ELOA – a Finnish post graduate program
The ELOA project is a post graduate program offered to Finnish students by means of a collaboration between four Finnish universities of applied sciences. The project name is an acronym that translates to ’boosting food export’ and constitutes a 30 ECTS polytechnic level program.The main funder of the project is the Finnish Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. The ELOA program consists of six blocks of themes ranging from basics of the food industry to personal salesmanship and consumer focused product development. ELOA provide students with practical insights on building and implementing strategies for international marketing of food products. More info about the program can be found here.
The program features lectures given by industry experts covering the different areas. In normal years, these lectures are mostly given face-to-face, but also recorded to be added to the lecture library of the ELOA program. As the Covid-19-pandemic made travel impossible for students as well as lecturers, the program coordinators have started to invite lecturers to speak on line through available platforms. This in turn has made recording easier, as this is a normal feature of most video meeting platforms.
Turning a problem into a possibility
As planning started for a block on consumer insights and export to other Nordic markets, Marru Kraft at the Lapland University of Applied Sciences reached out to Moreganic Sourcing AB to inquire about providing such a lecture, planned to be three sessions of 45 minutes each. Johan Cejie at Moreganic saw the potential for development:
”As I was thinking about the request from the Lapland UAS, it struck me that the pandemic has forced pretty much every one to get comfortable with video meetings. Also, people that are usually busy traveling now have a little more space in their calendars. Perhaps these people would agree to share some of their experience?”
As anyone involved in marketing knows, the human attention span is continuously getting shorter and shorter . With the tidal wave of webinars flooding our inboxes, most of us have developed a habit of having lectures and webinars as a background hum. As a response, Zoom offers organizers to track the attendees attention. Look at something else for 30 secs, and the organizer will know!
Johan Cejie continues: ”Well… I thought to myself that it is going to be very challenging to keep the students attention for three hours straight. Introducing new faces and other viewpoints could help.”
As a result Moreganic contacted a few experienced persons and some master students looking at shopper behavior, and they were all keen to contribute.
Delivering insights and inspiration
In the beginning of this week, we delivered three lectures containing one or two short interviews per lecture. Among others Per Rosengren, former sales manager at Saltå Kvarn, was one of the contributors. Mr Rosengren contributed with his experiences on business cultures in the different Nordic markets as well as the internal life of retail chains. Mirea Wolf and Cecilia Melén , master students at Uppsala University, contributed with their innovative model for surveying sustainability oriented consumers.
Marru Kraft, who is organizing this block of the ELOA, was thrilled by the result:
”I’m really happy with the videos supplied by Moreganic. By creative use of the technology, and in a short time, they have been able to provide expertise in a new way. I can’t wait to hear what our students say.”
While we at Moreganic really miss meeting all our friends in real life, the pandemic also provide opportunities for development. This format, sprung out of a problem with traveling, will be part of our offer to our customers.
Let us know if you are interested!