by Kim Lamb Gregory
As the President’s 2024/2025 Faculty Fellow, Professor of Marketing Ekin Pehlivan
is working to promote the three promises CSU Channel Islands (91Ƶ) makes to all
students and potential students.
“We promise them a safe and welcoming campus life filled with both academic and hands-on experiences,” Pehlivan said. “Second is our financial promise that focuses on the support we provide for about 80 percent of our students through financial aid and scholarships. And the third promise is a promise for the future to shine light on noteworthy alumni.”
These three promises are central to the 91Ƶ digital advertising campaign Pehlivan is managing while juggling numerous other projects through the student-run agency at 91Ƶ, CI Solutions, and is helping to coordinate the upcoming Plot-A-Thon.
Pehlivan launched 91Ƶ’s digital advertising campaign along with a team of five faculty and staff members and six students.*
“We are running quite a few digital ad campaigns on seven different channels - Google ads, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram, TikTok,” Pehlivan said. “(Marketing Lecturer) Shu Min Chien is running the Spotify ads. We’ve got audio commercials in Spanish and English. She is hoping to start our Connected TV ads in both languages soon as well.”
Pehlivan and Chien are working with the 20 students in CI Solutions, an on-campus student agency Pehlivan founded in 2020. Aside from the 91Ƶ marketing campaign, CI Solutions students work in paid positions providing assistance with specific projects to small businesses and nonprofit organizations.
Pehlivan is also helping the Writing and Multiliteracy Center organize the 5th annual Plot-A-Thon, a hack-a-thon-style data visualization festival in which students learn how to create infographics out of a set of data and compete for prizes.
“This year’s corporate sponsors are Cydcor, and Hubspot and the data set? Well, that will be a surprise contestants will learn about on the day of the event!” Pehlivan said.
Pehlivan marked a more personal milestone in summer of 2024 when she and her husband - both native to Turkey - became American citizens.
“When I voted for the first time, like Pinocchio, I felt like a real boy!’” she said with a laugh. “You live here for 18 years, you work and pay taxes, but you get no say in national or even regional politics. It was a real moment when we received our ballots. I felt like a had some agency at last.”
Pehlivan specializes in deception and manipulation in marketing.
“The majority of my original work is in fake news,” she said. “How do marketers make people believe things that are not true? It usually is not a lack of education or IQ, but a lack of critical thinking.”
To that end, Pehlivan adheres to a teaching philosophy that is less about telling students what to think -but how to think.
*Digital Marketing Campaign participants:
Faculty team: Dean of Martin V. Smith School of Business & Economics Sue Andrzejewski;
Associate Professor of Marketing Taylan Yalcin; Marketing Lecturer Shu Min Chien;
Director of Enrollment Management, Marketing, and Workforce Development of Extended
University Daniel Banyai
Student team: Juan Esteban Benavides-Castrillon; Zahra Nikooaghideh; Brooke Veres; Jocelyn Felix; Francis Toth-Fejel and Sydney Johnson