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 course was by far the most applicable Comm course I have taken at UCLA and I really do think every Comm major should take it. I found myself really interested in the realms of marketing communications and advertising topics that were discussed, and Prof. McLean (formerly Fermasico) is engaging and witty. She asks for participation in lectures a lot, but you only really have to if you feel inclined (oftentimes it is things asking about ads people have seen, sometimes textbook terms, etc.) - no one will cold call on you and the class was big enough you can def fly under the radar if you want. Assignments are straightforward - lecture is not 100% necessary EXCEPT for the days when she goes through the assignments for the first half of the class which is really helpful and clarified a lot for me/def helped me get a better grade. A large portion of your grade is a group Integrated Marketing Comms plan (ours ended up around 30 pages), but it's super manageable if you divide up the work. I recommend making connections early to start finding potential group members (though she will pair you up randomly if you want, which I did and that worked totally fine). She gives you a lot of time and guidance and a lot of it is creative things like coming up with a potential product/service and making sample ads, etc. Best thing by far about this class was the midterm and final (strange to say it lol I know...). Midterm was 50 MC questions, Final was 75 (not cumulative). Midterm tackled first few chapters of the textbook and final did the rest - she gives you a study guide that quite literally has everything you need to know for the exams and the exams are 100 PERCENT TEXTBOOK BASED. For me, I found it incredibly straightforward and you can pick and choose what to read based on the study guide. No tricks, nothing unexpected. Aced the midterm and did super well on the final too - do not need to be stressed about exams in this class. Overall - worth your time, ESPECIALLY if you have any interest in things like PR, Advertising, Marketing, etc. For what it's worth, I found myself learning a ton in this class that I actually applied in real-time to an internship I was working in this quarter, which was very fulfilling for me, a learning nerd. Good luck to you all!

I was forced to take this class because there were no other professors teaching this course. Prof. Feramisco or McLean is one of the toughest graders and she will mark a whole letter grade down for minor or subjective parts she did not like about your assignment. Her instructions were so inconvenient to follow. The things she marks as an "example" or "guideline" are actually the exact word by word format you have to use or else she will mark off a big chunk of your point. She makes fun assignments very stressful to finish.

Best class i’ve ever taken. do the work and you’ll get a good grade. professor very helpful and nice

Genuinely the worst professor I have ever had and the most useless class. By the end of the quarter no one even showed up because her lectures were repetitive, boring, and taken straight out of the textbook. She is rude and condescending and her grading makes absolutely no sense. It is really obvious she does not care about her students or about them learning anything. SHe constantly talks about her boring personal life and how great she was at marketing. Those who can't do, teach. If you want to waste your time and still not get a good grade, take this class. Also if you have a bad group for the project, you are screwed completely and even at an 89.5 she won't round up the grade.

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.