Digital marketing bootcamp

Fanshawe College and Northern Commerce team up to launch second digital marketing challenge

Photo: Corey Dubeau of Northern Commerce and Liz Gray of Fanshawe College

FANSHAWE COLLEGE IS teaming up with Northern Commerce and launching a new challenge for digital marketing students hoping to get a leg up as they look towards the job market.

The second Northern Digital Marketing Challenge (last year’s program was put on hold due to the pandemic) will see teams of marketing students plan, implement and manage digital marketing campaigns for 16 local businesses. The participating businesses were selected through Fanshawe’s Lawrence Kinlin School of Business. 

Open to students in the Business Administration Marketing, Marketing Management and Bachelor of Commerce programs, the idea behind the challenge is to give students some much-needed hands-on experience working with marketing campaigns.

“For local small businesses struggling due to the pandemic, the students’ help will be extremely valuable,” says Fanshawe professor, Liz Gray. “This program allows students to gain experience with digital marketing for real-life local clients prior to graduation.” 

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Teams will manage the campaigns for two months, after which they will present them and the results to a panel of judges drawn from Northern Commerce.

According to Gray, the Northern Digital Marketing Challenge operates as a sister program to Google Ad Grants Online Marketing Challenge, which sees students gain real-world experience creating and executing online marketing campaigns for nonprofits using a (USD) $10,000 monthly budget of in-kind Google Ads advertising credit through the Google Ad Grants program.

The Northern Digital Marketing Challenge, which is co-funded by Northern and Fanshawe, is set to take place entirely online this year. This is perhaps not much of a setback, either — if nothing else, it’s apropos for a year in which e-commerce and digital sales have been front and centre.

“Experiential learning is critical in digital marketing,” adds Corey Dubeau, VP of marketing at Northern Commerce. “With the mentorship of our team, students will gain valuable experience working with digital marketing platforms such as Google and Facebook that focus on learning and improving students digital marketing skills.”

Headquartered on Wellington Street, Northern Commerce made news last summer with the purchase of London-based Digital Echidna, a web design and digital agency that specializes in the development of large-scale websites on the Drupal content management system. Kieran Delamont