Editor’s Letter: Whistling Past the Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has ended lives, broken families, decimated industries, and undermined institutions throughout our planet. In the United States, it has brought into focus the cracks in the foundations of higher education. But as I see it, our reactions to this disease have spotlighted our strengths. Advertising education is a small discipline. Maybe because we are few in numbers we can be big in ideas and flexible in execution. Throughout the 2020 pandemic summer and fall, I saw examples of ad faculty rising to each day’s challenge with care for students and thoughtful attention to reaching educational goals using newfound techniques and technologies. It did not hurt that leadership focused like never before on education and student issues. The phrase “we’ve always done it this way” was heard but rarely. We could get on with teaching the best that the situation would permit. Most of the articles in this issue of the Journal of Advertising Education were written pre-pandemic, but all are relevant to innovative teaching in the world we now face. Lindsay Bouchacourt and John Murphy test the growing library of Stan Talks ad executive videos. Juan Mundel shows us how to conduct an ad course simultaneously on two continents, and Sarah Fischbach and Veronica Guerrero lay out a path to digital branding. And the value of diversity in guest speaker selection is tested by Craig Clay, Andrea Bergstrom, and Jenny Buschhorn. These are difficult times, and the innovations presented in this issue may not make things easier. Innovations rarely do. But we have shown the strength and the skill to keep our students and discipline moving forward. I hope we all have the health to keep at it. Good luck to us all.