Creating a Digital Marketing education ecosystem in (east of) The Netherlands

The strugle of businesses and advertising agencies who are active in online marketing to find personnel with knowledge and skills on areas related to digital marketing is well known. Under pressure from the field more and more technology companies like Google, Microsoft or IBM are creating educational environments for fast-track education in various domains.
Google for example launched in the summer of this year an initiative called Google Talent Factory
targeting college students who wish to make a career in digital marketing.

The program not only offers the possibility to students to get in touch with AdWords but also brings in touch students with agencies interested to hire them. As one of the universities participating with more than 10 groups every year in the Google Online Marketing Challenge we were also approached to bring this opportunity under the attention of our students.
Google is not the only technology giant active in the education of future marketers. IBM is behind the initiative Big Data University that offers a variety of online courses. In our Master course

Advanced Topics in Digital Marketing we have included two of the courses offered namely the IBM Watson Analytics and the Big Data Introduction courses as part of the course curriculum. I could mention more such initiatives reflecting the increasing anxiety of the field about the inability of the higher education institutions to adapt their programs in Business Administration and Marketing in particular to the new market and social reality, namely that the online world has become a platform where commercial, educational, social and transaction activities are increasingly taking place.
Here in the Netherlands and also in the east of the Netherlands where out University is located we observe an increasing interest by local businesses active in digital marketing domains to get involved and assist us in our efforts to educate and provide skills to future marketers. Companies like Team Nijhuis (top Google Partner in the Netherlands), AdWise (a very successful agency in online Marketing) are companies actively participate in our Digital Marketing courses providing guest lecturers and case studies. This week I attended with some of my students an open house event by a company in Enschede (Lime Square) specialized in Neuromarketing techniques. I was very pleased to see that the CEO of this company was welcoming visits and use of their labs by our students.
Another initiative taking place in the Netherlands is that teachers / professors of Digital marketing from the country will have a first meeting in October to discuss the state of affairs of the digital Marketing in The Netherlands. Possibly a yearly symposium of Digital Marketing in Education will be the outcome of this event.
All these facts signal the creation of a digital Marketing ecosystem in this country. We as University of Twente want to be in the forefront of this effort. After all the moto of this university is High Tech - Human Touch.

Does it make sense to study Business Administration in a Technical University?

This is a question for many students interested in Business Administration. I was asked by the Facebook Portal for Greek students in the University of Twente to explain what are the advantages of our program. Among other things we offer a unique possibility to students to enter the world of Digital Marketing both in the Bachelor and in the Master programs with two electives:

The 15 EC module Digital Marketing for Networked Businesses in the Bachelor

The 5 EC course Advanced Topics in digital Marketing

The interview is available in the following link

https://www.facebook.com/notes/university-of-twente-in-holland-greece-portal/interview-of-dr-efthymios-constantinides-assistant-professor-in-digital-marketin/1202289659844736

The impact of Social Media on top brands in The Netherlands

The Dutch Magazine of Marketing (Tijdschrift van Marketing) publishes in the April edition the results of a study conducted among the top 100 brands in The Netherlands based on their advertising budget. The study conducted by Greenberry analysed more than 1.8 million messages during a period of 3 months.As sources were used channels like Twitter, Facebook, Hyves (a popular Dutch social networking site) YouTube and various weblogs.
The results are quite interesting for a number of reasons; this is one of the few studies in the area to begin with. Furthermore (and maybe surprisingly) the well known 80/20 rule of thumb seems to apply also here : The 25 bigger brands are good for 80% of the total message volume. The top 25 brands had on the average 627 messages about them in the social media per day. Another finding is that the most "Social" brand is the Dutch Rail with 274.000 messages in 3 months (almost 3.000 per day) followed by the telecom KPN. The supermarket chain Alber Heijn is nr. 3 followed by the bank ING. Interestingly in the top 10 are included two more telecoms: T-Mobile (nr 5) and Vodafone (nr 7).
The picture is a bit different if we look to the reach of the messages: The average reach for the top 10 brands was 41 million users in the period of 3 months with the Dutch Railways (NS) on the top with 121 million. Interestingly the KPN who is nr 2 in the number of total messages is surpassed by T-Mobile as to the reach.
The sentiment of the messages was also analysed and here I think some of the toppers in the list of social activity and reach were less happy about the findings: The NS, Vodafone, KPN and T-Mobile are among the top 10 as to the negative sentiment of the messages! Being a social brand is therefore not the silver bullet. It seems that some of the most online social brands in Holland are social for the wrong reasons! The customer is talking about brands online but it seems that most of the talk is negative.