[MUSIC] You may have found the content of this specialization opened up a new world. You might want to explore deeper with more formal education. To discuss this, here is Professor Frank Mulhern. The Associate Dean in charge of the Northwestern Medill Integrated Marketing Communications or IMC program. Frank, welcome. >> Thank you, Randy. I'm happy to be here. >> Tell us a little bit about the educational opportunities or options people have at Northwestern. >> So the Medill School at Northwestern is a school of journalism media and integrated marketing communications. And in integrated marketing communications, we have four academic programs. Three graduate Master's programs and an undergraduate certificate program. I'll go through the three programs. There's the full-time Master's program that has a largely an international focus. So we'd bring in about 120 students every September, it's a 15-month program, four academic quarters. And one summer, what we call immersion quarter, where students work with a company on a project, often on-site at the company. >> So those people are full-time here on campus at Northwestern? >> Yeah, so that's here in Evanston. They come from all over the world, it is by design very international. Both in terms of student composition, which is over 50% of the students are from overseas. And in terms of curriculum and content in some of the activities students have while they're in the program. Opportunities to travel to other parts of the world. >> And I think one of the neatest things about that is you get to hear how IMC is being adapted and how it works all over the world. So it's a very global sort of a program. >> Very much global and it aligns a lot with the whole global marketing communication industry. Which has moved very much in that direction for many years now. >> Okay, so that's the full-time program. What are some others? >> So then locally in Chicago, we have the part-time program where sometimes we're calling it now the Chicago program. That's a two-year program for working professionals in the Chicago area. There's about 25 to 30 students who start every September. It takes two years, they take two courses at a time, two evenings a week. Some students vary it and maybe take a little bit longer. But that's really the same academic program as the full-time program. Just minus the immersion course since they already have jobs. >> What sort of things are they doing to take the night course? >> Well, it's quite a mix. Some students are from agencies, some are from media organizations. Some are from corporations in marketing or communications jobs. And others are actually in different fields altogether. In human resources for example and they wanna change their profession or their career path. >> That's deep. Then another thing though is that most of our participants are not gonna be able to come to Chicago, is there an option for them? >> Well, that gets us to our online program. So four years ago, we started an online masters degree program, very similar curriculum to the other two programs, same degree. And that takes about two years too, although students vary in terms of if they take one course at a time or two course at a time. But that's available to students online, there's about 160 students in that program now. There's three different starting points throughout the course of the year. The students there are very experienced. The faculty love teaching in it, because they can engage so much with working professionals. I think the average age is 36. So it's a really great experience for those students. They don't have to quit their job, they don't have to move and they can participate in the degree program. >> In terms of the types of people that are attracted to the three programs, are they any different? >> Yeah, they're very different, each of the programs serves a different market. The full-time program, the demographics are younger, a lot about half of the students are directly out of undergraduate programs. And as I mentioned they're very much international. The part-time program is very local, so they are more experienced, maybe the average is about late 20s to 30. And they are very much Chicago based. And then the online program, as I mentioned, more experienced students from all over the country. Some of them even from overseas, very few of them, but the key is that they are much more experienced. And we expect students to have more full-time working experience to be in that program. >> In addition to these great options in terms of education. One of the other things we do at Northwestern and the Medill IMC program. Is we have research groups made up of faculty that are really exploring the cutting edge of marketing today. And the neat part is you can follow them online and learn a lot about what's going on for the future of marketing through these groups. Could you tell us a little bit about the research groups? >> Yeah, so we have a very strong faculty, both in terms of academics, as well as former industry professionals. And those folks collaborated into quite a bit of research. I do think if you count us as an advertising department, we'll probably the number one research producing, advertising department in the country and probably the world. So what we've done is, because we have so much research going on. Is we have created some formalized initiatives to kinda encapsulate that research and move it forward. We have a fully funded research center called the Spiegel Center and that's for digital and database marketing. So they do very innovative research to start with customer databases, but then use it a lot of information on media usage. Particularly social media and digital media and various other kinds of devices and platforms. Quite a bit of research on how consumers engage with brands through these different kinds of technologies and devices. >> One of the things I like about Spiegel Research is it's very real world. In fact, Tom Hollinger, Professor Hollinger went when we wanted to go see what was going on with crisis management. And in terms of social walls, we send him to Taco Bell because he had the ins there. And the thing I like is his group which is Spiegel Research is always looking for practical applications. Of the things that we stress here in the Medill IMC program to show people how they can begin to use them all the time. >> Yeah, that's correct. And they do a great deal of partnering with organizations and the organizations provide data to the Spiegel Center. And so the people working on the projects are working with real data about real consumers and real brands. It's a very hands on and applied type of research. >> What other sorts of groups are there? >> So we have an applied neuromarketing group. We do that in collaboration with faculty at Kellogg and the medical school at Northwestern. And that's really about neuroscience and how it relates to things like consumer decision making, brand choice, advertising response, media effects. We've looked at things such as the impact of music on emotions and that very much relates to advertising and music and advertising. So that's a very innovative and a very exciting area. And it's a different kind of research than most other research. It's not based on questions,it's not based on interviewing people, it's really a physiological response metric. Which is a really booming area in academic research these days. >> What are some other groups? >> So then we have the Omni Channel Initiative which is about the multi-channel marketing and various technologies. Through much of your work, IBM has partnered with us and given us a great deal of software. So our faculty and students have access to these software tools from all these companies that IBM has purchased over the years, as well as their own software. So that's just a great experience for our students to learn these tools and hands on tools about online marketing, multi channel marketing, these digital media and social media platforms. >> One of the other things that teaching a whole lot is retailing, we have a group on that? >> Yes, so a lot of our faculty are doing work, are doing research on retail related things. So we partnered with an outside organization called Platt Retail Institute to form what we're calling the Retail Analytics Council. So it's about research on retail and now we use that word somewhat broadly to include e-commerce. But it's really about data and technology and analytics for retail buying behaviors. And some of it's about technologies at the point of purchase. Some of it's about data coming from mobile devices people are using in stores and how they are connecting. And a whole experience of online and offline integration of the consumer experience in terms of shopping behavior. >> Okay, is that all the groups or is there one more? >> One more is just about the launch, it's in partnership with Performix and it's called the Intent Lab. And that's really about studying consumers' digital media experiences on the pathway to purchase. We actually have a big study we're just about to launch with a major department store. Where we're gonna have a lab and people are gonna be exposed to various experimental treatments of digital content. Advertisings, promotions, reviews, all kinds of information like that. And then we will track how they navigate through those digital environments. And purchase or don't purchase and understand why they may or may not make purchases. >> For our participants, we're going to have in their toolkits links to all the different programs that you talked about. As well as each of the research groups, so they could follow them as they're doing their cutting-edge work. Is there anything else we're doing here in the Medill IMC program? To help people get educated about social and other sorts of team groups. >> Well, we're doing exactly what you've done here with this MOOC and we have a few other such MOOCs that I should mention. We have a MOOC on leadership, which is really across several schools at Northwestern. Coming at leadership from multiple perspectives, putting together a MOOC on leadership for business leaders and professionals. There's also a MOOC on content strategy, this is a really big topic these days. Content strategy, native advertising, content marketing goes by various names, but an awful lot of emphasis on that. So we have a MOOC on content strategy taught by multiple faculty from the Medill. And then we have a MOOC on understanding media through Google. So it's really about how Google has transformed the media landscape. The advertising landscape, how ads are purchased and sold and really other companies like Google. But through the lens of a company like Google, how the media landscape has been changing driven by technology. >> Oh, that's super. And all of those are on Coursera. And the participants can look under Medill or Northwestern. To see all the different MOOCs and MOOC specializations that we've created. >> Yes, they're all available and the MOOCs are a great way to learn more very quickly. >> Frank, thank you so much for giving us this overview of Medill IMC. And the many educational options that our participants can get involved in. >> Thank you very much for having me. [MUSIC]
