Youths score in marketing project

Singapore — For a group of students in Temasek Polytechnic (TP), academic life took an exhilarating turn when they had a chance to work with the TODAY team on a digital marketing project.

For their final-year project, these 15 students were tasked to research, plan and present a six-month, 360-degree marketing campaign, with the aim of growing TODAY’s online and mobile readership, particularly in the youth demographic of 13-to-25-year-olds.

Ms Heidi Tung, 19, recalled how excited she and her course mates were when they received the brief. She said: “We were pretty intimidated in the beginning; even more so when we had our first meeting with TODAY. It was a thrilling project as we were presented with real clients, with real meetings and scenarios.”

Working in teams of five, the students were given targets that included increasing monthly pageviews on TODAY’s website and mobile apps by 50 per cent and quadrupling the number of Facebook and Twitter followers under the age of 25. Scored for quality of content and research, format and presentation, the project constituted 40 per cent of their course grade.

Over five months, they were mentored by a TODAY team headed by MediaCorp Press Managing Director and TODAY Editor Walter Fernandez, together with Digital Media Editor Edric Sng, Deputy Digital Media Editor Hedirman Supian and Marketing Manager Caroline Bone. The team led consultation sessions with the students where they facilitated discussions, gave feedback on proposals and continued to offer their expertise via email and phone during the semester.

TODAY sponsored S$700 for TP’s graduation prizes as a reward for academic excellence in the categories of Best Project Team and Best Student. Outstanding students were offered work-experience stints at the newspaper. Ms Tung will join TODAY for five months in June, upon graduation.

The collaboration was initiated by Ms Hie Hui Ching, Senior Lecturer for the Diploma in Communications and Media Management (CMM) in TP’s School of Business. CMM students specialising in media marketing are required to do a scenario-based group project in their senior year.

She said: “To give our students the opportunity to work on real cases, I approached TODAY. I believed that TODAY is continuously making improvements to its product and might possibly benefit from having input from the youth as to how it could attract a younger readership.”

The invitation came at an opportune moment. TODAY had undergone a print redesign last May, followed by a digital relaunch. With its revamped virtual platforms, the newspaper was able to deliver news and content with new immediacy, especially for readers constantly on the move. Online readership increased from 250,000 unique monthly visitors in January 2010 to more than 1 million currently.

Ms Bone said: “We are constantly engaging our readers to find out how we can deliver a better digital media experience, and youth are one of our key target audiences. This collaboration is a chance for us to better understand how we can continue to grow our readership and digital presence.”

Working on the project, the students had the chance to put the marketing and media marketing fundamentals they had learnt into practice. At the same time, they realised that theories had to be applied in a flexible and discerning manner, said Ms Hie.

“The students saw the TODAY team as partners as well as advisors. The industry perspective that the team brought to the table and their insights on what worked and what didn’t gave them a realistic picture of the real-life situations and the challenges of the workplace,” she said.

Both parties acknowledged that the collaboration has been a success and is mutually beneficial. The TODAY team gained insights into the consumer and behavioural trends of youth, while the students had a glimpse into the intricacies of marketing a media product and learnt invaluable life lessons along the way.

Added Ms Hie: “As a progressive media player, TODAY is the right platform and partner for our CMM students in their learning journey.”