The impact of social media on your personal brand is the focus of the December 8th Wednesday Night Wisdom (WNW) online speaker series from the NIU College of Business.
This panel discussion will feature NIU Business alumnus and TikTok cooking star Darryl Postelnick, whose social media account enjoys 2 million followers, with his Smash Burger recipe amassing more than 5 million views. Postelnick will be joined by Associate Professor Mya Pronschinske Groza and Assistant Professor Elina Tang, both of whom are faculty members in the Department of Marketing. (Biographies follow.)
The WNW online event “Using digital marketing to build your brand” is scheduled for December 8th, from 6:00 PM to 7:30 PM CST. The event is open to the NIU community and the general public. Registration is free, required and also currently open.
Biographies
Darryl Postelnick, MKTG ’87 – Postelnick started his career at Ideal Industries and then moved to SmithKline Beechum. From there, he was hired to run the distribution area of The Walt Disney Studios and spent eight years there before being recruited to manage the Xbox Division at Microsoft, where he was the vice president of consumer sales – U.S. He currently works at Opia Ltd., a sales and promotions company based in the U.K. Postelnick started posting a cooking show on Instagram and TikTok in October 2020 and to date has approximately 2 million followers. He has monetized the site and launched his own branded merchandise business, including unique salt and pepper grinders.
Mya Pronschinske Groza is an associate professor of marketing in the College of Business at Northern Illinois University. Her research interests include qualitative and quantitative research methods, consumer empowerment, online and television advertising, digital marketing and social media. Groza’s work has appeared in academic journals, among them: Journal of Business Research, Journal of Business Ethics, Sport Marketing Quarterly and Marketing Management Journal.
Elina Tang is an assistant professor of marketing in the College of Business at NIU. Her current research interests focus on transformative service research, environmental sustainability, innovation and sales. Her publications have appeared in the Financial Times’ list of top business journals and include Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Marketing Science and Journal of the American Statistical Association.
In June 2020 during the first year of the pandemic, the NIU College of Business launched its online speaker series Wednesday Night Wisdom as one of several ways to maintain and expand connections between students, alumni, faculty, staff and friends.
~ M. De Jean, Director of Marketing, NIU College of Business
