Alumni of the month – August 2015

Christina Kunze
MSc International Marketing, 2014

Christina Kunze’s dissertation investigating brand engagement and social shopping on visual social media was recently accepted at this year’s European Academy of Management and Business Economics conference. She was also awarded LSBU’s Prize for International Marketing Student of the Year and is now Account Manager at MEC Global, one of the world's leading media agency networks.

Prior to studying in London, Christina wished to further develop her international marketing knowledge: “I wanted to specialise in digital marketing because it’s constantly evolving. The fast-paced environment requires you to be creative and think on your feet and also gives you the possibility to measure the results of your work almost instantaneously.” She decided to leave her native Germany and chose LSBU as one of the few universities in London offering a Masters in international marketing, with the option to focus on digital and social media.

Within just one year of graduating, Christina has secured a role managing “biddable media” for her clients at MEC Global. This is defined as digital media available for purchase to advertisers through auction platforms, a growing area in the industry: “I work in a very performance-based environment and the data-driven classes at LSBU have definitely helped me. I’ve learned to crunch data in a way that the client can understand.”

When considering her dissertation, Christina’s goal was to write about a current topic that would be relevant to marketing professionals now and in the future. Her expectations were completely surpassed as her paper was accepted at an international marketing conference: “Social media has been around long enough, but marketers are still not 100% certain what the benefit is. I wanted to demystify this area by looking at the rise of visual social media and how this affects digital marketing. To turn this work into a conference paper is fantastic and I can proudly say I’ve created a resource that is beneficial to digital marketing managers.”