Matthew Wilson
he/they
Associate Professor of Practice
CBB 340
Matthew Wilson
he/they
Associate Professor of Practice
Matthew Wilson is a creative director with more than 28 years of experience in creative advertising, digital strategy, user experience, copywriting, video production, and experience design. His career has spanned Silicon Alley interactive agencies during the dot-com boom, national integrated advertising campaigns, branded retail environments, feature film production design, and the college classroom. He joined UNI in 2011 on a mission to produce a generation of talented, hardworking advertising professionals.
Wilson treats students as pre-professionals. Rather than relying on textbooks, he immerses them in the ambiguous, high-stakes work of the real advertising world — pitching real clients, solving real problems, and building real portfolios. He teaches Digital Advertising, Digital Customer Experience, and Advertising Campaign Development, giving students hands-on experience with tools including Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Google Ads, WordPress, MRI-Simmons, Figma and various social media platforms.
As Faculty Advisor to the UNI chapter of the American Advertising Federation, Wilson leads the award-winning UNI team in the National Student Advertising Competition (NSAC) each year — one of the most demanding and meaningful real-world learning experiences available to undergraduate advertising students in the country.
Hobbies & Interests
Wilson is a devoted collector of vintage audio equipment and 78 rpm records, with a deep passion for early jazz and blues history. He plays guitar and runs JazzCrazy, a YouTube channel and website dedicated to historic jazz and blues record transfers and music history. He and his wife are avid readers with a large home library.
M.F.A. Yale University; B.F.A. Kansas City Art Institute; additional studies at Brighton Polytechnic, U.K. (now known as Brighton University).
Creative Advertising, Digital Advertising, Content Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Digital Customer Experience, AI in Marketing, Advertising Campaign Development, Brand Development, National Student Advertising Competition.
Wilson's career in digital began in 1995 at Internet Tradeline, an early e-commerce pioneer on Wall Street helping businesses around the world build their first web presence — at a moment when the commercial web was still being invented from the ground up. There he managed web production and personally trained production teams across Europe.
Wilson co-founded environments.com, a New York City interactive agency at the center of the dot-com boom, serving early-stage technology startups and new media ventures including Vote.com, UPOC, and the Information Products Group at JPMorganChase.
Wilson then served as creative director at Creative Realities (CRI), leading experience design and branded retail environments for clients including Bank of America — including their flagship location and Times Square digital billboard in collaboration with R/GA — Radio Shack, Time Warner Cable, and Harvard Law School.
During that same period, Wilson served as a creative consultant for Academy Award-winning production designer Grant Major at Weta Workshop, contributing design research in New York City to the pre-production of Peter Jackson's King Kong.
Immediately prior to joining UNI, Wilson served as creative director at Mudd Advertising, where he co-developed an innovative video-powered landing page platform and led creative for national accounts including Audi, Enterprise Car Sales, and Kaplan University.
Prior to that, Wilson served on the faculty at Wartburg College, where he taught Communications Design, developed a course in User Experience Design, directed the campus art gallery, and contributed to curriculum development.