‘Marketing… Beyond 2020’ was a week long marketing festival put on by the University of Derby. It bought together students, staff, local businesses and professionals to discuss and learn about contemporary issues in marketing. Across the week I have been tweeting, taking photos and writing blog posts to document the week and what I have learnt. Don’t forget to read my blog posts about day one and day three. In those posts I talk a lot more in depth about the guest speakers of the day. In this post however, I shall be succinctly summarising my highlights of the week and the key takeaways from the marketing festival.
Day One: CIM
- My university course is recognised by the CIM so I am exempt from modules in two of their internationally recognised qualifications.
- Graduate jobs are becoming increasingly competitive and with this comes the need to make your CV stand out.
Day One: Marketing Under Threat?
- As marketers, we are good at spotting threats externally, but we need to be better at it internally.
- Marketers need to fit the needs of the organisation, whether that be the language we use or how we define ourselves.
- Employees in general need to become more ‘commercially savvy’ and have an understanding of different functions within the business, not just their own.
Day Three: Artificial Inteligence
- Brands need to establish an early presence on platforms such as voice assistants as they become increasingly influential on our purchase decisions.
- Companies need to be respectful of people’s data concerns as they begin to invest in AI. It should not become ‘creepy’.
Day Three: Facial Expressions
- Emotions take over 24x faster than rational thought.
- Fake smiles are often confused for disgust.
- In advertising, we need to make sure we are displaying genuine emotions, not fake ones. People will notice subconsciously.
Day Four: Marketing Derby
- Cities often have their own marketing team to attract investors.
- Derby in particular is an award winning city with an extensive investment plan.
Day Five: Marketing Dinner
Although I don’t have any key takeaways to share regarding the marketing dinner, I did want to mention it. It was definitely one of my highlights of the week. On the final day of the festival, the university’s marketing society held a marketing dinner. Everybody, students and lecturers alike from all of the marketing courses, across all of the years got dressed up in their best dress and came together for the meal. It was just a really enjoyable evening with a live band, tombola and good food. It was particularity fun to spend time with all of my course mates and lecturers outside of formal lectures. An overall very enjoyable evening.
To summarise, I think the marketing festival was a great success. I learnt a lot of interesting things and it was great to go off timetable to learn about contemporary marketing issues. I hope you have enjoyed my documentation of it and I look forward to attending future events like this and documenting those too. Please give this post a share and I hope you have a great day.
