing document and PowerPoint deck and taking to each other? I have given you all the tools and know-how."

Is this really how she is going to treat us?? I know we have a group of 5 for each team but some tend to do it at the last minute with their parts so that is why those who do it early, can ask if it's fine on how we wrote our parts FIRST. You have to find a group who is willing to cooperate and do things EARLY. This is my problem, if you are not willing to help us clarify (since the syllabus/appendix "supposedly" does, then what does that say?? My THIRD problem, she acts like a rebellious teenager in office hours. Or better yet, she has a two-face. During lecture (2 hours 50 minutes long on Mondays every week), she would put a smile on her face and ask students if they have questions about a certain assignment. Now, I'm like, "hmm, that's weird. A few minutes before lecture, in her office hours, she sounded really mean and rude to them, and why are you being nice all of a sudden?" This is how she was acting throughout the whole quarter. My FOURTH problem is the grading. She thinks that because she's a know-all, she grades us harshly. Some comments are even vague. Better yet, I've gone to her office to fix those mistakes before turning it in and I still get low B's (or lower) for those assignments. So, what am I doing wrong or what am I not understanding?

MY LAST NEGATIVE COMMENTS: Overall, I feel like she needs to respect her students, be CALMER during office hours, and should be willing to help students with their assignments. The majority of our work is individual. I feel like it should be more about GROUP work. This whole quarter made me feel more lonely since it was all INDIVIDUAL work. Thanks to others who were willing to help me (and they were from other groups), I couldn't done any of this without them. They are like very supportive and I couldn't be more grateful for that friendship.

On the Side Note: I've had better professors than her who would make FLEXIBLE arrangements to office hours, answers your questions ON TIME (In minutes) and will do so for the remainder of the quarter. Comparing her to others, I would say they are the BEST and would love for you guys to take their classes. They are (Political Science Department) Sasha Issenberg, Kye Barker, (Comm Department) Dee A. Bridgewater.
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Onto the positive comments>

POSITIVE: The structure of the class fascinated me. I loved how every assignment capture the overall theme of Integrated Marketing Communications. For example, my favorite was the Market Research Survey in which you and your team must come up with at LEAST ten questions so that you can get others to take the survey (you need the statistical data afterwards for the IMC Plan). The other assignments, I feel like should be clarified more but they were good too. The Press Release was based on you creating your own like Covergirl or Nike's examples. With the product that you and your team have chosen, you are to make your individual Press Release. (I was confused because she told us to focus on the slides, but the syllabus gives exact details on how to do the assignment). The exams are fairly easy because she gave us the study guide for the chapters she assigned us to study on. This also applies to the Final exam.

Thank you for those who were able to read my long comment/review about her and the class overall. I hope this comment also tells her what to improve for the next quarters!!

:)

Professor Feramisco is overall nice, but she is not my favorite professor. She definetly plays favorites, and it was sometimes hard to communicate with her. In both her feedback after assignments and office hours, she was vague. Many of us were confused, and when we would send her emails, she either took a while to respond or sent out a mass email that said she would no longer be accepting questions. She always blamed us or the class group chat for our confusion, rather than her vague instructions which was discouraging. This pandemic has been stressful, and you can tell it also affected her. She snapped at me in office hours once just for asking for clarity on a question, and I almost cried (granted it was during midterms week, and I was already stressed and emotional). Her lectures are easy, just a recap of the textbook, but very long. While the content was easy to grasp, this was my most stressful class as I had to make sure every assignment was catered perfectly to her preference. Otherwise, she took off lots of points. Also, she once made a brief ADHD joke, which rubbed me the wrong way, but I know it wasn't mean spirited. The content I learned will definetly be helpful in the real world, but I probably would have enjoyed this class more with a different professor who was more detailed.

The class material was very interesting, especially for those looking to go into marketing. However, professor Feramisco had very specific expectations of assignments and would only give feedback before the submission sometimes. Occasionally, when she would review assignments during office hours here comments were dismissive, she would simply say "it's good," or if she graded it, "I gave you feedback already." The problem is her feedback is very unclear and she has favourites in the class. She includes examples in her slides that she does not even like/use herself.

This Professor teaches one of the most useless classes at UCLA. She is stuck up and often doesn’t teach but just goes on and on about her time in marketing over fifteen years ago. She hasn’t worked in a long time, which with marketing is very important so she can’t teach thoroughly about topics like social media because she herself doesn’t understand it. The whole class is based in group projects that are very frustrating if your group members don’t pull their weight. Then you have to sit through other peoples boring presentation instead of the Professor going over the material that will be needed for the next assignments. She acknowledges that she’s overly picky with grades, and she is, yet won’t change. Her grading only goes based on her opinion which really isn’t relevant since again, she hasn’t actually worked in the marketing field in a long time and doesn’t seem to understand that it has changed since she worked in it. If she likes you, you’ll get a good grade, if not you won’t. College grades should not be like that. She’s not accommodating, rude, and annoying to listen to. Would not recommend this class. If you’re looking for something fun and useful, this is not it.

This class is great to take if you are interested in marketing. At the beginning of the quarter, you are split into groups of around 6 people. You must create a product/service that you will be advertising throughout the quarter. Each week there is a very short advertising assignment due that is pretty fun. One week you have to create a hypothetical campaign for your product. Another week you have to create a one-page write-up of what your product is, the target market, etc. This class is great to put on your resume and talk about in internship interviews. There was a midterm and a final that were extremely easy (they were taken online for my quarter. I believe they would still be relatively easy in person). There is also a group project at the end where you create an executive summary of your product (maximum around 4-5 hours of work per person). Make sure you pick a product that you know you can market well, is original and can appeal to the professor. A lot of people in my class created alcohol-related products or products that already existed, which did not appeal to the professor that much. Don't create anything too complicated either where it's too hard to advertise the product.

This is one of my favorite classes I've taken during college. The things you will learn are an extremely necessary starting point for a potential career in this industry. Even if you're not interested in marketing (I didn't think I was until I took the class) you will learn a lot of valuable and translatable things. She is very straightforward and can be a picky grader but is always willing to help. The midterm and final were so insanely easy I got 100% on both. I mean they were both online due to COVID but even if they were in person I probably could have received the same grades. For the group project obviously make sure you are working with people who will pull their weight and are trustworthy. I had a great group and we got an A on our project but I can see how it would be detrimental if that wasn't the case as the project is a large part of your final grade. Ours was like 30 pages but between 5 people and hella graphs/tables it took me literally 5 hours to do my part. Plz take this class you probs won't regret it if you make sure you are in a good group. The material and the textbook are so straightforward it's literally just common sense concepts and requires no critical thinking.

Overall I learned a lot from the class and had a good experience. Three hours on a Monday night is tough but at least it is the only time the class meets. The assignments are not too hard, but you do need to meet with the professor to do well. While the assignments are presented as being very open, she has pretty narrow expectations of what she specifically wants. Just meet with her during office hours to go over assignments and you will do just fine!

This class was super interesting and very helpful because of how hands on it was. Essentially, you are working on a big marketing project the entire quarter with a group. She does the first few assignments individually which prepares you for the big project and lets you have more control of your grade. Just follow her directions and templates because she is a very picky grader. Go to office hours and ask others for help because sometimes the assignments can be very confusing. Make sure to get a reliable group and come up with a solid product to do well on the big project. Prepare a draft ahead of time and have her look over it because it can help a lot when revising and finalizing. There are also 2 tests which are pretty easy and come straight out of the study guide she gives us. She also brings in guest speakers which is super interesting and cool to see the stuff we are learning in real life. Overall, she is a great professor and this is an awesome class. Just pay attention to details and put in a decent amount of effort and you'll be fine.

Celia is the SWEETEST woman ever. She grades extremely generously and has worked in marketing making her the perfect person to answer any real life questions. This class 100% has been my favorite class at UCLA so far, because it is both extremely easy and extremely real world. The whole class is project based and the focus is on submitting aspects of a real marketing plan. The best part is that once the class ends, you can add all of the projects to a portfolio as the content is perfect for showing off in any future job interview! Projects are easy and fun and the midterm/final were all entirely based on a study guide that she gave us. She also brought in a guest lecturer who works in PR, giving us even more exposure to the real job atmosphere of advertising/marketing/public relations.