Mickey Brazeal
Photo by Nathan Latil/UM Communications
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By James Lumpp
n the intersession last August, several lucky graduate and undergraduate students at the Meek School took a brand new course — Integrated Marketing Communications 556: Multicultural Marketing Communication. They spent two very full weeks learning about the ins and outs and different dimensions of that important business activity from visiting professor Mickey Brazeal. Brazeal is an associate professor at Roosevelt University in Chicago, where he heads up their innovative integrated marketing communications sequence. This wasn’t the first time he had helped us. He played a major role in designing Ole Miss’ IMC programs, which just completed their third year, and graduated the second cohort. He has also made presentations on IMC topics and spoken to classes. He graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln and a master’s
14 MEEK SCHOOL
degree in advertising from the University of Illinois, where he was a James Webb Young scholar. Brazeal spent — and survived — 28 years in the rough-and-tumble Chicago advertising agency business. He started at Marsteller, which was later bought by Young & Rubicam. Then he worked his way steadily up the career ladder through McCann-Erickson, eventually migrating to Grey/Chicago, which was bought by LOIS/EJ — first as group creative director, then later, as executive creative director. He worked for IMC legend, designer George Lois. While Brazeal was there, billings increased from $45 million to more than $200 million. In 2000, he shifted into full-time teaching. Clients and campaigns to his credit were created for Internet startups Stamps.com and Drugstore.com, Armour Meats, First Alert, Jewel Food Stores, Osco/Savon, Eli Lilly, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, and BASF Crop Protection products, among others. He also has worked on several international consulting projects and campaigns. His awards list is lengthy — with Addies, Tellies, Effies and
