Emma Connor
What happens when the world of beauty influencers, algorithmic content trends, and big-brand campaign briefs collides with postgraduate marketing education? For our MSc Digital Marketing Management cohort, it became a real-world assignment with TikTok at the centre.
This blog explores the design and delivery of a live, industry-facing assessment co-created created in partnership with Judit Plein, who held the role of Campaign & Strategy Manager at TikTok Shop during the collaboration. Working at the intersection of academic rigour and fast-moving digital culture, this collaboration invited students to reimagine what it means to build beauty brands in a platform-first world.
From Coursework to Creator Culture
The starting point was simple: how do we help students apply their learning to something current, creative, and commercially relevant? TikTok’s rise as a dominant force in digital marketing is now influencing 80% of beauty buyers and accounting for one product sold every second in the UK; transforming how younger audiences discover and engage with brands (Loyst, 2024).
Our students weren’t just analysing this shift. They were planning strategies for it.
The assignment brief challenged students to audit a beauty brand’s TikTok Shop presence, such as the likes of Made By Mitchell, PLouise and more. Students were challenged to evaluate the success of a recent live shopping campaign and build an omnichannel plan for the next quarter. The twist? The data came from TikTok Shop’s internal campaign dashboards. The platform nurtures campaign partnerships, live selling, and creator-led commerce (Business Insider, 2024) and this was mirrored in the assignment.
Why Beauty? Why Now?
The beauty sector thrives on no click, platform-first marketing. It thrives on aesthetic trends, visual storytelling, influencer credibility, and rapid cycles of consumer engagement. TikTok has accelerated this, turning product discovery into performance. Whether it’s #GRWM clips, “dupes” gone viral, or creators reviewing products mid-makeup routine, beauty brands are no longer just competing in store; they’re competing in the scroll.
By focusing the assignment on this category, we offered students something more than case studies. We gave them a live brief that reflected what agencies and brands are actually navigating.
The Role of Authentic Assessment
Authentic Assessment is a term that’s often discussed, but harder to deliver meaningfully. Authentic assessment involves evaluating students’ learning through tasks that reflect real-world scenarios, allowing them to apply their knowledge and skills in relevant and practical contexts (Swaffield, 2011). In this case, the authenticity came from multiple touchpoints: a genuine client collaboration, access to campaign data, and an assessment task that mirrored agency workflows. This wasn’t about ticking boxes. It was about rewarding students in task-based assessment (Black, 2007). Industry and academia worked together to create an assessment for students that prepares them for the kind of work they’ll be expected to produce from day one in industry roles.
The feedback we received from students confirmed the impact. Many spoke of how the module affirmed their desire to work in digital marketing. Students also valued the creative freedom, the exposure to platform-specific insights, and the sense that their ideas might actually matter in a real-world context.
This is aligned with calls for marketing educators to rethink how students are prepared for the technology-enabled workforce (Grewal et al., 2024) and to close the gap between what is taught in classrooms and what is expected by industry (Ye et al., 2023).
Co-creating with Industry
The relationship with TikTok wasn’t a one-off guest speaker or logo on a slide. It was an active collaboration, built through conversation, curiosity, and shared commitment to student experience. The Campaign & Strategy Manager worked with us at the time of the collaboration to shape the brief, clarify expectations, and review the final project outcomes. This co-creation helped us avoid the trap of superficial industry involvement and focus instead on meaningful partnership.
Importantly, the project also gave TikTok a window into how academic programmes are preparing students for digital-first roles and how those students are thinking critically about the platforms themselves. As Crittenden (2024) notes, staying current with the rapid growth of social media marketing remains a persistent challenge for both academia and industry.
Lessons Learned and Looking Ahead
• Students respond to tasks that feel current, real, and creative; especially when grounded in platforms like TikTok, which now drives 44% of UK in-app shopping activity (TikTok Newsroom, 2024).
• Industry wants graduates who understand platforms not just as users, but as strategic thinkers.
• Academic rigour and digital agility aren’t opposites. They can, and should, inform one another.
We must continue to transform and reevaluate marketing topics to meet a changing marketplace (Kumar, 2018). The role of teachers, too, is evolving. As Phillips (2023) puts it, “The future of education is agile, innovative, and fun.”
Moreover, partnerships like this highlight the shared value between universities and business. As Times Higher Education (2025) writes, academia and industry need each other to realise the economic and societal impact of innovation.
There’s still more to explore. How do we scale this kind of work without losing the quality of engagement? What support do educators need to keep pace with platform changes? How might similar models be adapted across different programme levels or subject areas?
These are questions I’m keen to continue exploring and not just in my own modules, but as part of wider conversations about curriculum design in marketing and business education.
References
Business Insider. (2024). ‘A top TikTok shopping exec explains its US growth strategy.‘ 25 October. Available at: https://www.businessinsider.com/tiktok-shop-exec-hopes-americans-embrace-holiday-live-shopping-2024-10. (Accessed 16 July 2025).
Crittenden, V. L. (2024). ‘What Is the Future of Marketing Education?’ Journal of Marketing Education, 46(1), 3-5. https://doi.org/10.1177/02734753231220115
Grewal, D., Guha, A., Beccacece Satornino, C., & Becker, M. (2024). ‘The Future of Marketing and Marketing Education,’ Journal of Marketing Education, 47(1), 61-77. https://doi.org/10.1177/02734753241269838
Loyst, M. (2024). ‘TikTok and the live shopping revolution.’ The Times, 7 October. Available at: https://www.thetimes.com/business-money/entrepreneurs/article/tiktok-and-the-live-shopping-revolution-enterprise-network-n6z6f9mb0 (Accessed 16 July 2025).
Kumar V. (2018). ‘Transformative marketing: The next 20 years,’ Journal of Marketing, 82(4), 1–12.
Phillips, V. (2023) The Future Of Education Is Agile, Innovative, And Fun Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/vickiphillips/2023/08/01/the-future-of-education-is-agile-innovative-and-fun/?sh=30c8f4ea310a (Accessed 15 June 2025).
Swaffield, S. (2011) ‘Getting to the heart of authentic Assessment for Learning,’ Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 18(4), pp. 433-449doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/0969594X.2011.582838
THE- Times Higher Education. (2025) ‘How to work well with industry.’ Available at: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/spotlight/how-work-well-industry (Accessed 20 June)
TikTok Newsroom. (2024). ‘Social commerce market in the UK projected to more than double to reach £16 billion by 2028.’ [TikTok]. Available at: https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-gb/retail-economics-report (Accessed 6 July 2025).
Ye, C., Kim, Y., & Cho, Y.-N. (2023). ‘Digital Marketing and Analytics Education: A Systematic Review,’ Journal of Marketing Education, 46(1), 32-44. https://doi.org/10.1177/02734753231166414
Emma Connor is the Programme Leader of the MSc Digital Marketing Management and leads final year undergraduate and master’s level marketing modules at Greenwich Business School. Her areas of academic interest are: advertising and marketing communications, digital marketing, and consumer psychology. Emma’s is a Senior Fellow of HE, and her curriculum design is heavily grounded on experiential learning, and she is a passionate advocate for technology enhanced learning, business simulation games and employer led assessment. Emma is pursuing a PhD in consumer behaviour, with a particular focus on advertising strategy, and has presented at the European Marketing Academy. Emma brings practical experience in managing large web projects, search engine marketing, CRM, analytics and is a trained copywriter. Emma is a member of the Digital Marketing Institute and the Institute of Data & Marketing.
Email: ge28@gre.ac.uk
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emma-connor-905aa698/