Q&A with Marc Salata, Director of Marketing

KGI welcomed Marc Salata just before the fall semester as the first director of marketing in KGI's history.  Salata joined the KGI community with a dual background in education and entertainment, having worked for the Princeton Review and for 11 years in the music industry, most recently as the vice president of marketing for Rhino Entertainment, a division of Warner Music Group.

A short conversation with the new director made it clear his diverse background brings a new perspective to KGI and the potential to assist the school as it enters its next stage of growth and development.

Q: How can an academic institution like KGI benefit from the addition of a marketing director at this point?

Salata:  An academic institution needs support just like any company; KGI needs the support of potential students who are the customers, and it needs the support of donors who help us do important academic and research work here at KGI.  I'm here to increase the profile of the KGI brand so that people will help us do the great things we strive for.

Q: What are your goals for the 2011-2012 school year?

Salata: So many significant things are happening here, and the more people know about it, the more support we can get to accomplish even more. That means attracting high caliber students, attracting funding and attracting media interests. Ultimately it means building a reputation that helps students from KGI get hired after they graduate, and when they say they're from KGI that makes an impact.

Also, I want to make KGI a more recognizable term-JPL is Jet Propulsion Laboratory, MIT is Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and over the next few years I'd like for KGI to speak for itself.

Q: How do you plan to achieve these goals?

Salata: Specifically, there's a lot of potential on the Web where we can expand our message and connect to people, through social media, news and blogs. We can use traditional media more to get our name out there as well. The goal is to engage with donors, corporate sponsors, and potential students in a way that excites them.

Q: How will the pending marketing initiatives enhance existing efforts of the communications department?

Salata: I think that there's a lot of great marketing going on here in individual departments, and I'd like to capitalize on the energy currently happening behind marketing, but make the message more clear and cohesive.

It's about trying to position all the great things we're doing for each particular audience. There are certain things that we're doing that would excite the general public, there are certain things we are doing that would excite industry, and there are certain things we are doing that would accomplish both.  The communications department acts as a traffic cop by pulling in stories and funneling them out in the right direction to the people that will be interested.

Q: Is there anything else the KGI community should know about your position?

Salata: Marketing comes from knowing your audience and being able to meet them for whatever they're looking for-so it's not so much telling somebody what they want, as it's finding out the intersection of what they want and what you're doing. It's presenting that story in a way that's compelling. My work is to figure out who we're trying to reach, what we have in our toolbox to reach them, and then getting there.

By Megan Hill (MBS '12)