Future marketing specialists can start their career specializing in the latest technologies thanks to a new AR marketing course offered by Brock University in Canada. The St. Catherines (Ontario) university has recently enlisted professor Joachim Scholz, who spent the last six years researching and teaching augmented reality at California Polytechnic State University.
Why the Need for an AR Marketing Course?
For professor Scholz, there is a real need for this specific course in the academic field. So far, universities are teaching digital marketing with augmented reality as a small component of the overall curriculum. What he proposes to do at the Goodman School of Business at Brock University is to focus exclusively on AR techniques in marketing.
“Students will become marketing experts who are familiar with the types of AR experiences that resonate with customers, and they will gain first-hand experience in how to design an AR marketing initiative,” Scholz said in a press release sent to ARPost.
He further explained that many students and marketers confuse augmented reality with virtual reality. Thus, they need in-depth learning through the AR marketing course to understand the use cases and benefits of AR in business.
What Will Students Learn While Attending the AR Marketing Course?
Professor Scholz structured the course in four specific learning blocks:
- A series of lectures that cover basic concepts of AR, its strategic potential in marketing, AR experience design, and how augmented reality is applied in advertising, retail and experiential marketing;
- Presentations by guest speakers experienced in industry practices;
- Presentations created by the students covering topics related to current AR experiences;
- The core of the course – a project developed by the students for a client.
The AR marketing course launched in May and so far the students have already created a project for a client – a winemaking kit brand.
How the Students Work on the Practice Project
Professor Scholzestablished a collaboration agreement with an AR/VR company, UP360, to help the students develop the client project within the AR marketing course. Harrison Olajos, President and CEO of the company, stated that he is “excited” to offer working space, mentorship and coaching for free to the AR marketing course students.
In their turn, the students worked closely with the client and with other industry partners focusing on:
- Understanding the objectives of the business
- Develop skills in the creative process
- Learning how to create a persuasive pitch
- Build and implement the ideas they’ve come up with.
Who Is Professor Joachim Scholz?
The driving force of the new AR marketing course at Brock University is a reputed researcher and augmented reality marketing professor. His first article on the topic of AR in marketing, published in 2016, won the Business Horizons’ Best Article of the Year award.
He is a member of Adweek’s Academic Council and a teacher of AR marketing since 2015. Professor Scholzalso continues publishing insights and commentaries on the state of AR and digital marketing on various websites and publications.
Speaking of his new AR marketing course at Brock University, he said: “The course has a huge experiential education component to it. Workshops and pitch presentations to industry partners take up most of the second half. Students take the AR knowledge they learn from lectures, guest speakers and research and apply it to a real-world client.”
Plans to Develop the AR Marketing Course
At the moment, professor Scholz’s course is available exclusively online. However, he plans to incorporate it into his syllabus, taught at R3CL facility, an AR/VR reality consumer laboratory equipped with Microsoft HoloLens and other cutting edge technologies.
“Beginning with the R3CL and now this new unique AR marketing course, Brock University and the Goodman School of Business is on a trajectory to become a centre of excellence in the area of AR marketing,” said Dean of the Goodman School of Business at Brock University, Andrew Gaudes. “Goodman students will be among the first to have a solid foundation on how to use AR in marketing strategy.”
