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Winter-Spring 2014

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Bostonia

Thomas Fauls Blended Creative Background and New Technologies

COM advertising prof defined by his love of teaching

Thomas Fauls, a Col­lege of Communication associate professor of advertising and marketing and direc­tor of COM’s adver­tising program, was known among his colleagues as a bright and creative thinker and an inspirational teacher to his students.

Among fellow fac­ulty in the advertising department, he also was known as the go-­to “tech guy” for all things inter­active, according to a tribute to Fauls published by three coworkers in the COMmunicator, the college’s mass communication, advertising, and pub­lic relations depart­ment newsletter. “He created the first interactive marketing communications course at COM and introduced new technologies to all his classes, at a time when the college’s technical resources were minimal,” wrote Judith Austin, an associate professor of communication, Christopher Cakebread (COM’82, SED’00), an assistant professor of advertising, and Carolyn Clark, an associate professor of advertising.

Fauls died on June 26, 2013, after a long battle with esophageal cancer. He was 65.

He earned a bachelor’s in com­munication arts from the University of Notre Dame and a master’s in advertis­ing from the Univer­sity of Illinois. He also received a certificate in web commerce from DePaul University.

He began his career as an adver­tising manager for Chemetron Corporation, a Fortune 500 company, and then as an agency account executive. Over the years, he was a copywriter, a creative director, and an executive creative director, and he worked for such firms as NW Ayer, Leo Burnett, Foote, Cone & Belding, Cramer­-Krasselt, and Atkinson Marketing. Fauls worked in print, outdoor, broadcast, collateral, and new media for big-­name clients such as McDonald’s, United Airlines, Kraft, Sears, Frito-­Lay, Oscar Mayer, Coors, World Book, and Dr. Scholl’s.

In 1989, Fauls joined forces with friend and colleague Patrick Sweeney to form the interactive marketing company SweeneyFauls, Inc. Fauls worked for the company for almost 25 years.

Throughout this time, Fauls conducted many multimillion-dollar national and international campaigns. He was also brought in as an associate creative director to launch and brand the company that would become Discover Card.

In addition to his work in advertising, he also conducted research about the field of advertising. He was interested in trends in art direction and graphic design, the disappearance of copy in advertising, the relative size of key agencies, and the domination of top ad agency holding companies. He was a coauthor of Advertising & the Business of Brands: Media Revolution Edition, an introduction to the worlds of advertising and marketing.

Fauls joined the BU faculty in Sep­tember 2000. “Along with his practical creative background, Tom offered an un­derstanding and en­thusiasm for the burgeoning field of interactive adver­tising,” his three colleagues wrote in their tribute. “Tom’s passion for the new world of the internet, with an emphasis on search engine marketing, inspired countless students to consider the inter­active world for a career.”

What defined Fauls was his love of teach­ing and his personal interactions with his students. “They sought his advice about course content and postgraduate opportunities,” his coworkers wrote. “They were rewarded with a rich perspective, a blended view of the advertising field that was both old and new. He inspired students to be bold in their search for that first entry-­level job.”

And once they landed careers, those graduates came back to help current students. “These alumni paid their respects by coming back to Tom’s classes to bring their experiences to the current students,” Fauls’ colleagues wrote. “They became invaluable resources, notifying and advis­ing new graduates about job opportu­nities. Tom’s lessons in expertise, generos­ity, and commit­ment set in motion enormous bene­fits to his students as they move on through their lives.”