Earlier this semester, the School of Communication’s class Advanced Writing and Branding: Taylor’s Version had the opportunity to visit the Moore Agency to present to a panel of professional judges.

The class, COM 3930, serves as this semester’s Special Topics in Communication course and explores branding and storytelling through the lens of Taylor Swift’s career. For this specific class project, students were given the prompt “What should Taylor Swift’s plan post-Eras Tour be?” and were tasked with creating a pitch deck on their solutions. They later presented these to a panel of professional judges at the Moore Agency, a local PR agency with strong ties to FSU and the College of Communication and Information. The judges panel included FSU Chief Marketing Officer and SCOM Professor Susannah Wesley-Aschwelde, Moore President and SCOM Professor Terrie Ard, Moore Account Executive Rachel Corry, Moore Associate Director Morgan King, and SCOM Director Patrick Merle.

Member of the winning student group Sophia Brandsetter shared that while it seemed scary to speak in front of so many PR professionals during her first visit to an agency, the experience helped her build several invaluable skills. She explained that the class “definitely helped me prepare for my future career. From speaking to business professionals to creating a pitch, I have experienced so many new things in this class. I have learned about crisis communications, how to build and present a pitch deck, how to format a magazine article, how to interview people, and how to develop a 5-point argument.”

Students in the class expressed that they’ve greatly enjoyed learning more about branding, writing, and storytelling in such an innovative way. They also shared that they found the real world experience of presenting at Moore extremely helpful.