michael roberts: my story
I am a graduate of the UNT College of Business Administration with a Bachelor’s degree in marketing. I will not bore you with the details of my classes and GPA, but if you are interested, you can see them here.
I thoroughly enjoyed my time in Denton, but after my graduation I made the decision that Austin was the town for me. As young and naïve as I was, I just assumed that I would move into town and have employers falling at my feet. I have since learned that a degree from UNT does not carry much weight in a town that boasts the largest public university in America. I have spent much of my time trying to convince people that I am, in fact, employable.
I have been involved with the Austin Ad Federation since July of 2005 and have really enjoyed meeting people while doing great things for the Austin community. I originally signed up to help with the Art From the Streets campaign, and have since gotten involved with the Hill Country Ride for AIDS and the Austin ADDY Awards.
In my short time since joining the Austin Ad Fed, I have been named Volunteer Coordinator. I work closely with the Texas Advertising group and the Texas State Ad Club to gather volunteers for any events that may be going on. If you are interested in volunteering, you should go here.
With Art From The Streets I helped to organize and execute a guerilla marketing campaign in which some homeless artists and volunteers passed out postcards for the show. To increase effectiveness, we set up actual framed paintings on easels on the corners with us. This event helped to increase awareness of the show, which had a 30% increase in sales from the previous year.
My ongoing work with the Hill Country Ride for AIDS includes the calling of meetings and coordination of guerilla events. Every month, I lead a group of volunteers at First Thursday on South Congress to distribute red ribbon flyers with ride information on them. These flyers were originally designed to be hung on bicycle handlebars, but have since been placed on car antennas and doorknobs. These ribbons were placed on over 1000 bicycles at the Austin City Limits festival in September 2005.
