Ogilvy & Mather, one of the largest agencies in the world, wants to teach you how to do what they do.
Ogilvy has partnered with learning marketplace Skillshare to offer a series of classes starting March 21 through April 4 that will cover digital marketing skills across different channels and platforms. The classes will be taught by some of Ogilvy’s top execs like Dan Schreibstein, vp of digital strategy at Social@Ogilvy, who will teach “How to Influence the Influencers.” Robert Davis, executive director of Ogilvy’s advanced video practice and Marcus Andrew, a top strategist on the same team, will both teach “YouTube & Video Strategy.”
“I always felt that Ogilvy had some great workshops and training sessions for internal employees and clients,” explained John Boese, director of digital innovation at Ogilvy. “So why not open up some of these up to the public?”
Boese said that he had taken many Skillshare classes in the past and thought the platform would be a great fit for Ogilvy. Skillshare had approached Ogilvy about working together, “and out of that meeting the idea of a semester of Ogilvy classes was born,” explained Boese.
The classes cost $25 per person, and all proceeds will be donated to Project:2040, a nonprofit organization that helps exceptional minority engineering students get summer internships with Silicon Valley start-ups. The program will launch this summer according to the press release.
The classes are meant for anyone interested in the digital media marketing topics and application of them in the real world, according to Boese. That means college students, grad students, and even small business owners and startups.
“Personally, during my MBA program I would have jumped at the chance to take a class on Youtube strategy from someone who develops it for well-known brands,” said Boese.
Boese says that Ogilvy hopes these classes will be part of a long-running program and that future classes will cover areas like mobile.
Agency as educator? Universities are only slowly but surely adding digital media-related courses to their curricula, so perhaps agency-taught courses will really catch on with college-aged kids hungry to find employment in one of the only constantly growing industries. It could really catch on, because who better to teach students about the constantly changing world of digital media than those who work in it? This could even be a way for agencies to find and cultivate new talent.
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