Marketing students were recently treated to a full day of inspiring networking sessions by renowned industry pioneers in a series of workshops.

The workshops were organized by the CPUT Marketing Society as its highlight event for this year and were attended by students from CPUT, the University of Cape Town and the University of Western Cape.

The aim of the event was to create familiarity around the process of campaign development from strategy to creativity.

The theme was “Out of the Box” as the Marketing Society believes that when marketers start thinking out of the box, magical things happen.

The pioneers created an understanding of how strategy is turned into creative output through the campaigns and the advertisements we see around us.

These included digital content such as art direction and online public relations management.

The experts also presented a holistic insight into industry trends, branding communications and creative strategy as well as how everything is all connected.

The keynote speakers were Scott Grey, Head of Innovation at Quirk and Ross Chowles, Executive Creative Director at The Jupiter Drawing Room (Cape Town).

Chowles, Di Charton, Managing Director at Red and Yellow School of Advertising, and Denver Jacob, Managing Director and Founder of ForståCreative Interactive Agency, later ran exciting and informative workshops for the students.

Formed in 2013 to support marketing students at CPUT to gain access to career opportunities in the industry, the society uses a combination of workshops and mentoring relationships to expose students to a variety of industry networks.

Written by Kwanele Butana
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First-year Marketing students put their classroom skills to test to make a difference in the lives of The Big Issue street vendors.

Students used word of mouth, flyers and social media to advertise the magazine and hit the city streets to sell the magazine alongside vendors.

A group of students were assigned to one vendor and they then had to use all their marketing savvy to boost sales.

The project is a collaboration between the Marketing Department, the Language Unit in the Faculty of Business and the Service Learning Unit.

The Big Issue is a non-profit organisation that assists unemployed adults to earn a living through a developmental employment programme.

The project’s brief was to integrate community engagement into the language curriculum.

Yesterday students showcased their work and reflected on their experiences.

In the feedback session, students said they learnt a lot more from the project than in the classroom as they were challenged to use skills some did not even think they had such as dealing with nasty rejection from motorists as they were selling the magazine.

The vendors were also given gifts and certificates during the round-up session.

Written by Kwanele Butana
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