How Dentsu International Cemented Their Support for Early Talent in 2020

Uploaded

23rd December 2020

Read time

15 minutes

Young female on laptop

Dentsu International’s The Code, opens the doors of the Advertising and PR industry to students from diverse backgrounds, through immersive workshops, work experience opportunities and apprenticeships.

Through these experiences they gain the technical, craft and strategic soft skills required to succeed in the digital marketing industry. They also work on cutting edge marketing briefs from some of Dentsu’s biggest clients, which focuses on their sustainability challenges and opportunities.

Developing Skills with Cadbury

In 2020, The Code launched an online student challenge with a marketing brief from Cadbury. Students from Key Stages 4 -5 were given a sustainability focused marketing challenge for a huge global company. This gave students the chance to develop key employability skills such as working to a brief and putting together a professional pitch.

The Code utilises Connectr’s platform to host their student challenges, so they were equipped to quickly respond to Covid-19 and ensure that students did not miss out on encounters with employers. Dentsu also launched an entire marketing curriculum for students and a digital mentoring scheme, alongside the challenge. Students were able to speak to professionals, with 208 messages sent about their online challenge entries and career journey questions.

The Results

The launch of this programme saw 18,000+ page views over a 2-month period. 238 young people engaged with the challenge, with 31submitting an entry. 12 shortlisted finalists then attended a virtual finale event in September and pitched their entry in front of a senior panel of judges, with a chance to win prizes. All finalists were also offered a mentoring session with a Dentsu or Cadbury employee.

Festive Opportunities

Each year, Dentsu sends holiday cards to its clients across the world to express appreciation for the relationship and well wishes for the year ahead. This year, Wendy Clark, Global CEO of Dentsu International extended the invite to students from The Code, the global social impact programme, to create the 2020 holiday cards.

Finalists of The Code holiday card competition won a development and design session with Sakura Martin, Dentsu’s Brand Manager, with three winners being sent out to clients around the world.

Do you know a young person whose creativity could be sparked? Start their learning journey today on our platform. The next online challenge will launch from January 2021.