What your students will be able to do.
For the length of a session, your students run a company’s marketing. Each round takes them from decision to execution, then on to the verdict of the figures, before they start all over again in the next round.
Request a quoteThe skills they practise
Every round, your students climb up to the floor where objectives are chosen and budgets weighed, then come back down to where bids are set, ads written and customers answered.
Deciding
Setting the course, holding the budget, reading the figures and making the call.
- Media plan
Setting and justifying an objective, choosing customers, products and price, then revisiting them round after round.
- Media planAnalytics and market watch
Splitting a budget across channels according to the objective, the results and the competitors’ moves.
- Analytics and market watch
Reading a dashboard and comparing sources.
- Social mediaEmail and WhatsApp
Choosing what to hand over to AI and to what degree, then reading its effects in the results.
Executing
Carrying that course into the tools, one ad after another.
- Meta Ads ManagerSocial media
Choosing which customers to target, then building audiences that resemble them.
- Google AdsCallback requestBusiness profile
Moving on to execution, with keywords, bids, ad copy, a callback request page and a business profile.
- Email and WhatsAppGoogle Ads
Reacting to changes in the market and applying the rules of advertising platforms and messaging apps.
- My websiteMy shopTikTok
Following a customer from one channel to the next, from video to website, from website to in-store collection, from receipt to the next conversation.
By the end of the session
By the final round, your students will have defended an objective with the figures from a brief, split a budget against competitors who never saw them coming, and written ads that were read, graded and sometimes rejected. They will be able to read a dashboard without taking it at its word, say what they are changing and why, and name the decision they would make differently.
Each round also leaves a written trail, from the rationale for the objective and the published content to the decision memo in which the team explains its choices. These texts show what your students have understood as clearly as the figures do.
Who it is for
The game is designed for undergraduate and master’s students, and works in executive education too. You choose the level when you create the session; every team plays at that level, in the same market.
Bachelor’s, years 1 and 2
Discovery level
The tools show more, forecasts stay close to reality and a single twist awaits the teams. The decision memo remains optional.
Bachelor’s year 3 and master’s year 1
Confirmed level
A second twist comes in round 3, forecasts become less reliable and the decision memo counts towards assessment.
Master’s, year 2
Expert level
Forecasts grow more uncertain, ad review gets stricter, and the twists come one after another, one of them aimed at a single team.
Executive education
The level of your choice
The level follows the group rather than the degree, and the rounds take whatever time the participants’ diaries allow.
Module by module
L’atelier fits a specialist course such as digital marketing, the operational marketing of the core curriculum or the business simulation that closes a programme. Each module has its own guide, describing what students do in each round, how to organise the classes and how to assess the teams.
- Digital marketing
- Social media and community management
- AI applied to marketing
- E-commerce
- Data marketing and web analytics
- Marketing fundamentals
- Operational marketing
- Strategic marketing
- Consumer behaviour
- Communication and advertising
- Distribution and merchandising
- Services marketing
- Business simulation
Assessment
You grade the quality of each team’s decisions, not its place in the ranking. Every round, students write a decision memo setting out what they read in their results and what they are changing. At the end of the session, each team hands in a written report and gives a presentation of about ten minutes, drawing on the charts in its report.
The game also suggests a grade out of 100 every round, criterion by criterion, which you can use as a guide. You set the weight of each criterion when you create the session. To assess decisions, we recommend these weights out of 100, performance against the chosen objective 10, budget efficiency 15, content quality 20, targeting relevance 15, reading the KPIs and reacting 30, omnichannel consistency 10.
The final grade is yours. You can add a bonus or a penalty to a round, and a student’s grade can differ from their team’s by two points at most. The session grade exports out of 20. Once the session is over, each student downloads a certificate of participation.
The grid and marking scheme, module by moduleIn class or remotely
The flow is the same in the classroom and remotely, only the length of the rounds changes. A session started in class can carry on remotely.
In class
You close each round when the room is ready. The results appear on the projected screen and you discuss them with the teams. The session follows one of the two class formats.
- Short format. All three rounds in one intensive day.
- Long format. One round per class, over three or four three-hour classes spread across several weeks.
Remotely
Teams have two days for the preparation round, then a week per round. Each round closes on schedule. Teams receive an email when it opens, a reminder before the deadline and another when the results are published. Between rounds, you discuss the results in class or by video call.
Describe your course, its level and its timetable in your demo request.