Covid-19 gave me a chance to refocus

Having considered the Digital Marketing Certificate in Munster Technical University for several years, in a fortuitous turn of events, the Covid-19 lockdown granted me unprecedented free time, what was I to do?

"The real lesson is to remember whatever aspect of your life that fired your passion before this mess - and keep stoking it now" Mark Little

I recalled the words of Mark Little and found myself finally signed up, yet still unsure what I was going to get out of it.

In hindsight, I believe my personal objective was to build confidence in my existing skillset. With a marketing background that spanned over 25 years, I found myself largely self-taught in anything that was created in the last two decades!

As I dialed into the first of many, many zoom lectures, I nostalgically thought of the parting words of my marketing lecturer in 1999 “Watch out for this world- wide- web thing it might be big!”. How right he was! Here I was over 20 years later, a full course dedicated to innovations that I had since “Googled” to keep up with trends.

What had I let myself in for? 

Already having pretty long workdays and a 2+ hour commute to the office (Yes I was full-time office-based through Covid-19) and now I was committing to 2-3 hour online lectures 3 nights per week, plus group projects, solo assignments, and some review work!

Support

Each Lecturer offered up an individual style, yet all were enthusiastic, approachable, supportive, knowledgeable, and inspiring with their own first-hand use cases. 

Confidence

There is nothing better than “doing” to really grasp new skills or refresh old ones! The combination of breakout workshops, discussions, assignments, case studies, projects, reports, and presentations offered ample opportunity to learn and hone our skills in real-time.

Learnings

My qualifications being from 1999 an era pre – well everything that we consider to be Digital Marketing tools, I was essentially self–taught through YouTube, Google, and the likes.

Navigating 2021 social media in a world that is constantly changing, we found ourselves researching changing trends in real-time. A life lesson being borne in front of our eyes, the impact of Covid-19 on our Digital Marketing world.

The changing trends in Consumer behaviour from Device usage, buying habits, social media usage, and how the “Credos” of Marketing 3.0 were now progressing through to the updated Marketing 4.0: Moving from Traditional to Digital (Philip Kotler, Hermawan Kartajaya, Iwan Setiawan, 2016).

Throughout Covid-19 there were ever-increasing examples of how brands were now looking to authentically create brand connection. They sought to empathise with the Human Spirit to progress the traditional path to purchase (aware, appeal, ask, act) and expand to include advocacy. We saw growing communities and the repurposing of User Generated Content to impact buying decisions.

With these learnings, I look forward to building strategies for our new world and advance with reinforced confidence.