UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — An award-winning executive with 20 years of industry experience is set to visit University Park for a free public event titled “You’ve Got the Power: Personal Accountability in the Advertising Industry.”
Kendra Hatcher King, vice president of marketing and consumer strategy for SapientRazorfish, will be the featured guest in this year’s Don Davis Lecture in Advertising Ethics at 6 p.m. March 19 in 112 Kern Building.
Based in Atlanta, King works with a group of business and development leaders through SapientRazorfish, a digital agency in the Publicis Groupe. Her work has featured brand development for a long list of companies, including Bridgestone, Coca-Cola, Kellogg’s and Russell Athletic.
In 2017, King was named to the Ad Age "Women to Watch" list and in 2016, she was named among the “Top Women in Advertising and Marketing” by Black Enterprise. She also chairs the Mosaic Executive Council, which is the American Advertising Federation’s body charged with promoting industry diversity and inclusion. She received her bachelor’s degree from Ohio University before completing her master’s degree at Northwestern University.
The lecture was made possible through the generous support of the late Donald W. Davis Jr., a Penn State alumnus who earned his journalism degree in 1942 and later created the program to honor the memory of his father, former Penn State professor Donald W. Davis Sr. The event is intended to perpetuate the ideals of ethics in advertising that Davis Sr. maintained throughout his professional and academic careers.
The elder Davis established the University’s advertising program in 1936. He also published his “Basic Text in Advertising,” which emphasized the “continuing fight for standards,” and exemplified his approach to advertising. He taught for 37 years, predominantly at Penn State, and under his leadership, enrollment in advertising courses grew to be the largest in the country.
Davis Jr., who died in 2010 at the age of 89, was the retired chairman and CEO of Stanley Works, one of the largest international manufacturers of builders’ hardware and tools. Under his leadership, Stanley grew to a “Fortune 200” company with annual sales approaching $2 billion.