A recurring topic on my blog is the digital skills gap within Marketing, and how we at RGU have been working very hard to ensure that our new MSc in Digital Marketing addresses this gap.
I cannot overstate the importance of this, and I truly and very passionately believe that academia has a role to play. Universities have a lot to answer for, if they cannot respond to this drastic shift in marketing - which requires not just creative but also technical and analytic / data skills.
I'm very lucky in that my University (RGU Aberdeen) exactly understands this, and has been instrumental in allowing us to design a Digital Marketing Masters degree that is fit for purpose. Earlier this week, we outlined our vision in an article, Marketing in the Digital Age, in the Press & Journal newspaper.
I was pleasantly surprised therefore to find the exact same discussion about the digital skills gap, and how modern marketing can stay relevant, on the Guardian network last week.
I dare say the Guardian article could have been penned by me - certainly we here at RGU have the same vision and are absolutely determined to help solve the urgent issue the article rightly outlines:
By 2018 the US is predicted to lack around 1.5 million managers and analysts with sufficient technical and digital know-how to make effective decisions, and the picture in the UK is similar.
Imagine! How are we going to address this digital skills gap, and ensure that UK Marketers stay at the top of their game? It's not even just about educating the next generation, but also, ensuring that traditional Marketing Managers know what they're doing (I'm still surprised and shocked at how much inflexibility in attitude a traditional marketing degree seems to produce, and how unfit for the digital age some marketers - especially at senior level - are).
Sometimes I wish we could just tear marketing down and start all over again, from scratch 🙂
Digital Skills Gap Live Chat / Q & A
Tomorrow, Thur 6th March, from 12.30 PM, the Guardian is running a live chat on their site about this very topic.
You can either ask questions in the comments section of their article here, or send questions through Twitter using the hashtag #GMNliveChat