Trends in Digital Marketing: When University Teaching Turns into a High-Intensity Industry Conference

Forget everything you associate with traditional lectures. What if a university course felt like a top-tier marketing conference where global experts share insights you can apply the next morning at work?

At NEWTON University, a course called Trends in Digital Marketing has been designed to challenge the conventional idea of higher education. Instead of passive learning, students step into an environment that mirrors the pace, pressure, and relevance of real industry practice.

From lectures to keynote stages

When designing this semester, the goal was clear. Give students direct access to real-world expertise, current industry thinking, and practical skills that are immediately usable in professional life.

Rather than standard lectures, the course is built around keynote talks delivered by leading professionals from digital marketing, e-commerce, and technology. These sessions are recorded in a podcast-style studio environment, making them accessible to both full-time and part-time students in identical quality.

The result is not theoretical distance, but immediate proximity to the people shaping the industry right now.

Ninety minutes of concentrated industry knowledge

In most conferences, top speakers are given a limited window. Often just a few minutes, sometimes up to twenty, to deliver their key ideas.

In this course, the format is different. Each guest speaker has up to 90 minutes. That creates space for depth, context, and discussion that goes far beyond surface-level trends.

Students are not just exposed to ideas. They can question them, unpack them, and connect them to real business problems.

This year’s lineup included some of the most relevant voices in the Czech and Slovak digital ecosystem:

Martina Vaculíková (Head of Social Media, Fragile) explored how social media behaviour is shifting. She focused on the return to authenticity, smaller communities, and nostalgia in an AI-saturated digital world.

Jakub Fiala (Retail Industry Head, Google) brought an insider perspective from one of the world’s largest technology companies. He focused on the evolution of search, retail media, and the future of digital transformation in commerce.

Gabriela Keprtová (Programmatic Team Lead, Proficio) introduced students to the complex world of programmatic advertising and real-time bidding, showing how digital inventory is bought and optimised at scale.

Adam Pešek and Miloš Uldrich (Seznam.cz) broke down native advertising, user identity in digital environments, and methods for measuring brand impact through brand lift studies.

Dušan Smoljak (COO, Acomware) addressed one of the most transformative topics in marketing today, the practical use of large language models and AI in everyday marketing operations.

From PR to AI and the future of video advertising

Continuing the speaker lineup, the course moved deeper into areas that are currently reshaping how brands communicate and compete.

Hana Křenková (COO & Account Director, Adison) opened up the world of online PR and crisis communication in a digital environment where reputations can change within minutes and timing is everything.

Petr Srna (CEO, WOO) focused on influencer marketing as a core part of the modern marketing mix. He explained how campaigns are structured, measured, and why creator partnerships have become a standard rather than an experiment.

Lucie Mifková (Head of Media, Pickerly) guided students through the fast-growing field of video advertising. From YouTube ecosystems to Connected TV, she showed how video inventory is expanding across platforms and devices.

No fictional assignments. Real business briefs only.

A key innovation in the course was the complete replacement of traditional seminar papers.

Instead of theoretical essays, students worked on a real-world assignment:
 Design an actionable TikTok content strategy for Motorola in the Czech and Slovak markets.

The brief required students to respond to current digital trends and actively integrate generative AI into their creative process.

This shift fundamentally changed the nature of the assignment. It was no longer about describing marketing principles. It was about applying them under realistic constraints.

When theory meets reality in final presentations

The final project defenses revealed a level of practical execution that is rarely seen in academic settings.

Students did not present static slides. They brought video concepts, campaign scenarios, and in some cases even animatics supported by AI-generated voiceovers.

At the same time, a clear challenge emerged. Some teams relied too heavily on artificial intelligence, letting it generate ideas without sufficient human input, originality, or brand understanding.

This created a valuable tension between efficiency and authenticity, between automation and strategic thinking.

Learning through feedback and real industry pressure

The evaluation process was not limited to academic grading. It included direct feedback from Karel Dörner, Marketing Manager at Motorola.

This interaction with a real brand representative created a high-pressure but highly realistic learning environment.

Students experienced what it means to defend creative decisions in front of a global brand and to iterate based on professional feedback.

Most importantly, they saw how fast ideas evolve once they are exposed to real-world constraints.

When the best ideas move beyond the classroom

For top-performing teams, the project did not end with academic evaluation.

The most creative and strategically strong concepts have the potential to be produced and published on Motorola CZ and SK TikTok channels.

In other words, student work is not only assessed. It can become part of real brand communication.

And for those students, the classroom becomes the starting point of something much larger.

Author: Martin Peška, founder and CEO of the Pickerly agency, and course guarantor of Trends in Digital Marketing.