I’ve spent my career working with a variety of clients and employers and will always be an advocate for strategic experimentation.
Working in digital marketing means there is always a new trend or technology we might want to play around with. Kick the tires and see if it is worth pursuing further or not. This has meant diving into virtual worlds with beverage companies, producing a podcast for English teachers, and building a virtual kissing booth for a clothing brand.
So when the student ambassadors for our Marketing and Communications team asked me if I had ever heard of the show Hot Ones, I grinned and replied, “Of course!”
If you don’t know Hot Ones, it is a perfect example of a silly experiment that has grown into a flourishing empire. Take the standard old one-on-one interview show with a celebrity and add in asking the questions while eating progressively spicier chicken wings. Read this fantastic New York Times article if you’d like to learn more.
I don’t know why they decided to do this or the ongoing plans for it, but my rule is always to help students if I can when they ask for it. I love my food to have flavor, but I’m not a fan of heat just for the sake of it, so I went into this a bit stressed.
My goal was to honorably represent the Business and Management Department, show current and potential students that professors are more than the people they see in class, and deliver a fun interview. I refused to get a look at the questions ahead of time, and my only ask was that if I swore that they’d bleep it out so that it wouldn’t reflect negatively on Wheaton in any way.
I encourage my colleagues to do this if asked, and I can’t wait to see what fun experiments happen next. Thank you for inviting me to be the first guest on WheaWings. It means a lot.
