Jon Cook, BJ ’93, believes it’s the real-world situations that students get to experience that puts the Missouri School of Journalism at the top.
“There are a lot of good journalism schools out there,” says Cook, the president of VML, a full-service digital marketing agency headquartered in Kansas City. “But no one gives as much hands-on experience as the J-School does.”
One personal example of this hands-on experience occurred during his final semester at the Journalism School, when Cook encountered one of his toughest projects in his capstone class.
“This was a class where the focus was creating a campaign for a real client, and it took everything I had learned at the journalism school in order to succeed,” he says.
Cook’s capstone team worked with the Missouri Anti-Smoking Association, and the team had to work hard collectively to succeed. The capstone team received very positive feedback from the client. The organization took away some fresh ideas for this and future communication efforts.
“Everyone had a different skill and was a full contributor to the group,” he says. “It was really cool to see how the different skill sets meshed together.”
Cook, who has lived in Kansas City for most of his life, graduated from Center High School in 1989. While in high school, he worked on both the newspaper and yearbook staffs. It was because of these experiences that he first began to appreciate journalism and consider it as a possible career.
“So many people think of journalism as an individual career,” Cook says. “It really opened my eyes to how much of a team effort journalism can be.”
When he had to decide where to go for college, he choose the University of Missouri because he wanted to stay close to home and had heard about the Missouri School of Journalism’s excellent reputation. He was – and still is – a huge Missouri Tigers fan.
While in school, Cook worked for Mizzou magazine, the official publication of the Mizzou Alumni Association, in order to earn extra money for college expenses. He worked as a teaching assistant for the Graphics in Journalism class, what is now called Strategic Design and Visuals. Cook also worked as an Add Sheet layout artist.
Cook believes that the limitations of desktop publishing at the time made him stronger in digital design later on. Desktop publishing for computers, which began in 1985, was relatively new and the Internet had not yet taken off. “It forced me to focus on the integrity of communications and the heart of messaging as opposed to being able to rely on graphics,” Cook says.
Professor Henry Hager, who taught an advanced copywriting class, was one of Cook’s most influential professors in his time at the journalism school. Hager had worked as a copywriter at Campbell-Ewald in Detroit on some of General Motors’ most memorable campaigns during his professional career.
“Henry was a great professor because his experience came from working in the ad agency environment and on one of the most famous automotive campaigns in the industry,” Cook says. “It wasn’t just academic lessons but anecdotes from life at an agency.”
Prestigious internships provided Cook with some additional insights into the real world. During the summer before his junior year, he worked for the Disney College program in Orlando, Fla. Cook says this gave him the chance to learn the operations in marketing and hospitality from the world’s best and helped him understand the value of the “guest experience.”
The next summer in 1992, Cook worked for the Missouri Lottery as a summer ambassador, where he was part of a team of 12 college students to promote the lottery at events across the state. “Our main job was to create awareness, education and excitement,” Cook says. “We were not only introducing new lottery programs, but also educating the public about how the lottery funds were being used.”
After graduating in May 1993, Cook didn’t have much time to celebrate. Through a connection with an alumnus at the Kansas City Ad Club, Cook interviewed for an account manager position at Nicholson Kovac. He got the job and started his career the Monday after his commencement. In his time at NK, Cook worked with a number of high-profile international and national clients, including Sprint and Yellow Freight.
In 1996, Cook accepted an account executive position at VML, also in Kansas City. Cook enjoyed working for Nicholson Kovac, but at the time VML was a much smaller agency, and Cook believed he had a chance to make a big impact.
In nine years, Cook went from an account executive to director of client services. He was named president in 2005. Cook credits his success to the agency’s stability.
“We’ve always had a great team of people who have stayed committed for a long period of time,” he says. “It’s an environment that lets each of us maximize our strengths and allows us to work on our weaknesses.” With Cook as part of a core leadership team over the past 14 years, VML has grown from 30 employees to 700 employees and now has 11 locations worldwide.
Cook has now been at VML for more than 14 years, and he believes that has to do with the versatility of the agency. “I stayed because we’ve done a great job of reinventing ourselves,” he says. “Now I get to apply the things I like across a much larger stage.”
VML has succeeded because of their flexibility with evolving technology, according to Cook. “Some marketers jump to a ‘digital checklist,’ whereas VML maximizes customer needs individually,” he says. “We put a premium on remembering the consumer is first, and communicating in a relevant way.”
One of his favorite projects at VML has been working with Gatorade on their G-series product at a major time in their product history.
“The campaign required everything we knew about advertising and made it an incredibly effective campaign,” he says. “We had done campaigns that focused on social media, banners and branding content, but for this campaign, we really had to harness all of those elements to succeed.”
Cook believes the Missouri School of Journalism has helped him tremendously throughout his career, and the School truly means a lot to him.
“I’m so proud of the instant credibility that comes from the School, and how people are so impressed with the degree,” he said. “The School’s reputation extends far beyond journalism.”
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