From Scarlet PR Co-Founder to Paramount Leader: David Pangilinan Reflects on the Power of Experiential Learning
The SC&I student-run, in-house public relations agency Scarlet PR was little more than an idea when David Pangilinan COM'16, senior manager of market and cultural intelligence at Paramount, first became involved in creating and launching the new student organization.
Alongside other students also involved in Scarlet PR’s founding, Pangilinan saw an opportunity to create an exciting new organization that would enable communication students to apply the knowledge and skills they were learning in the classroom to real challenges faced by real-world clients.
"Of the more than 3,000 students I have had the privilege of teaching and mentoring at Rutgers University, David is an excellent example of a student who proactively pursued his passion to work at a major media and content company such as Paramount,” said Associate Professor of Professional Practice, Communication Mark Beal. “As a student, David was consistently curious. He proactively engaged executives who were leaders in media and content, and he secured valuable internships including NBC. There are no limits to what David will achieve because of his proactive mindset and innovative approach. One day, he will be running a major media company."
In our Q&A, Pangilinan, who also holds an MS in Journalism from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, explains what it was like to simultaneously balance classroom and agency work, and the ways he still applies what he learned as a SC&I student and founding member of Scarlet PR.
What was it like helping establish Scarlet PR, and what were some of the biggest lessons you learned from that experience that you still carry with you today?
The late Jack Grasso was the faculty member who helped us initially spearhead it. Later, when I was a junior or senior, the public relations specialization was added to the Communication major and that's how I met Mark Beal. Right away I fell in love with the curriculum and the way the faculty were teaching the courses at the school.
Scarlet PR came about when a lot of the students who were in PRSSA thought, why don't we create a think tank, or some form of PR agency, where we can practice what we are learning in the classroom and apply it to doing PR work for real local clients? So, it was really interesting to come up with a pitch and work with the university to make it happen.
Building it from the ground up was an amazing experience because there wasn’t anything similar at Rutgers to draw blueprints, lessons, or inspiration from. This was the first time the school was going to create a student agency. So, we did a lot of competitive intelligence. For example, Syracuse University's Comm School had something similar to what we wanted, and so we were trying to kind of mimic things Syracuse and other schools had done so we could get it approved by the university. So it was a lot of work but it was very fulfilling.
Were there any experiences that you had with Scarlet PR that kind of influenced the way you approach your work today?
Definitely. At Scarlet PR we did a lot of what was then called SWOT analysis. We in the industry don’t call it that anymore, but we do similar analysis work especially here at Paramount. At Scarlet PR we’d ask ourselves, ‘Who's doing this work better than we are and why?’ We always wanted to know so we could constantly improve and evolve the agency and ourselves as individual contributors.
We were given so much control as students that it made us feel like true adults with adult responsibilities. One client gave us $500. It really made us realize we had to put our big boy pants on and say, ‘Okay, it's actually time to work.’
When a campaign didn’t deliver, it was great to be able to fall back on our professors, Mark Beal and the late Jack Grasso, to ask, why didn't it work?
I feel it was important that we had that bushy-tailed optimism, which really helped us, especially at the beginning of Scarlet PR, because we didn't know what we were doing, but also our optimism helped us to become leaders, because it made us feel, in a positive way, the true weight of being answerable to paying clients.
What concepts or skills that you learned in your communications classes prove to be the most valuable during your time with Scarlet PR?
I would say understanding your demographic. Still today, at Paramount, I actually have a meeting with our pitch team and I tell them the number one thing they should be asking me, or should be telling me, is who their demographic is.
I think from my communication classes, the 400-level research/survey class, Media, Marketing and Communication, taught by Mark Beal, was super helpful to me. What we did in class, such as write surveys and learn to understand the length of completion and all of that kind of information, was so boring, and I still do it here today.
And also, Mark Beal's campaign strategy course. That was one of my favorite courses because we students were able to work with each other to create a campaign. So, it helped us put our training wheels on first before we did that work for Scarlet PR clients.
Scarlet PR also helped us figure out and leverage what we were good at. Many students had specialties. For example, some people were big creative heads. Some people were much more attuned to the budget. Some people liked project management. We learned who specialized in which area, and we would sort of volunteer by saying, ‘I'm really good at this. Let me handle this.’
Looking back, how did your classroom education and hands-on experience with Scarlet PR complement one another and prepare you for your career?
Going to Rutgers and being exposed to so many different cultures and people from so many different backgrounds and different perspectives on life enabled us to open our minds and break out of the silo and echo chambers that we all grew up in.
Specifically at SC&I, there are so many different professors who dedicate themselves to sharing their real-world experiences combined with communication theory. That combination enabled me to understand how things could be, and then paired with Scarlet PR, I could understand how things can actually be in practice.
With the steady hands of the late Jack Grasso and Mark Beal, I learned how to marry both of those together, and then really be able to demonstrate that knowledge during my real-world interviews for real jobs.
Scarlet PR taught me that the public relations field is always a mixture of art and science. Sometimes there are situations that are out of our control, such as social media trends. Scarlet PR also enabled me to really understand accountability and the risks of having accounts under my name. At the same time, it allowed us to blossom from students into adults working in the real world where the stakes were high, because yes, we were still learning in the classroom, but we were also learning how to manage our time while working on Scarlet PR accounts.
Learn more about Scarlet PR at the Rutgers School of Communication and Information on the website.
