General Information
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Instructor Bio
Inez Blackburn is a futurist who helps companies navigate the emergence and convergence of marketing technologies and business and consumer trends to deliver profitable growth. Inez has held numerous executive positions in marketing and market research and has successfully helped many companies across multiple industries develop and deploy effective marketing communications plans. She was the Canadian Lead for SmartLabel Canada and developed the VR/AR Category Management Training Tool for Category Management. Inez is a deliberate and decisive leader with the passion and vision to create and deliver strategic marketing plans that reflect market dynamics. Her consulting company, MTI Market Techniques and Innovations, is focused on helping her clients develop effective marketing plans and digital strategies in an arena of change.
Inez is a best-selling author of “Pride Passion Profit -7 Steps to Category Development” and a featured speaker at industry conferences. She has worked with leading Retailers, CPG Companies, Private Label Manufacturers, Telecommunications, and Medical and Technology Companies, helping them navigate emerging trends and opportunities to develop compelling positioning and marketing strategies. Inez is a detail-oriented, creative problem solver who interprets multifaceted issues and delivers meaningful solutions by applying best practice standards, broad industry knowledge, and persuasive communication.
Inez is also an award-winning instructor at the Rotman School for her ability to deliver courses that prepare students for the world they will graduate in. Many students at the undergraduate and graduate levels have leveraged knowledge gained from course material, assignments and guest speakers to further their careers and secure successful employment.
Target Audience
This is a must-take for everyone interested in marketing. It covers privacy issues, the evolving role of marketing personnel, discussions, and frameworks crucial to building a valuable toolkit for marketing professionals to develop an effective marketing communications strategy.
If students seek a career in marketing, they should take this course. If students plan to work with Marcomm (Marketing Communications) as a general manager, consultant or communication expert, they should take this course. Students interested in a successful marketing career in a tsunami of change and digital disruption should take this course. Students will benefit significantly from understanding the impact and opportunity of Social Media in addition to privacy concerns and limitations.
Format
12-13 weekly in-class sessions with guest speakers and interactive class discussions.
Each week, we will focus on a critical topic in marketing communications in an interactive seminar discussion format. The course will also use outside experts to facilitate discussions, inspire, and address leading-edge perspectives on strategic marketing communications. There will be a strong focus on automation and the impact of AI on strategic marketing communications. Student engagement in the readings, writing assignments, and class discussions make this course meaningful and rewarding.
Course Mission and Scope
This course prepares marketing practitioners and managers for the Marcomm world of 2024 and beyond. Marketing has been the business discipline most affected by evolving marketing roles, digital transformation, AI, Machine Learning, generational change, and escalating global competition. These challenges independently and collectively create technology wars over data, consumer loathing of advertising, adblocking, and new regulatory constraints. Consider:
- The #1 marketing spending priority in 2024 is not advertising, media, agency fees or marketing salaries as it has been for decades— it is marketing technology — a line item that did not exist ten years ago,
- Fifty thousand jobs left creative advertising agencies in North America during the 2020 pandemic as spending went elsewhere and the rush to in-housing accelerated. This trend is expected to continue.
- CMO tenure in 2024 was the lowest it has been in ten years.
- Top-line growth objectives are up. Budgets are flat. Consumers are more demanding, technically savvy and unforgiving.
- Privacy concerns and new laws will continue to impact social media
- AI and Machine Learning in tandem with Chat GPT3 & 4 will continue to impact Marketing Budgets, Roles, Strategies and Profitability, and it is crucial to stay on top of emerging and converging technologies.
It may not look like a rosy picture, but it is for great talented marketers.
This course is designed to prepare students for this new environment. Key themes in the course will be:
- Fragmented spending in advertising and non-advertising vehicles (e.g., owned media, earned media, influencers, UGC, social issue advocacy, and content marketing)
- Faster, better, and cheaper means finding a different marketing toolkit
- The creativity and technology embraced
- No clearly defined swim lanes with tidy, defined areas of responsibility,
- Lead with responsible decision-making and
- Above all else, creativity rules.
This course will build on these themes and discuss inspiring ways marketers flourish in this environment with creativity, new talent, risk-taking and a completely new toolkit.
The ANA (Association of National Advertisers) Growth Agenda provides a content compass for the course. Each of the four segments of the outer ring will be addressed, beginning with the two lower segments on technology, marketing organization, agency, and talent.
The middle part of the course addresses the upper right quadrant dealing with creativity, content marketing, storytelling, and media.
The final quadrant in the upper left deals with brand purpose, social responsibility, and sustainability and provides the course’s capstone.
Evaluation and Grade Breakdown
| Component | Due Dates | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Class Participation | Ongoing | 20% |
| Case Study | Week 5 | 25% |
| Group Project – Digital Marketing Audit | Week 7 | 20% |
| Group Project – Strategic Marketing Communications Plan | Week 12 | 35% |
Required Resources
The course has a textbook and extensive reading list, mostly, but not all, from public domain sources. Because of the dynamic nature of the Marcomm industry, the readings and cases change each year.