DMA Talent: Summer school - Safwana Mohammed

Whilst Google is my partner in crime as I endlessly search for and apply for marketing jobs, it was DMA’s Talent Summer School that really helped me realise the huge scope the marketing industry has. It was like a good slap from reality. For example, there are a fair few job titles that didn’t cross my mind that were part of marketing before I began the summer school. There’s the copywriter, the designer, the SEO executive, the planner - the list is endless! Knowing the roles that are out there is crucial, especially when job hunting starts to cramp your neck. You want to spend more time applying to those couple that are perfect for you instead of using one-click apply methods to apply to thousands of jobs that will make a company’s HR department quote DJ Khaled with “another one”. With that being said, let’s move on to the next career-moving lesson I learnt.

Grab a handful of calorific food because you’ll need the energy to understand what the GDPR is and how it has affected the industry. If you’re clueless about it, not to worry I’ll give a short summary. GDPR stands for the General Data Protection Regulation and it was introduced to help organisations protect personal data that they process. It is a step forward to allow individuals more control over their personal data. There are lots of rules and my head hurt when I tried to read about it, but at the DMA there are two individuals (Rosanne Stewart and Ashley Flanagan-Heselton) that created these fun cards about the GDPR which made the topic less dull than expected. Since marketing requires collecting personal data to successfully advertise and appeal to individuals with particular traits, GDPR has changed marketing. Also in this particular scenario, I recognised that marketing is all about perception. If your delivery is great, there’s no doubt you’ll get attention.

Following on from the topic of personal data and trying to keep it private, I had the pleasure of meeting the CEO and founder of people.io Nic Oliver. His speech was definitely one of the highlights of my time at Summer School, and worth mentioning. His work concentrates on creating a firewall for people and their valuable data. He highlights that data is not the new oil, therefore, making me think that companies should find value within the required minimum data that individuals allow them to use instead of trying to get as much data from them as possible. This makes me relate back to my data mining module where I was taught that the difference between data and information is that information is the small useful amount of data from a large database of data. Which, suggests if there’s a need for data analysts then that company is collecting more data than required to provide their service or product. When I was watching TV a while ago, the latest Facebook advertisement was on and it insisted that Facebook is committed to “protecting your privacy” which forced me to point at the TV, laugh sarcastically and have my family ignore my outbreak. The reason for my behaviour can be explained. DeepMind is an artificial intelligence division of companies like Google and Facebook that gets smarter with the data it is given even if you delete its data after. This means the value of the machine learning increases and the actual data contributed value is decreased. So Facebook still holds the value of our data even if they claim to have deleted it.

I can definitely say that I learnt a lot. DMA Talent’s Summer School was an eye-opener and I learnt I wasn’t the only one in the same position. I met some amazing people, which essentially create better teamwork and honestly, I feel empowered to do more, be more than I already am. Personally, getting into the marketing field would be a dream and hopefully, when I do get my foot into the field, it’s DMA Talent that I’ll be thanking (and my parents, loved ones and my hard work).

Interested in applying for DMA Talent: Summer school 2019? Find out more and apply here