Dr Sayed Elhoushy, Programme Director MSc International Marketing and Business Strategies, reflects on the success of a new Sustainability Marketing module.
In this era of climate change, companies must analyse and exploit the opportunities caused by climate change, as well as learn to mitigate threats. Nothing is more powerful than a well-educated marketer who understands how to employ marketing to drive a more sustainable future.
Driven by our core purpose, our newly developed Sustainability Marketing, Ethics, and CSR module is designed to expose students to the latest advancements in sustainability issues and research in marketing. We want to boost students’ ability to integrate sustainability into the theory and practice of marketing, allowing students to explore different ways of pursuing answers to current sustainability and ethical challenges.
“Speak Sustainability” is a group project led by teams of students as part of their coursework. Students are assigned to a group-based consultancy task to analyse and assess the impact of exiting business. The analysis included a thorough understanding of sustainable performance, challenges, and opportunities using various tools, including the B Impact Assessment; SDG Assessment tools.
During their “Speak Sustinability” presentations, it was great to see students apply backcasting, and TOWS (threats, opportunities, weaknesses, strengths) analysis to “match up” their company’s strengths and opportunities. They were able to form actionable, sustainable directions that consider not only economic but also social and environmental problems and targets.
We were joined by Slyvie Verinder, CEO of Tumblebug Ltd, a circular bioeconomy solution for organic waste, who praised our students commitment to their work. She said “I was impressed with the group of students who presented and a group of students stayed behind until gone 6 to discuss and want involvement so it was, for me a very worthwhile trip as stakeholder engagement, education and behaviour change are my passion!”
Zainab Ajao, Interntional Marketing and Business Strategies MSc student attended the event and said "I thoroughly enjoyed looking through the lens of a sustainability consultant. Having to disect information and communicate it in way that captures an audience, are skills I will take with me on my career journey. "
Her classmate Soba Dakuku Peterside added "A lot of times I believe in "Go big or go home" and 98% of the time it works! I messaged my teammates at about 1:40pm on a random Thursday saying "I am suggesting we do our presentation like a talk show! it was amazing getting the team to come up with their scripts, critiquing run-throughs, and deciding on outfits for our show! I'm glad it went well, and I'm ready to be Panera Bread's next PR exec."