Georgian College students get real-world experience by boosting brands for local businesses

Students at Georgian College in Barrie are getting a taste of real-world marketing experience through the TreeFort program.

It brings clients in from local businesses that have a marketing challenge which ultimately helps boost their brand.

“We match up clients with students that are working on learning, developing, putting together plans and preparations and pitching back to the client their solution to that marketing challenge,” said Alison Durtnall with Georgian College.

“It’s so vital to their experience, a real business situation that they have the opportunity to work on, and then they can put it in their resume and portfolio for when they’re looking for their careers.”

This semester’s students in the TreeFort program said this was a great learning opportunity and feel confident about their next steps following graduation.

“It was a great opportunity to replicate a real-world experience and something we’re going to be doing in the future potentially,” said Michael Marlow, a second-year business marketing student at Georgian College.

So, getting that experience, getting used to it, will be very useful for myself and everyone else in the program for our future careers.”

Over the years, many groups in Barrie have participated. This semester, one of the organizations is Waypoint Centre for Mental Health Care.

Officials told CTV News they were pleased with the outcome and said it was a great experience.

“We want to relaunch our speaker series, and this group was a great resource for us. They did great data analysis, research and picked up some great focuses and topics for us for future ideas for the speaker series, so we are just thrilled,” said Laurene Hilderly with Waypoint Centre for Mental Health Care.

Another organization that previously took part in this program is Youth Haven in Barrie.

“I was so amazed and impressed by the presentations I received. They were able to grasp our needs so well. They understood our challenges, and they responded in a positive way,” said Lucy Gowers, executive director at Youth Haven.

“I found that their ideas were innovative, concise, and clear.”

Both organizations said they would highly recommend the TreeFort program.

Staff at Georgian College said between 30 and 40 students take part each semester, and the project is a big part of the students’ overall grade.