Celebrating Black History with MDJ: Professor Mike Jackson

 By: Joyleah Odom

​To celebrate Black History Month, PRSSA would like to highlight Mike Jackson, the Professional-In-House for the spring semester. Mike has a long and impressive career, one that we hope inspires you to be ambitious and never settle for less.

Mike Jackson is the founder of 2050 Marketing, a marketing consulting firm that helps companies build their brand to best fit the America of the future. 2050 has worked with clients ranging from Fortune 500 companies to start-ups.

He has worked with companies such as Coors, USAA, Vision Media, and several others. Additionally, he has had executive leadership roles at Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Coors, and GM. He provides his expertise as a marketing analyst guest commentator and contributor for NBC, CNBC, ABC, NPR, CCTV, USE Today.

As of recent, Jackson has returned to his alma mater to be a Professional-In-House and to work with Franklin Advertising. When asked about what he enjoyed most about his career, he said he enjoys his ability to work with global brands. He is proud to be one of the few African Americans to lead advertising and marketing for General Motors. One of his favorite projects that he worked on was assisting Insurance and Financial firm, USAA in the agency selection process after they terminated a seven-year relationship with their creative and media agency over a racist email controversy. "I worked closely with the USAA CMO, to define the values necessary for new agency partners, and assisted with the selection of the new agency," Jackson said.

When asked about how to achieve a common goal with a diverse group of people, he said “staffing your teams (internal or external) with a diverse set of thoughts and experiences is the key. My style is to respect everyone that I come in contact with while maintaining a focus on delivering outstanding results.”
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Starting 2050 Marketing has come with its own set of challenges. With the companies goal of adapting and preparing for the America of tomorrow, it is difficult to get large companies to adapt. “Most of the challenges are convincing brands and agencies to allocate resources and convincing c-suite leaders to emotionally invest, accordingly,” Jackson said.

When asked about his time at Kent State, he said, “my time at Kent State helped me ‘grow up,' refine my personal and professional skills, and have the confidence that enabled me to be a leader in corporate America at a time when opportunities for African American males were few and far between.”

We celebrate Black History Month and Mike Jackson’s career in hopes to shed light on the amazing things African American people have done for this country. We wish his career well and we're excited to watch how he continues to strive ahead in the field of communications.