Oxford Brookes Marketing students spend a day at global advertising agency

Oxford Brookes Marketing students experienced an exclusive open day and workshop at VCCP London - Campaign Magazine’s Top UK Advertising Agency 2022.

VCCP’s recent clients include Cadbury, O2, Virgin Media, Comparethemarket, Walkers, and Domino's Pizza. 

The event was organised by Oxford Brookes Marketing alumnus, Archie Tollast, a business director at VCCP, and a team of Oxford Brookes academics (Bjoern Asmussen, Valentina Bevilacqua, Rocco Porreca, and Segar Reddy). The aim was to offer a group of students an immersive experience in the marketing communications industry. Out of over 50 applications from Oxford Brookes undergraduate and postgraduate students, 24 were selected to take part. 
 
Following a brief introduction to the agency’s departments the students learned about some of the latest trends related to AI (Artificial Intelligence) in the marketing communications industry. VCCP recently founded its own AI agency, fAIth, and students were shown examples of that work for brands such as Doritos and Virgin Media.

Afterwards, the students were briefed for a workshop. During the workshop, the students had to work in small groups and develop an advertising campaign for one of VCCP's biggest clients.

The students then presented their ideas to some of the agency professionals and received comprehensive and constructive feedback.

Archie took lots of the students’ original and funny ideas when they gave their presentations. 

The day at VCCP was finished off with a presentation on the agency’s graduate scheme, and how to get into the advertising industry more generally. Students stayed on to discuss potential job opportunities in more detail. 

MSc Marketing and Brand Management student, Najla Al Baiti commented: “Having the opportunity to visit a leading creative agency in my first two weeks at Brookes was exciting. We got to visit an ad agency that created some of the UK's most famous campaigns and got to hear first-hand about the thought processes that went behind them. As a marketing student, I would say that this experience was invaluable, my long term career goal is to continue to build myself in the field of marketing, and I found this trip as an incredible opportunity toward achieving that goal”.

Fellow MSc Marketing and Brand Management student, Khaled Ahmed Awad Hassan added: “It was a pleasure to be one of the students who were chosen to attend the VCCP London open day.

“I have seen how the advertising industry is much more complicated than I used to think with its challenges and high competition. I have learned many creative techniques from the VCCP team and last but not least, learning about the use of Artificial Intelligence in marketing communication was an extremely useful session.”

The day was made possible by a large number of colleagues and Archie, an Oxford Brookes graduate success story who has been working successfully in advertising for more than 10 years.