If you had told past me that I would be completing a two-year fast track course in Digital Marketing, I would not have believed you! My first year at BCU was a learning experience I would never forget. It brought new opportunities to work on skills that I would need to have a successful career. Attending university seems daunting and difficult, but I am here to tell you that it is manageable and will help you to be successful in any marketing role you want to take on.  

At the beginning of my first year, I had no knowledge on what exactly I wanted to specialise in, and I certainly didn’t know any terminology or marketing methods, but that is what this course is for. For my first assignment, we were introduced to the foundations of marketing. This assignment helped me understand myself better as we got to complete a personality test and see what areas I had strengths in. I then had to introduce myself and present my findings, and once the whole class presented their work, it helped me get to know the people on the course and get to know them without the need to go up to them one on one. 

One important part of this course was the group work. After getting to know the class I started to use each module to work in different groups and find people that I would work well with. This was so important because I improved on my communication skills and the workload became easier to manage once tasks were delegated to different people in my group.  

During our assignments there were opportunities for one-to-one tutorials to get help and guidance. All of the modules and projects were vastly different, which was the most exciting part to me, because I got to know how marketing would differ for each industry and target different audiences. I worked on briefs for brands such as GHD, Penhaligon’s and Kirby.   

For the summer module we were given a live creative brief from a London advertising agency called Complex Creative. We were lucky enough to get the founder and managing director of the agency, Sabrina Chevannes, to come to our class and introduce the brief to us. It replicated what working in the marketing industry would be like and we got to ask questions on the best way to approach this brief from a client’s perspective. It was about a charity called ‘Mental Hellth’, and the task was to make a one-page website to showcase the charity and influence people to join their community.  

Along with this, we got to create video ads, posters, social media posts and TikToks to show their message in detail. To do this, we needed to think of slogans and key messages to appeal to the appropriate target audience, in this case this was people suffering from mental health issues.  

I got to learn how to use cameras and lighting equipment, and being in the studios was the best part of the module and was the best experience to end my first year. We took pictures, created videos, and edited these pieces for our presentation. With the help of the editing suite, it made the process easier and helped me improve skills I already had like editing and filming.  

I haven’t even had time to cover general university life at BCU yet! The University has a range of societies to join and become a part of. For me, the dance societies were interesting. I was able to balance my work and time to do things I was interested in with the way the course was designed.