Tag: Jooyoung Kim

Jooyoung Kim named director of Cox International Center

Posted on by Sarah Freeman

Jooyoung Kim, the Dan Magill Georgia Athletic Association Professor in Sports Communication, has been named director of the James M. Cox Jr. Center for International Mass Communication Training and Research.

Tudor Vlad, the current Cox International Center director, will assume a new role as executive director. Vlad has led dozens of international training missions and welcomed hundreds of visiting journalists from around the world to UGA over many years of service to the college.

“Dr. Kim brings a highly successful international program, the Business and Public Communication Fellows Program, under the Cox International Center, marshalling the college’s international training center and its resources,” said Charles N. Davis, dean of the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication. “I’m excited to see the Cox Center continue enriching media operations around the world through its training and international research.”

Kim is grateful for the opportunity to work with the Cox Center and continue its mission.

“Through interdisciplinary collaborations with Grady faculty and other excellent units at UGA as well as external experts and organizations worldwide, I hope to continue to build the Cox Center as a global hub for mass communication knowledge production and training,” Kim said.

Kim is the founder and director the Business and Public Communication Fellows Program, a program inviting experienced communication professionals from different countries to study for one year at Grady College. The program, founded in 2010, operates in conjunction with the Cox International Center and has graduated more than 100 students.

“Now under the Cox International Center, the program will flourish even more by attracting international scholars in a wide range of disciplines related to mass communication,” Kim said.

Kim is a professor of advertising and specializes in research on the roles of advertising in branding context and perception. His research also examines advertising and brand communication in the sports context. Kim also directs the Advertising and Branding Insights Studio at UGA to facilitate interdisciplinary collaborations that focus on research-driven insights in advertising and branding using various scientific approaches. Kim serves as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Interactive Advertising and was secretary last year of the American Academy of Advertising, an organization dedicated to advertising science and research. He is the co-founder and current vice president of the Korean American Faculty Association at UGA, an organization committed to increasing the visibility of its members and mentoring the Korean and Korean American students on campus.

The James M. Cox Jr. Center for International Mass Communication Training and Research began operations in 1985 and is dedicated to conducting media training programs involving countries all over the world, and conducting and publishing research reports on a variety of topics related to the practice of journalism around the world.

Among the activities in the past year that the Cox Center has directed are the development of a series of civic and media management courses for the African Civic Engagement Academy and hosting a group of 21 journalists from the country Georgia for training in digital media.

The Cox Center is named for the late James M. Cox, Jr., chairman of the board of Cox Enterprises and a major figure in the communications industry in the United States in the twentieth century.

Editor’s Note: For more information, please read this April 2022 profile about Jooyoung Kim. 

 

Jooyoung Kim helps people become innovators

Posted on by Sarah Freeman

Whether his students are a group of undergraduate advertising students, graduate advisees or international visiting professionals, the guide that Jooyoung Kim uses in his teaching is the same: helping people become innovators through thinking and doing.

Inspired by Apple’s Steve Jobs, Kim frames his teaching philosophy from bringing together the two pillars of thinking and doing in one person.

“To be a thinker, you have to have knowledge,” Kim said. “To be a doer, you must apply your knowledge and experience in the classroom to settings in real life. That collective experience can help a person succeed, innovate and make positive impacts whether it be at a micro or macro scope.”

In addition to teaching advertising courses, Kim’s research mainly focuses on the roles of advertising in branding context.

“I like to observe and theorize how things work, especially human behavior and thoughts,” Kim said. “Since a brand is a perception shaped by a set of constantly updated cognitive, emotional and sensory experiences, my research scientifically explores how advertising helps that process. And, I want to provide useful insights at both a small and large scale.” As the Dan Magill Georgia Athletic Association Professor in Sports Communications, his research also examines advertising and brand communication in the sports context.

As a means to connect with academics across the world, Kim serves as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Interactive Advertising and was secretary of the American Academy of Advertising, a flagship learned society for advertising science and research. Kim also directs the Advertising and Branding Insights Studio at UGA to facilitate interdisciplinary collaborations that focus on research-driven insights in advertising and branding using various scientific approaches.

Kim founded the Business and Public Communication Fellows program to provide international professionals in communication fields with the opportunities to learn from the faculty at Grady College, known as one of the top programs in media and mass communication, especially in advertising and public relations research. Created in 2010 in conjunction with the Cox International Center, the program has graduated more than 100 participants.

Jooyoung Kim teaches an undergraduate advertising class in the Peyton Anderson Forum.
Dr. Jooyoung Kim teaches an undergraduate advertising class at Grady College.

Amid the increasing awareness of diversity, equity and inclusion, support for Korean Americans on campus is important to Kim, as well. He co-founded the Korean American Faculty Association at UGA last summer, which is committed to increasing the visibility of its members and mentoring the Korean and Korean American students on campus. He currently serves as vice president of KAFA.

Preparing students is at the heart of Kim’s teaching, and he believes that the skills he teaches are transferable to any career.

“Advertising is science. The system of knowledge and skillsets related to advertising, including data analytics, research and message strategy, are important competences for any career,” he said. “Moreover, communication is a critical component for the success of any project. If you think about the terms such as ‘science communication’ and ‘environmental communication,’ you can see why.”

Kim is always thinking about the future and encourages his students to be, too. For instance, Kim recognized the importance of understanding large media and consumer data and realized several years ago that there was a gap in understanding between advertising and data science experts. He then formatively created a graduate course to teach data science for communication research. More recently, he encouraged his students to include metaverse advertising strategies in their capstone projects for Nike last fall, acknowledging the importance of the emerging media environment for advertising.

“I want to make my teaching relevant to what my students will need to be thinking and doing after graduation. I want to go beyond the textbook and ask, ‘How can you use these ideas for your future career?’ Let’s do it now and see how it goes. Because of the ever-changing media environment, we may never be able to prepare our students perfectly. But knowing how to think and do simultaneously should last and foster themselves to be constantly prepared,” he said.

UGA researchers examine factors related to awe in luxury brands

Posted on by Sarah Freeman

Natural wonders such as the Grand Canyon typically inspire feelings of awe. Consumer psychology researchers at the University of Georgia investigated whether or not those same feelings might be inspired by luxury brands and what that reveals about how consumers respond to advertising.

The study, “Brand Awe: A Key Concept for Understanding Consumer Response to Luxury and Premium Brands” is one of the first of its kind about brand awe, and was led by Jooyoung Kim, a professor of advertising and the Dan Magill Georgia Athletic Association Professor in Sports Communications at Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication.

“Awe is a concept from psychology, and we have taken and developed a new measure that can be useful for marketing communication,” Kim said.

 

“For instance, if a global car manufacturer is launching a new line of premium cars, their marketing materials might talk about sophistication, reliability, safety as reasons to purchase the car. But, for luxury products, there are emotional connections that should be promoted, as well, and this study addresses those most shared emotions.”

 

The researchers found that brand awe is a mixture of emotional experiences consisting of euphoria, enthrallment, and vastness that a consumer experiences when encountering a brand. Keith Campbell, a UGA professor in the Department of Psychology and Hyejin Bang (Ph.D. ’17), an assistant professor of marketing at Kookmin University in South Korea, also contributed to the research.

For the study, the researchers showed participants images and descriptions of 11 utilitarian luxury products (cars, wristwatches) and hedonic luxury products (fashion, cosmetics), with varying degrees of luxuriousness. Throughout two phases of study, first with 205 and second with 256 participants, the three brand awe factors were identified.

Three main dimensions comprise the concept of brand awe. They are: Euphoria, or the positive emotions that consumers are likely to feel when encountering a brand; Enthrallment, or the attention the item is likely to generate; and Vastness, not so much physical size but the impression that the product makes the person feel insignificant in comparison.

Researchers also investigated how other factors, such as prestige, luxuriousness, quality, and innovativeness affected consumer attitudes and found that they did little to influence consumers if “brand awe” wasn’t also present.

Participants were also asked about their willingness to save and share the experience with friends, providing implications for the likelihood of posting on social media. The study found that luxury products that elicit emotions of awe are more likely to be shared than those without.

Kim believes this has broad implications for marketers of luxury products.

“Our study has demonstrated that awe can be experienced from brands,” Kim added. “Marketers can try to manage the level of awe in a way they want based on the three awe factors, and make sure their communication in advertising has conveyed consistent awe experience in their messages.”

According to Kim, luxury brand advertisers typically focus on materialistic consumption experiences to make the brand continually desirable and aspirational via cool-quotient and newness factors. “However, the most important consumer response criterion that marketers should carefully monitor for premium and luxury brands have remained unclear. We hope the brand awe construct will be useful to help luxury advertisers and marketers manage their brands.”

“Our study spurs further research into the role of brand awe in many other types of brands such as human or institutional brands. For example, athlete branding can certainly benefit from our research,” Kim concluded.

The study, “Brand Awe: A Key Concept for Understanding Consumer Response to Luxury and Premium Brands” has been published in the September 2020 issue of the Journal of Social Psychology.

 

Jooyoung Kim named Dan Magill Georgia Athletic Association Professor in Sports Communications

Posted on by Dayne Young

Grady College advertising professor Jooyoung Kim has been named the first Dan Magill Georgia Athletic Association Professor in Sports Communications. The professorship honors Dan Magill, former UGA sports information director and tennis coach.

“The professorship clearly signifies the care and support for long-term research excellence carried by Grady faculty,” Kim said. “I consider the professorship as an unparalleled opportunity and encouragement for further research rather than a recognition of the works already done. The field of sports communication calls for scientific inquiries and insights to help build better relationships among teams, players, spectators, the general public and sponsoring brands for any sporting events.”

Kim’s research focuses on advertising theory and practice. He is currently focused on advertising engagement, integration effects and consumer emotion.

“I am delighted to appoint Dr. Kim the inaugural Dan Magill Georgia Athletic Association Professor in Sports Communications,” said Charles N. Davis, Grady College Dean. “This professorship will augment that many exciting things that Grady is doing in the area of sports media, and honors the Greatest Bulldog of Them All, so it means the world to me personally. An indelible memory of my deanship is getting to visit with Coach Magill and tell him about this professorship, and so seeing it come to fruition is most gratifying.”

Dan Magill was a staple of UGA athletics for seven decades. He coached men’s tennis for 34 years, winning 13 SEC championships and two national championships. He retired as the winningest coach in NCAA Division 1 history.

“Beyond impressive record books, Coach Magill’s leadership and care are what really stand out,” Kim said. “As a professor teaching students majoring in advertising, I have coached many student teams for national competitions and helped them win numerous top awards. With the coach’s legacy now associated with me, I believe I will actively embrace his coaching spirit and dedication to UGA and its students, both undergraduate and graduate.”

Kim joined Grady College in 2004. He is currently the Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Interactive Advertising and an Associate Editor of International Journal of Advertising. He serves as the executive director of Grady College’s Business and Public Communication Fellows Program.