PRESS RELEASE

Senior leader apprenticeship course to address the UK marketing skills gap

• Chartered Institute of Marketing granted end-point level 7 assessor status
• Cranfield School of Management has launched the first master’s-level Marketing and Leadership programme compatible with the senior leader standard and CIM qualifications
• Follows research that highlights that the UK senior marketing community needs to upskill, as digital skills have fallen amongst heads of department

The Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) announces that businesses across the UK will be able to upskill senior marketers as part of the updated government apprenticeship standard.

To address the UK marketing skills gap and apprenticeship standard, Cranfield University launched the first MSc in Marketing and Leadership, which maps across a range of CIM qualifications and supports the development of senior leaders across the UK.

This course was designed to meet the requirements of the Level 7 Senior Leader apprenticeship standard which was recently redesigned by the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (IFATE). Cranfield is the largest academic provider of the senior management apprenticeship standard with some 700 students already enrolled.

The senior leader level 7 apprenticeship standard comes at a time when research has shown some senior marketers have fallen behind on both core marketing and digital marketing skills. CIM worked with Target Internet to benchmark the digital skills of 9,000 professional marketers and surveyed an additional 1,200 marketing professionals regarding their core marketing skills and training requirements, as part of its Impact of Marketing 2 research. The reports concluded that senior marketers need to upskill themselves in order to keep up with changes in the sector:

• Core marketing skills - required to engage the board are waning, with almost half of marketers (44%) are finding it difficult to keep up at a time of dramatic transformation in the sector, while one third have received no training for over two years
• Digital skills - among heads of department have fallen across many digital disciplines, most dramatically in areas such as SEO. Key digital skills like social and usability are becoming more complex, creating a knowledge gap

Discussing the announcement, Maggie Jones, Director of Qualifications and Partnerships at CIM said: “The news that businesses can now access apprenticeship funding to support marketers wherever they are on their career journey; from the marketing basics all the way to senior decision-makers is good news.”

“At CIM we believe in the importance of professional marketing training to ensure consistency and quality in the standard of marketing at all levels. Our partnership with Cranfield University will help further professionalise the marketing industry driving excellence at the highest level of business.”

Vasilis Theoharakis, Professor of Strategic Marketing and Director of the MSc in Marketing and Leadership at Cranfield University said: “We are excited about the launch of first master’s-level senior leader marketing apprenticeship in the UK. The response from both individuals and organisations has been very positive. Senior marketers are keen to upskill themselves to be able to deliver strategic advice that cuts across the enterprise, while organisations are keen to use the course to build better, more efficient teams and leaders who have a broad understanding of not just marketing but how the board thinks and operates.”

CIM awarded end-point assessor status     

Having worked on the development of the marketing apprenticeships since its inception, The Chartered Institute of Marketing has received independent end-point assessor organisation (EPAO) status. By becoming an EPAO, CIM is responsible for assessing apprentices at the end of their course. As the world’s leading professional body for marketing CIM is the ideal organisation to oversee consistency in the assessment of apprenticeships.

If you would like to learn more or upskill your senior marketing staff click here

Or to find out more about the Marketing and Leadership MSc offered by Cranfield School of Management click here

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Notes to editors

• To learn more or to take the digital benchmark test: https://www.targetinternet.com/benchmark-digital-marketing-skills-assessment/
• To read the last report in CIM’s Impact of Marketing series: https://www.cim.co.uk/exchange/thought-leadership/the-impact-of-marketing-digital-vision-living-on-the-cutting-edge/
  
  

For media enquiries
For further information please contact the Chartered Institute of Marketing press office at Good Relations on CIMTeam@goodrelations.co.uk

For CIM enquiries
James Delves
CIM Head of PR and External Engagement
james.delves@cim.co.uk

About CIM:
For over 100 years, CIM has supported the marketing sector. With over 20,000 members in more than 100 countries, CIM strives for business leaders and opinion formers to recognise the positive contribution professional marketing can bring to their organisations, the economy and wider society. We support, develop and represent marketers, organisations and the profession all over the world. Our ability to award Chartered Marketer status recognises a marketer’s commitment to staying current and abiding by a professional Code of Conduct. While our diverse range of training courses and world-renowned qualifications, enable modern marketers to thrive in their roles and deliver long-term success for businesses.

About Cranfield School of Management:
Cranfield is a specialist postgraduate university that is a global leader for education and transformational research in technology and management.

Cranfield School of Management has been a world leader in management education and research for over 50 years, helping individuals and organisations learn and succeed by transforming knowledge into action. We are dedicated to creating responsible management thinking, improving business performance and inspiring the next generation of business leaders. We work to change the lives of our students and executives by encouraging innovation and creative thinking, as well as the drive to succeed and make a real impact on their organisations.

Organisations as diverse as Jaguar Land Rover, BAE Systems, Royal Dutch Shell, L’Oréal, UNICEF and the African Development Bank have benefited from our work, which ranges from management research projects, through staff talent management development on our MBA courses, to customised executive programmes.
 
Cranfield is one of an elite group of Schools worldwide to hold the triple accreditation of: AACSB International (the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business), EQUIS (European Quality Improvement System) and AMBA (the Association of MBAs).
 
In the Times Higher Education/Wall Street Journal World University Rankings 2019, our Finance and Management MSc is ranked second in the UK, fourth in Europe and sixth in the world.
 
Our open and customised executive education programmes are ranked in the top ten in the UK, according to the latest Financial Times survey, and in the top ten in the world for international reach.

Over 8,000 people come to Cranfield each year to benefit from our executive and professional development programmes.

Cranfield School of Management was the first business school in the UK to launch an Executive MBA via the newly created Apprenticeship Levy, run in partnership with Grant Thornton.

www.cranfield.ac.uk/som