Schulich and the Future of Marketing Institute: A New Era in Management Education
CGI Influencers. Neuromarketing. And Hyper-Personalization.
These are just some of the emerging trends and technological advances transforming marketing.
Closely monitoring and curating information about these latest developments is Schulich’s Future of Marketing Institute (FMI). The Institute is the one of the world’s foremost sources for information and insights on how these trends are changing the way marketing practitioners are building brand loyalty and reaching potential consumers.
In this month’s column, David Rice, Executive Director of FMI and Associate Professor of Marketing, explains how Schulich’s Future of Marketing Institute has established itself as the leading global think-tank promoting research, teaching, and outreach on “future-of-marketing” topics. The Institute’s media channels – everything from a daily digital magazine, podcast and video series to X and LinkedIn profiles – are all growing, thanks in large part to the team of Schulich Master of Marketing students involved in the day-to-day operation of the Institute.
In fact, as you will discover in Professor Rice’s column, the Institute has become an incubator of experiential learning that’s at the cutting edge of marketing practice today.
I encourage you to learn more about our unique Institute and some of the fascinating trends reshaping marketing in the age of digital disruption.
Best,
Detlev Zwick, PhD
Dean, Tanna H. Schulich Chair in Digital Marketing Strategy
Schulich School of Business
Schulich and the Future of Marketing Institute: A New Era in Management Education
The Future of Marketing Institute (FMI) at Schulich is at the forefront of innovation and research in the marketing sector. As a global think-tank, FMI focuses on cutting-edge research, teaching, and outreach on emerging marketing topics including Generative AI (ChatGPT), augmented and virtual reality, Web3, and the Metaverse to name a few.
FMI is helping to break new ground in experiential learning for Schulich students. Every semester, a group of top Master of Marketing students are recruited to help run the day-to-day activities of the Institute. Holding the position of Marketing Specialist, students are responsible for publishing the ‘Future of Marketing Magazine’, a daily digital publication with over 52,000 readers. Students are also in charge of other FMI media platforms including the FMI LinkedIn page, Twitter, Instagram, a podcast series, and a bi-weekly newsletter. Working on these different platforms is a demanding work experience for our students! However, they benefit greatly by overseeing media offerings that garner more than 1.5 million annual impressions.
The world of marketing is changing at a rapid pace due to the quick adoption of ChatGPT and other Generative AI tools. In the past, tasks that could only be done by trained experts can now be accomplished by FMI Specialists. For example, working at the Institute teaches Specialists how to use AI to create original artwork for our articles and posts. Specifically, students have the opportunity to explore leading-edge text-to-image software, including Stable Diffusion, Dall-E, and Midjourney.
To illustrate, FMI Specialists recently explored how AI can be used to understand and develop ‘brand personas’. As an experiential exercise, the Specialists used Generative AI software to envision which animals best represent different brands of automobiles. One of the brands was Porsche, known for its speed, precision, elegance, sleek and aerodynamic looks. ChatGPT chose a ‘Falcon’ as the persona that best represented the brand. Specialists then used Stable Diffusion and created the following Porsche print ad. We think the result is of professional quality and our social media post on the topic led to thousands of impressions on FMI Media.
Marketing Specialists also have the opportunity to conduct a research article on a future-of-marketing topic. Our specialist articles have spanned the gamut of future-of-marketing topics including neuromarketing, virtual reality, holograms, hyper-personalization, the Metaverse, the ‘Internet-of-Senses’, and Generative AI. The FMI team has also ventured into more avant-garde subjects, such as the prospective future of brain-computer interfaces and the idea of ‘advertising in dreams’. While placing advertising in dreams sounds like dystopian science fiction, decoding people’s dreams through technology is emerging as ‘science fact’. How long until Elon Musk’s Brain Computer Interface can do just that? We are proud that the Specialists at FMI produce research of the highest quality and have been mentioned in leading business publications, including Forbes.
The Future of Marketing Institute is flourishing due to industry excitement about Generative AI and new technologies. As the Institute expands its reach into the marketing community, we are able to offer increased opportunities to Schulich students. In January, Schulich will be offering our undergraduate students the first-ever University course on the Future of Marketing. Co-taught by FMI Executive Director David Rice and Associate Director Martin Waxman, the course will develop students’ abilities to reimagine and develop new conceptual frameworks, methodologies, and technologies for future of marketing strategies. While some schools and Universities are banning or limiting the use of ChatGPT, we’re going all in on Generative AI in the future of marketing course. Using AI will be a basic requirement for many of the assignments and projects the students will complete.
At Schulich, we want to train the leaders of tomorrow. Through FMI, we aim to teach our students that the future of marketing lies in the effective combination of humans and technology. By understanding and leveraging this, students can be better prepared to navigate the evolving landscape of marketing.