Possibly one of the greatest mismatches between digital marketing education and real-world marketing skills application is that the discipline moves so quickly, and students don’t get enough hands-on experience in real-world settings before they enter the job market.
Mind The Gap actively seeks to change that, believing strongly in the importance of bringing real-life experience to university classrooms. The best way to ensure that university students remain on the bleeding edge of digital marketing innovation and techniques is to provide the opportunity to work on real business cases and develop their marketing skillset to a professional level that will serve them once they graduate. That is, make them ready to go to work in the field as soon as school ends. Recognizing that business and university collaboration programs are the best way to give students this kind of chance, Mind The Gap is proud to announce one of its first such cooperative endeavors: a semester-long project between Mind The Gap and the marketing department of Anderson University in the state of Indiana (USA).
“We are thrilled to take part in a university-industry collaboration of this type that brings together the expertise of a global digital marketing agency and a university program, creating a truly hands-on partnership. When students, particularly in fields like marketing, get the chance to see and do projects in their field early on, it’s definitely a value-added experience beyond lectures and textbooks.”
Professor Victoria Shaw, Anderson University
As a first part of the program, Mind The Gap’s leadership team will deliver lectures on data-driven marketing and real-world implementations of digital marketing strategy and campaigns. As a second part, Mind The Gap and Australian e-commerce client, SuperFeast USA, will involve Anderson University marketing students in supporting the SuperFeast US launch. Students will work in two teams, organized into two sprints, during which they will conduct field and marketing research to understand marketing personas, the competitor landscape, and aspects of product marketing. Mind The Gap will support the students as they develop their research and deliver a go-to-market strategy for the US launch, providing feedback and answering questions as students work through the project steps and assemble final presentations.
To make it even more interesting, the project is also a contest: only one of the two groups can win. The winning promotional and go-to-market strategy proposal will receive a cash prize for each person in the group. Winners will be announced in April 2021. Finally, there will be the possibility for one or two standout students who have displayed outstanding performance or potential to be offered online internships with SuperFeast and/or Mind The Gap to continue their hands-on learning journey.
“While a competition makes it sound like it’s winner-takes-all, we believe everyone wins with this partnership, as all the students involved will have a driver’s seat in developing a go-to-market and digital marketing strategy for a real launch. There’s nothing more valuable than that kind of experience as you head into the workforce.”
Paolo Ramazzotti
Find out about the full Anderson University and SuperFeast collaboration. Read the case study.