Iowa State’s Terrence Thames Talks Teaching Streaming, Sports Advertising, and Storytelling at Streaming Media 2025
In this interview from Streaming Media 2025, Cocoa Creative CEO and Iowa State University assistant professor of practice Terrence Thames discusses his approach to teaching students about the creative and business aspects of streaming with Streaming Media contributing editor Timothy Fore-Siglin.
A Diversity of Skill Sets
Timothy Fore-Siglin opens the interview by asking Thames to share a little about himself. Thames replies, “I am the founder and CEO of a medium marketing agency called Cocoa Creative, but I’m also a professor at Iowa State University in their College of Journalism and Communications.”
Fore-Siglin notes that moving from the corporate world to academia gives Thames the “chance to influence younger minds. What’s the most fascinating thing for you as you move from business into teaching students?”
Thames clarifies that he’s still involved in the business side of streaming, noting that this access and exposure influence how he teaches. “So it’s good to still currently be practicing and then offer my unique value proposition and perspective.” He believes this perspective is most evident in the acknowledgement that commerce is an aspect of every major, so any student can add value to the marketplace no matter their area of focus as long as they have an open mind and prioritize collaboration.
Thames tells students, “Let’s figure out how your gifts and your education can match with passion and purpose, and then make sure you’re refining those skill sets, but also know that your passion and skill sets don’t have to be the only way that you monetize.” He brings other lessons into the classroom: on life, leadership, and resiliency. “I’m big on soft skills, so I’m integrating that into teaching advertising, PR, and elements of sports media communication.”
Teaching How Advertising, PR, and Communications Converge
Fore-Siglin shares his experience teaching PR: He had to explain the difference between PR and advertising, and students would scoff at going into PR, saying that advertising was more interesting. He asks Thames, “How do you deal with that, with them looking at sort of different levels of commerce, as you talk about commerce being part of it all?”
Thames believes students need to understand all aspects of the commerce system in order to understand how they work together. “[T]hings are less segmented now, I think. Understanding what advertising is versus PR versus just general communications versus marketing, there’s a lot of integration for these things together, but the students don’t know because they’re coming in seeing it all [at once].” He adds that students are “coming in with somewhat of a consumer mindset. They know that they’ve been marketed to, they know that there’s PR working, they’re interested in communications and storytelling, but they’re not sure how to differentiate it per se.” He reiterates the importance of students developing diverse skill sets.
Case Studies as Teaching Tools
Thames turns to sports advertising to explain why it’s important to understand how advertising, PR, media, and journalism converge. “You can almost take off the word sports and replace it with anything else and say, This is business marketing [and] communication. This is social marketing and communication. But we just attach the athleticism, the element of competition to what we offer into the marketplace, right?” He wants students to understand the ethical dilemmas involved as well as the business opportunities and to see how journalism has changed.
Fore-Siglin elucidates modern marketing challenges: “It’s not like when we were growing up where on Saturday morning cartoons you would say, ‘We will be right back,’ and then you’d cut to an actual commercial. It seems like these days when we went through the influencer phase and we’re into the sponsored content phase, that those things blend together so much that it’s hard to tell what’s you telling me something that’s helpful for me versus you marketing to me.” He asks Thames how he helps his students understand this differentiation so they can choose their careers.
Thames points to the case studies he often uses that relate to advertising, PR, and sports communication. “[T]hose case studies help lay the groundwork for the premise of how to separate those differences. I think also my experience being involved with our regional Emmy chapter and the board and being an awards chair and seeing different content come through and also being a judge helps me to also be current with some of the issues that come up,” he muses. He’ll introduce questions such as, Is this branded content, although it’s from a news station? What categories does this content fit into?
“And so as we answer those questions to make sure things are in the right categories when it comes to business and how we elevate our journalists, elevate our creators in the marketplace, be it in sports, be it in media, advertising, whatever it is, that also helps me to further define that when I bring it into the classroom,” Thames explains. “So I do build it in the lessons, but the case studies help because the case studies bring out different dilemmas based off of what happened in the marketplace and how teams or people responded or what was successful.” He shows the students how to looks at why something is or isn’t branding, whether journalism is an element, what’s unethical about something, etc. “And so yeah, I think that case study as a premise really, really helps me to teach it because I can just point to the examples.”
Authentic Advertising
Fore-Siglin has a final question: “We talked about sports, and you said you could sort of take that off and add other things in. One of the things though it seems that sports gives is authenticity. … [H]ow do we work with students to help them understand what’s authentic versus what’s just being pitched to them in a really appealing way?”
Thames advises a shift in perspective. “[O]ne of the things I emphasize in the classroom is to take off your consumer mind and put on your advertising and PR mind, or put on [your] sports communication mind. And I ask them, ‘[I]n terms of advertising, in terms of you being advertised to, what campaign did you see?’” They’ll realize, “‘I see that this was targeted toward me based off of this, this, this, and this.’ Or ‘I was walking through and I saw this brand activation when I was out with my parents doing blah, blah, blah.’ Now they’re starting to think, ‘Oh, I saw something and I was interested as to why this targeted me or why I saw this ad. And I went and did some research over the weekend.’ Now they’re thinking with a different mindset to separate themselves from the subject matter.”
Thames also tells his students, “[Y]ou will be the progenitors of what good practice looks like in media, communications, production, all the things going over the next four or five years. So it’s important you understand these things, but separate yourself from your fandom to be more of the professional or professional in training.”
Thames likes when students say they never noticed the aspects of marketing and advertising that are prevalent until they took his class. “Now [they] understand there’s different elements of the business, and [they’re] processing it as a person, not only [who’s] consuming it, but a person that this needs to be an effective way you come into the marketplace later,” he shares. Emphasizing the importance of having a professional mindset, not just a consumer mindset, “positions them to understand how they can add value when they start to graduate or how they can do things differently, but more importantly, identify problems that they believe they can solve, right? No matter what their niche is in advertising, PR, in production,” Thames adds.
To close the interview, Fore-Siglin applauds Thames’ approach: “[I]t’s critical thinking skills you’re giving them to step back and actually assess it to know when they’re being marketed to. I think that’s key.”
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