The Department of Marketing Management arranged visits from industry experts to expose the students to the practical side of this type of marketing. Quirk Marketing Agency, the largest digital marketing agency in Africa, presented a series of lectures focusing on digital and direct marketing. Ms Alexandra Rees, Strategy Planner at Quirk Johannesburg, gave a very insightful lecture to the students, highlighting the importance of content when developing and executing a digital marketing strategy. She also shared a few exciting case studies showing how certain brands had achieved great success in their campaigns.

During this lecture, the third-year students were also graced with the presence of a renowned direct marketing expert, Mr Alastair Tempest, Chief Operating Officer at the Direct Marketing Association of South Africa and President of the Institute of Interactive and Direct Marketing. He also introduced a colleague, Ms Lauretta Ngakane, a marketing and communications specialist with over 18 years hands-on experience in Southern Africa as Managing Director of myMOBworld, a Johannesburg-based mobile marketing consultancy. Ms Ngakane’s session gave a broad overview of spam and hacking and how this negatively affects marketers, while Mr Tempest pointed out the laws which will affect how marketers communicate with consumers. The lecture closed with a challenge to the students to learn from the sophisticated spammers, who are great at segmenting and targeting the right consumer.