COM Students Create WBUR Web Site for Mom
Grad student Ryan Ferland (COM’07) helped create a special Mother’s Day Web site as a WBUR promotion.
Ryan Ferland, the marketing manager at WBUR, was given a challenge for this Mother’s Day: strengthen and personalize Boston University’s National Public Radio Station’s holiday campaign with innovative marketing styles.
As an outgrowth of a video production class project, Ferland (COM’07, MET’07) and fellow graduate advertising students Chris Antonowich (COM’07, MET’07), a WBUR marketing associate, Jean Wong (COM’08, MET’08), the marketing director for Golfer’s Warehouse, and Vanessa Diaz (COM’07, MET’07), who works for PepsiCo, created a Mother’s Day Web site.
The site features videos of listeners honoring their mothers and written tributes, and as a fundraiser, listeners can send flowers to mom, with proceeds benefiting the station.
“We did the whole project from conception to finish in three-and-a-half weeks,” says Ferland. “That includes filming, editing, animating titles, scoring, Web design, and coding.” Antonowich wrote and performed the original music for the site.
Working on the site helped the four implement the techniques they’d learned in the classroom, but also turned about to be a surprisingly emotional endeavor for each of them. “At the end of the day, everyone said it just reminds them of their own moms,” Ferland says. His mother was touched by his work, he says, and is considering adding her own story as a gift to her mother.
To view or add stories about important women, visit www.wbur.org/mom. Flowers may be ordered for delivery outside the Boston area until noon today, May 11, and for delivery in the greater Boston area until 1 p.m. Saturday, May 12.
Kathleen Dowling can be reached at dowlingk@bu.edu.