KEVIN MARDESICH
COMMUNICATIONS
WRITING, STORIES
& MARKETING
Kevin offers full-service communication skills. His writing, story, and marketing projects help Oscar, Emmy, and other industry leaders tell their stories. Kevin's credits include: 1) PR campaigns for National Geographic; 2) developing scripts for Oliver Stone; 3) Troika ad agency projects for ESPN and Apple; 4) documentary-shorts for USAID and UCLAx; and 5) writing/producing MTV's Emmy-winning interactive films, Take A Stand Against Violence -- which earned White House praise. Kevin also lectures at Stanford, Fordham, UCLAx Film, and USC's #1-ranked PR program.
Kevin's teaching success can be measured by his awards, anonymous teaching-evaluation scores, as well as alums' viral and Oscar-caliber work. In total, Kevin has won six teaching awards, including from the 2008 national honors society, Gamma Beta Phi. A poll of all Chapman University dormitories recognized Kevin as a "Top Two" professor in the entire university.
Further, Kevin earned top teaching-evaluation reports at all three universities where he has taught, including currently UCLA Extension. Please see the attached PDFs from UCLAx, Chapman University's film school and The University of Texas at Austin.
Teaching effectiveness can also be measured by alumni success. On the heels of Kevin's courses, several alums have reached the Oscars. Publicist Stephanie Baum (photo, lavender dress) helped manage the red carpet. Producer Jean de Meuron's (tux) film was Oscar-nominated for Best Short Film (see trailer). In Jean's interview here, he cites Kevin's influence. Jean went viral with his next short -- a proof-of-concept for a Cloverfield sequel called Megan (see link). Marie Roussin is a French TV showrunner. Joy C. Mitchell co-wrote Netflix's #1 rated Bridgerton (see trailer). Kevin helped his first student Dafina McMillan train at the prestigious Kennedy Center. Dafina later became a Bloomberg executive (photo with Anthony Mackie).
Other alums work at Disney, Netflix, Xbox, and as advertising leaders. For example, Mike Alfaro (photo) went viral creating Amazon's #1 Best Selling board game, Millennial Loteria (video here). Many other alums have gone viral with branded content, too. For example, Kevin taught Tessa Jakobsson Wintervy at UCLA Extension while she worked remotely as the content manager for Sweden's IceHotel. Kevin coached Tessa's creative brief, narrative, and marketing plan across two courses. Her IceHotel team then brilliantly filmed this "Experience IceHotel 365 Days" branded content seen on this page. Posted on facebook, this ad earned approximately 70,000 views in 2016 then 363,000 when reposted in 2019.
Kevin started his teaching career at The University of Texas at Austin
earning top scores for
Entertainment PR (PDF).
Prior to UCLA Extension, Kevin taught full-time at Chapman University. He earned six teaching awards. These included from the above academic and service society.
Alum Mike Alfaro speaks in Kevin's UCLA Extension courses. (Above) Mike's board game Millennial Loteria went viral. Besides this side hustle, Mike is a leading art director and copywriter.
After Producer Jean de Meuron short film La femme ... was Oscar-nominated, he was interviewed by UCLAx (above) and cites Kevin's influence. Jean's trailer can be seen on this page, too. For Jean's next project, he produced a YouTube ad for his proposed Cloverfield sequel Megan (also this page) -- which "went viral." Here, Jean implemented Kevin's UCLAx transmedia-marketing lessons.