Nustory project-based learning
Exploration into the use of artificial intelligence for marketing strategy and execution
Why
Marketing has gone through a particularly significant transformation over the last couple of decades, moving to a measurable outcome-based approach, driven largely by digital marketing. As artificial intelligence (AI) technology matures, its application to the marketing function across strategy, planning, and execution opens up the potential to deliver even greater outcomes.
Goal
Help business students understand how AI can improve marketing strategy and execution by working on a consulting project for a non-profit. Students build skills around marketing, consulting, and the application of AI for business, all in a real-world, purpose-driven setting.
The project
A team of 3-5 business students is paired with a non-profit organization, working as consultants to create a digital marketing strategy which is planned, executed, and analyzed. The team will explore the audience, discuss motivators and pain points, and see how generative AI can be used to create digital ads that can be tested in-market. Students will receive guidance along the way from marketing professionals. They will present findings and recommendations based on the results of the campaign.
Phases of the project
| Phase | Task | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| Strategy | Understand the business | Learn value prop, value chain, competitive space and conduct SWOT analysis. |
| Understand the audience | Use interviews to create empathy maps. Use AI to create audience personas. |
|
| Develop a marketing brief | Use design thinking to hone in on motivators and pain points. Use AI to develop keywords for focus. Build a model for prototype testing against different attributes. |
|
| Execution | Create ad copy | Use generative AI to create copy specific to attributes. |
| Create ad visuals | Use generative AI to create imagery specific to attributes. | |
| Launch campaign into market | Determine focus of campaign based on marketing brief and launch campaign on social media platform. | |
| Evaluation | Evaluate results and provide insights | Evaluate results with generative AI to provide insights. |
| Optimize campaign | Based on insights, optimize the campaign, and review performance. | |
| Share outcome-based insights with non-profit | Create final report for non-profit stakeholder that outlines findings and presents recommendations. |
Skills developed
Through this project, students will develop a number of skills:
Marketing strategy: How to understand audience, the competitive space and value propositions
Marketing execution: The importance of a brief, and the creation of marketing content
Consulting: The models used to help pinpoint client challenges and a results-based approach to delivering solutions
Design thinking: The use of the human-centered approach to problem solving and the role of prototyping
AI for business: From the strategic role of the technology through to tactical implementation like prompt engineering
Collaboration: Defining roles and responsibilities, knowledge-sharing and communication
Nustory program support
The Nustory team will provide the following:
- A Single Point Of Contact (SPOC) for the students who will be a marketing leader with experience in delivering outcome-oriented marketing campaigns
- A non-profit organization who will be the main focus for the project (eg. Black Farmers Index): providing a stakeholder, access to audience members, and operational data such as web traffic
- A learning environment to help students understand key aspects of the project, such as marketing strategy, marketing execution, and use of AI tools
- Feedback to the student team at each stage of the project, and especially around the final report
Project timeline
The project can be amended to fit into the student calendar year but is designed to take place across the majority of a semester (roughly ten weeks).
Example timing
| Phase | Task | Timing |
|---|---|---|
| Strategy | Understand the business Understand the audience Develop a marketing brief |
4 weeks |
| Execution | Create ad copy Create ad visuals Launch campaign into market |
3 weeks |
| Evaluation | Evaluate results and provide insights Optimize campaign Share outcome-based insights with non-profit |
3 weeks |
To learn more about this project contact darylp@us.ibm.com.