Justin is a marketing academic at UCT, who gave us some excellent feedback on both the first and second editions of our textbook: eMarketing: the essential guide to online marketing. He provided a perspective that is difficult to maintain when you’re working in the Online Marketing world – how do students view eMarketing and what’s the best way to recruit the brightest ones into the field?

Justin pointed out that eMarketing is quite a practical discipline – the best way to learn about it is to do it. Playing with AdWords, for example, will teach you far more than being lectured on it. The kind of lectures that industry practitioners give – like those we did in support of the textbook – are also a valuable addition to an academic course. The lecture hall context serves to introduce students to a discipline that most would otherwise be unfamiliar with.

Sad, but hardly surprising, is that students don’t initially see eMarketing as sexy. “Marketing students tend to shy away from anything involving numbers,” says Justin. Preferring courses in consumer behaviour, it takes some time for students to realise that these disciplines all also exist online.

Internships at companies like Quirk are also a great way to learn – Carlos originally came from Beneke’s course as did our most recent clever studlings (as we like to call them): Jamie and Maija.

The industry needs high quality recruits. Justin agrees with the popular the view that marketing budgets will increasingly be moved online in the near future. The introduction of the SEACOM cable should also contribute to the growth. In his view:

“In other countries (such as the UK) there is a rather strong correlation between the adoption of consumer broadband services and the time and money that consumers spend online.”

These factors suggest that knowledge of eMarketing is pretty much essential for people who want to do the best work they can for their brands. Justin says that the eMarketing textbook has certainly helped in this regard – with the use of case studies being a valuable resource, and the relevance of the book making it – dare I say it – pretty hot (love those colour images). Will the eMarketing stars of tomorrow come from a university course?