Creative marketing is a key component of the creative industries which contribute more than £120bn to the UK economy.
Despite its importance to the economy, the UK’s creative industries – including creative marketing – are facing a persistent and growing skills shortage.
In Northamptonshire, however, organisations like Northampton College and Toru Digital are tackling the shortage head on by equipping the next generation of creative marketers with the latest skills.
Northampton College offers courses which help to prepare students for a variety of creative marketing roles, including graphic designers, content creators, social media managers, creative directors, website designers and website developers.
Northampton College Principal Jason Lancaster said: “Creative marketing is vitally important to businesses because it helps them to establish their brand and connect with their target audiences.
“In this digital age, where we’re constantly exposed to thousands of adverts and other media, effective creative marketing helps businesses to stand out from the crowd.
“Yet despite its importance to businesses and the economy the industry is facing a growing skills shortage. We’re determined to help tackle this problem head-on by offering a suite of courses that equip students in Northamptonshire with the latest creative marketing skills.
“As part of this we’re proud to provide students with opportunities to work with leading businesses working at the forefront of the creative industries.”
The college’s industry partners include Northampton-based Toru Digital which acts as a trusted Creative Technology Partner for businesses across a range of industries. Its highly skilled team offer strategy, brand, digital and AI services that provide its clients with creative digital solutions that unlock their potential and solve real-world business challenges.
Over the years Toru Digital, which has been awarded the Investors in People Gold accreditation, has supported Northampton College’s networking events and careers fairs and has provided industry placements for its students.
Managing Director Sean Toru said: “It’s hard for students to break into our industry because so many places only want people with experience. We understand how important it is for them to be able to benefit from industry placements at organisations like ours so they can gain experience that will help them to secure a job in the future.
“We’re also keen to provide industry placements to students because we want to retain talent in our region and do as much as we can to encourage creativity and creative technology. This approach has supported our recruitment strategy which has always been to recruit the right people in terms of cultural fit, aptitude and intelligence.
“Offering industry placements gives us early access to the brightest young talent. We’ve taken on young people straight out of school or university and trained them up quickly and built our team in that way. Indeed, at various stages in our history that was the only way we could grow because of how much senior developers cost.
“Bringing in young people and training them quickly has been a really good way to grow and when you do that well you can build a really special team.”
Northampton College students who have benefitted from Toru Digital’s expertise most recently include Bogdan, who is on the College’s Level 2 IT System Support course.
Sean said: “Bogdan made fantastic progress during his time with us. By the end of his week-long placement with us he had designed and built his own website which was a great achievement in such a short time.
“Along the way, he learned key fundamentals, including HTML, CSS, Git, Figma, and JavaScript. These are the essential building blocks of web development, and it was impressive to see him grasp them all within a week.
“We enjoy working with Northampton College on industry placements because it provides us with information about the students beforehand and its team get in touch during placements to make sure everything is going well.
“Working with Northampton College is a positive experience, and we’d recommend that other employers work with it and its students.”
For more information on Northampton College, or to apply for a course starting this September, visit their website.
Learn more about Toru Digital and its services via their website.
