By Remy Raitt

The no-cost, three-month long boot camp was launched in 2014 by Livity Africa in partnership with Google SA and IAB SA. “Digify is a part of a much larger conversation between Google South Africa and Livity Africa MD, Gavin Weale, about the need to see more diverse talent in the industry. They wanted to develop a programme that would solve these issues,” says programme director Sherry Dzinoreva.

She says an early rendition of the Digify course began in the Livity office in the UK but that never really kicked off. Once it was brought to South Africa things moved quickly. Since Digify ZA’s inception last year 60 Digify graduates have completed the course which resulted in each of them finding employment opportunities at agencies and brands across the country. That’s a hundred percent success rate, further proving the clout this course has. Currently on their fifth cohort of students, Dzinoreva says the course continues to be a success because it has answered all the needs that were initially identified.

Weale developed the curriculum to equip the students with all the skills they would need to be able walk into a job and offer value. “We've matched it to the latest key skills that a generalist digital marketing professional would need,” he says. “The curriculum is developed by top industry professionals – originally Sarah Blake – and is updated each cohort, which means it can be responsive to how the industry is moving.”

One of the 60 successful Digify ZA graduates is Gugu Kheswa, who secured a permanent position as a Livity account executive through the programme. “Before the course I had an idea of what I wanted to do but didn’t have the experience,” she says. Kheswa says after her formal training she could not secure interviews and therefore take her career forward. “But now, people take notice of me.” She says the way the programme is structured gave her real-world practical experience. “It grew my confidence in the theoretical knowledge I already had and was a great platform to develop my skills and scope of thinking. I met real world people and the whole industry become more possible and tangible,” she says.

And this is what the course aims to do. What does Weale want every Digify graduate to walk away with? “Real life experience of developing campaigns and strategies or audits and presenting them to real clients and agency people,” he says. “This means they are almost always able to hit the ground running in their jobs once placed, rather than just being interns that need looking after. We want them to walk away being useful to their employers from day one.”

For the last year the course was exclusively run in Johannesburg but later this month the first Cape Town cohort will begin training. This means that Digify will be graduating a minimum of 160 professionals per year. “We worked out with our partners at Google that this could change the diversity of the whole digital marketing industry by around 10% over the next five years - at least,” says Weale. “That's exciting, but so is Digify Bytes, the two-day version of Digify which is aiming to train 48 000 young people by the end of 2016.”

Dzinoreva says Digify Bytes, in partnership with the British High Commission, the British Council and the Rockefeller Foundation, was started in an effort to reach a wider net of people. “It’s aimed at people who may already be studying; there are quite a few young people who aren’t sure what they want to do or how to use their digital skills. So this is a broader approach into an amazing range of opportunities that come through digital marketing,” she says.

“In the two days the students are shown how to apply the theoretical knowledge they learn through their studies to the real world. It also shows them actual career options in the digital marketing space,” she continues.

Dzinoreva says a lot of young people are unaware of the myriad of jobs that are available in the digital sphere, Digify Bytes hopes to clear this up. “You hear so often that there are no jobs available in digital. But digital is a broad term and students often find it intimidating. Digify and Digify Bytes are making this field more accessible to young people who are already, maybe without realising it, using digital platforms all the time,” she says.

Digify Bytes sessions take place throughout Gauteng and the Western Cape. To host a session at your facility contact [email protected].

For more information, visit www.livityafrica.com and livemag.co.za. Alternatively connect with them on Facebook or on Twitter.