On Monday night I had the opportunity to guest lecture at the University of St. Thomas for an old boss John Purdy. John's class is COJO 4070 a campaigns class for seniors. It was bascially the same class that I taught at the University of Minnesota when I was adjunct professor there from 1991-2004.
I always love the opportunity to be back on campus? Why? I find a college campus to be full of energy and excitement and as a place of higher learning I always find it stimulating. But it is truly the opportunity to listen to the students is what I truly enjoy. To hear about their hopes and dreams for getting into the marketing business whether it is in advertising or public relations.
While the class lecture was about research - I quickly shifted gears and gave a lecture on the future of agencies (Advertising or PR). Where are they headed and what they need to do to survive. My lecture could be summed up in one word - Digital.
I started my talk with three pictures of "famous" ad legends - Leo Burnett, David Ogilivy and J Walter Thompson. While I didn't expect any of the students to know who they were it set the stage for a key point. While all these great men built great ad agencies in their day - those agencies need to evolve to stay on the forefront of the business and that is get digital inside and out. Edward Boches recently said "Everything is powered by digital - so you need to hire digital, think digital and learn digital or die".
This is the world that these students are venturing into and I believe they will be well prepared. Why? Clearly they are growing up in a digital age and totally get it. While some of the current people in our industries don't get it. As a result they can come in and make an impact right away.
After listening to them talk about their habits of media consumption it again re-inforced the need to be digital and get more digital into my work life.
Are you getting enough digital into your work life?
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