Destination Seville for marketing students: a lesson in branding

Students from across the Business School are offered numerous ways to participate both in industry engagement and international experiences. Here student Jami Hall puts the spotlight on her recent Marketing trip to Seville.

As part of the three Marketing MSc courses, we are allowed to choose electives; and one of the elective options that I chose took me to Seville in Spain for a week.

Our group were visiting students at Pablo de Olavide University, taking a course on Country of Origin Branding in Spain. We spent our afternoons on their campus learning from visiting lecturers and working on a group presentation that we would be giving on the afternoon of the last day on how we would bring a Spanish product of our choosing into the UK market.

But when we weren’t in class, the hands-on fun began. We visited the Plaza de España, which is a beautifully constructed building with a man-made river running around it, where we enjoyed free time to soak up the warm weather and sun and admire the gorgeous architecture all around us. We were also able to take a tour through the Seville Cathedral and the Alcazar of Seville, two beautiful and historic structures that gave us a little insight into Seville’s rich and diverse history.

Two of our afternoons were spent visiting local companies in the agri-foods sector – one olive oil hacienda and one international torta (think crispy sugared biscuit) company. Both companies talked us through their history and walked us through their daily operations and let us learn about how they create and ship their products around the world under the Spanish nation branding labels. And the best part came at the end, when we all got to sample the olive oil and tortas!

During our evenings in the city we could do more sight-seeing and watch a live flamenco performance, but much of our free time was spent enjoying the local cuisine. Because in Spain it is customary to eat dinner much later in the evening than we do here in the UK, we would leave campus right around dinner time and hop the subway into town to enjoy as much tapas, paella, gelato, and sangria as our stomachs could hold.

Our week in Seville was non-stop and exciting, but also eye-opening and rewarding. Everyone took something different from the experience and we all left with not only gorgeous photographs and fun memories, but also a much deeper understanding of Spanish culture and of nation branding as a whole.

About Jami Hall

Jami Hall is an MSc Tourism Marketing Management student in the Department of Marketing.