Meet Austin Sporn, a member of the 2022—’23 Arrowhead Team, where he lent his skills as a copywriter for the campaign client, Indeed. Having graduated with degrees in French language & literature and advertising from FSU in Spring 2023, Austin has transitioned into the realm of project management. We asked Austin to reflect on his time with Arrowhead and its influence on his life postgrad.
What is your favorite memory from Arrowhead?
No doubt, my favorite memory from Arrowhead was experiencing Señor Frogs for the first time alongside Dr. Kelly. (If you’ve never been before, it’s an interesting experience… to say the least)
Did Arrowhead help you find your place in the industry?
Arrowhead definitely had an impact on how I viewed the advertising
industry. Even though many of us shared “advertising” as our primary major, we all had different skill sets and interests within the industry. Keeping that in mind, Arrowhead reassured me that I didn’t need to be a wizard in Adobe Creative Cloud or experienced in writing dialogue scripts to contribute to and have an impact on an advertising campaign. More importantly, Arrowhead gave me insight into what it was like to build a campaign from the ground up and watch it develop as each of our decisions eventually lead us to a finished product that we were proud of.
What are you up to now?
After graduating from Florida State, I accepted an offer to become a Project Manager at Epic Systems. With Epic being primarily known for revolutionizing EHR Software (if you’ve used MyChart, that’s us!), I originally didn’t think my advertising degree nor involvement with Arrowhead would translate to this job. WRONG! While advertising may seem irrelevant to healthcare software, my current role and associated responsibilities parallel the work I did in Arrowhead. Things like creating slide decks, presenting in front of end-users, tracking project tasks, using KPIs to measure success, and many other “advertising” practices are a core part of what my day-to-day responsibilities look like now. Recalling that I sporadically applied for Arrowhead the day applications closed and without really knowing anything about it, I am very thankful that I was able to be a part of the team and would encourage anyone at Florida State to step out of their comfort zone and join an organization like Arrowhead!
Megan Mohrmann, an advertising major at FSU’s School of Communication, wrote and edited this article for the team’s blog.