By Jordan Gillen
De Montfort University students will be given a fantastic opportunity to do some invaluable networking and meet Lord Alan Sugar himself at The Festival of Marketing in London next week.
The award-winning festival will take place over two days from November 11-12, where some of the industry’s biggest and richest names will be making an appearance.
DMU marketing student Cody Kostbar, is an ambassador for the festival and has helped arrange the trip for students to travel down for one day to take part in this incredible experience.
He said: “It’s a big marketing convention down in London. They’ve got speakers from all over the industry including Monica Lewinsky and Chris Hadfield, the guy who tweeted from the International Space Station. It’s two days of conventions, seminars and award ceremonies.”
DMU students were offered a limited number of tickets, which cost just £27 including travel to and from London, representing a massive coup considering standard festival passes’ are on sale for £995.
Cody explained why DMU got tickets so cheap, he said: “It’s because they’re kinda conditional, it’s not just admission it’s a half day work and half day admission. I don’t think it would’ve worked if we had just said ‘Hey can we come down for the day?’”
It will not be just a cheap day out then for students, as for half of the day they will be working at the festival, directing lost people to the correct seminar or convention.
Cody said: “To get the free entry, what we’re doing is a half day split. One half is a normal day of work, where you’ll be pointing people in the right direction. The other half when you’re not working you can just go sit in on any seminars you want.”
Despite only being the second year that DMU have attended the event, Cody has high hopes that it may become a recurring event, which can be something that will only benefit students.
He said: “We’ve got to the point now where we’ve got contacts working at the festival so there’s a chance of it turning into a recurring event. In a perfect world this will be a mix of networking and talking to the people running around and learning from the industry experts speaking.”
Cody is an international student, who has transferred here from New York to complete his third year, so it will be extra interesting for him.
He said: “It’ll be cool having a lot of big English companies coming in and talking because when you’re born and raised in the States, it’s a lot more New York City or Silicon Valley focussed whereas here it’s much more EU focussed.”
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