The Communicator

It’s 1995 and Boston University’s own Professor Shawn Zupp is stepping out as a fresh BU graduate.

In a pre-World-Wide-Web period with sites like AOL just starting, Zupp is gearing up to go headfirst into the advertising agency world of New York City — and this will be his life for the next 25 years.

In the agency world, Zupp made his start in client management, working and partnering to help clients translate their business goals into creative outputs. Originally a marketing major, Zupp had plenty of experience working the business aspect of things, but what drew him back to communications was the intersection between creativity and business that advertising had.

“At the time, advertising had a huge role in pop culture,” Zupp said. “People could recite TV commercials. It has always been a powerful force, and it still is today in pop culture, and I think I kind of like that as well.”

While at BBDO, an advertising agency, Zupp had the opportunity to do work for brands like Pepsi and genuinely explore the world creatively.

“That was always a favorite because I got to do so much — Pepsi did so much advertising, and also was a brand that likes to live in that pop culture zeitgeist.”

On the other hand, with a different agency called R/GA, Zupp was able to create apps and develop digital platform experiences for healthcare brands like Johnson & Johnson. 

“I’ve always been attracted to the world of agency because it’s like a village of many different kinds of people, and it tends to be highly diverse by discipline, types of way of thinking, cultural experiences… so agencies have always been and continue to be just great fertile ground for that,” he said.

Although Zupp will always have a heart for agency work, he also encourages his students to explore the options that are out there.

“We live in a world now where the choices for students are greater. Tech platforms, like Google and Meta, have their own creative studios, where you can go work… That could be rich, for sure, for experience.”

But even when things weren’t up and up, Zupp faced any challenge with an optimism and a desire to simply learn. During his time partnering with Samsung, many challenges emerged from the fact that the global nature of the company, with clients from all different cultures. From developing a good working relationship with its overseas headquarters to customer relations management, Zupp was able to overcome it all.

“[Other times], the challenge is just you’re doing something new,” says Zupp.

Working in a collaborative setting across different departments can be trying, but to Zupp, the most important aspect of it all was the enthusiasm across the board to put in the effort to succeed. 

“That took a lot of collaboration and patience… a willingness to say ‘we’re experimenting together,’ and to create an environment of understanding that sometimes things don’t work!”

Advertising is a fast-paced, ever-changing industry. With new trends and technologies always popping up, staying on top of this creative business needs open-mindedness and energy — which Zupp aims to bring and create in his classroom settings.

“First and foremost, my approach is to really try to be very real and true to what it’s like [in real life]. So I try to replicate — as much as makes sense in the classroom — working environments,” Zupp said. “I try to really keep it real.”

One last piece of advice he gives to his students (and to his younger self) is this:

“There are many, many, many paths to success, and success is not a one single point — it’s many points and you can channel it different ways. So don’t feel anxious about whether one decision is going to derail you or not… There is not just one way!”