Designed to give transition year students a taster of the relevant programmes available on the Athlone campus, TUS hosted its annual Digital Marketing Summer School in recent times.
Over the course of the week, students from Ardscoil Chiaráin Naofa, Clara and Columba College, Killucan explored the worlds of content creation, influencer marketing, brand development, podcasting, social media marketing whilst participating in brainstorming and ideation sessions in the form of a digital pitch.
Three lecturers facilitated the week’s activities including Dr Aisling Keenan, Eugene Pettit and Daniel Seery the latter of which commented on how ‘engaged’ and ‘tech-savvy’ the students were and said he found their ‘energy and dedication’ inspiring.
“I’d be delighted to welcome these students into our Digital Marketing degree programmes in the near future. There was a great energy and appetite to learn about the digital world and students were keen to showcase their creative skills from the outset,” Mr Seery stated.
Students also were treated to workshops on influencer marketing delivered by fitness guru/social media influencer Oisin Mulligan (@Mulligainz ) and Karen Gaffney from the brand development department of ICON Management agency who manages a number of Ireland’s top social media influencers such as Kash beauty and True Beauty.
Both speakers, emphasised the importance of creating short form video content on platforms such as TikTok to engage their audiences.
“Influencer marketing is growing at a staggering rate and it is becoming an increasingly important way of promoting brands and products. We were keen for the students to learn more about the dynamics of influencer marketing,” Ms Gaffney commented.
This year in Ireland €67 million will be spent on influencer marketing, a nine percent increase on last year.
“Here at TUS we are a delighted to be partner with the European Influencer Academy which provides masterclasses to social media influencers from around Europe on responsible leadership, cultural differences, filter bubble/polarisation, response strategies to negative messaging, media ethics, inclusivity and meaningful communication. Having Oisin and Karen collaborating with us for this summer school, explaining the influencer economy to secondary students reaffirms the significant role of influencer marketing in future digital marketing strategies,” Dr Aisling Keenan added.
TUS Lecturer, Eugene Pettit also highlighted the importance of developing future skills
“TUS’s Digital Marketing Summer School was a fun and an engaging way to introduce secondary school students to future skill requirements. The summer camp offered students a blended learning experience combining digital, design, creativity, business modelling, and innovation as core elements. Its approach was to instil wonder, creativity and initiative at the very heart of the learning process to prepare students for our changing economy,” he continued.
Students attending the four-day programme also had the opportunity to attend a podcasting workshop where students got to talk about their product in a digital and social world. Considering the many ways to advertise a product, students were given the opportunity to learn more about recording and editing podcasts in state of the art music and technology labs at TUS Athlone.
According to TUS Lecturer, Daniel Seery, the Digital Marketing Summer School was a taster of exciting new changes to the Digital Marketing programmes designed to furnish students with the skills needed to increase their employability in an increasingly digital world.
“The digital landscape is constantly changing and evolving. We need to stay ahead of the curve by consulting with industry experts and conducting our own research to ensure students are equipped with the necessary skill set after graduating.
“Similar to the experience of senior cycle secondary school students during the summer school, TUS’s degree programmes in Digital Marketing will place a heavy emphasis on content creation, brand development, paid advertising, social media and artificial intelligence (AI ), campaign creation together with an industry based digital marketing capstone project and lots more,” Mr Seery concluded.
