Being a marketing manager in AIESEC during the pandemic by Vladislav Gomankov

AIESEC is the international student-run organisation, which was found after the WW 2 to unite European countries through international volunteer programmes. The main goal of the organisation is to implement intercultural exchange of students to show them the difference of the cultures and people. For me personally, AIESEC became a place of working and studying in the field I want to develop professionally- marketing.

My experience as the marketing manager began in October 2019. The processes were going well back then. The lecture bashes, info stands, events and conferences were organised by B2C team. When 2020 started, my task was to create and then implement marketing strategy for the new year to attract new customers. The campaign included offline and online marketing events, on a par with lecture bashes, info stands, direct in indirect marketing. However, the storm of international crises and problems began.

First, marketing campaign had to move only in online field. That is why AIESEC’s social media platform become the only opportunity to advertise the organisation and grab new customers’ attention. I started to point the importance of online platforms right away. With the help of my colleagues, we created a series of marketing campaigns in Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. What we did not expect, is the closure of European and international borders, and, as a consequence- the inability to sell the organisation’s main product during the spring peak.

Our team had several months of unknown situation and straggles. However, in autumn 2020 we came up with the new idea! The idea was to implement online events not only to find new customers but to attract the youth’s attention to global problems such as global warming or even COVID-19. The planning of those online events, budgeting, and advertising were valuable and interesting experience. Because of the pandemic situation I was forced to learn how to use new application and programmes for planning. Nevertheless, the usual digital platform such as Google docs, Zoom, Teams, Canva were very helpful. During the training I learned how to use Facebook Ads and Google Ads, SEM and SEO, and Facebook pixel.

To sum up, the practical training in a big company such AIESEC taught how to manage big team, how to organise and plan properly and how to implement different tasks at the same time and stay focuses. Another important outcome of my practical training is creating marketing campaigns and strategies, customer personas and ads. Also, I consider my experience of working during the unusual pandemic situation as a great value, since I learned how to create something new and unusual for the organisation to stay in touch with the world and still be able to attract customers and sell products. That was a great chance to learn myself and what can I do being under the stress and unknown situations. And now I know for sure- I can create something new and pass any obstacle on the way of my professional path.

Author: Vladislav Gomankov