IDM creates council of the profession's finest for new education push
Released 18 July 2003: The IDM has created a council of some of the profession's best known and highly regarded professionals to help expand and drive its education programme. Its aim is to help the institute in its mission to attract the UK's brightest graduates to a career in direct and interactive marketing.
The Head of Marcoms at Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, the Chief Executive of dunnhumby and the Managing Partner of Harrison Troughton Wunderman were among those who attended the inaugural meeting of the new Education Council last week.
The meeting reviewed the IDM's current efforts which have placed its education modules in 71 out of the 100 universities that teach direct marketing, achieved over 128,000 hits to the new careers website Think Direct and received entries from over 1,200 university students this year for the student competition.
A number of issues raised at the meeting including direct marketing's increasing importance as a business discipline, the variety of skills and knowledge sets required by the profession in the short and long term and helping students through the job application process.
Director of Graduate Services at the IDM, Kate Wilkinson comments, "We had an incredibly warm response from everyone who was invited to join this council. Now that we have all met I am pleased to report that everyone at the table is passionately committed to making the IDM Education Programme work for the good of the profession at large. There were a number of issues raised during our discussions which in turn elicited some genuinely useful suggestions and creative solutions, all of which will be explored as we develop the new education strategy."
Over the coming months, supported by the Education Council, a new education strategy will be formulated.
Notes to Editors
For more information contact Ruth Stone on 020 8614 0216 (direct line), 07788 417 109 (mobile) or e-mail ruth@orchidpr.co.uk.
