The fast paced and innovative nature of marketing presents many hurdles for undergraduates studying in our field. Often by the time students graduate many of the practical skills they learnt in their first year are out of date. The constant sector innovation doesn’t allow for a standard curriculum cycle and as such marketing education has focused for a long time on the core principles of marketing, expecting early career development to take care of the rest.

Over the past 5 years, the basic fundamentals we teach those who are new to the industry is how users behave when exposed to marketing but these have begun to have less and less relevance to their own experiences of media and advertising. We teach that there is a linear relationship between awareness of a brand and eventual engagement, but our digitally native younger generations are acutely aware that the constant drumbeat of advertising in their daily lives is much more dynamic than ever before, and their brand affiliations can be won and lost in an instant.

They’re now the second and third generation who have grown up with the internet at their fingertips from a young age, and they consume media in a way that is anything but linear, and anything but traditional. As they start their careers in marketing, it’s important we teach how the world turns now, not five or ten years ago.

With this in mind, our partnership with UA92, the university set up by the class of 92 and Lancaster University aims to bring real-world, ‘right now’ marketing technology and thinking to the next generation of marketeers. By putting industry experts at the cutting edge of their craft in front of students about to begin their careers. We aim to equip students with more honest and realistic models for user behaviour, and updated core principles that reflect how changes in marketing technology and media consumption are shaping the marketing strategies of the future.

UA92 is a natural fit for McCann Manchester. Being deliberately different in its approach dovetails with our core value to never to accept conventional marketing wisdom as gospel, and to continually challenge and evolve our own thinking. This is why the partnership is so important to us, because a future media industry that thinks ahead and challenges perceptions means a better media experience for brands, marketeers and consumers.

McCann Manchester partnered with UA92 in 2022 and further cemented its relationship with the University recently with the co-creation and co-delivery of a new digital marketing degree with its McCann Experience team launching in September this year.

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