Professor Tanja Lanza teaches in the Department of Business Administration at JCU. After working for 12 years in large corporations and independent creative marketing agencies in Italy, she brought her industry experience to JCU’s Digital Marketing course. Besides teaching, she has been working independently as a strategic consultant since 2022, and in July 2025, she co-founded Natural Digital Creatives studio, together with a former student.
Tell us about your background.
I'm half Italian, half Slovenian. I was born in Ljubljana but did all my schooling in Italy. My family is very international. Since a very young age, I have learned that diversity means complexity and richness at the same time. I know five languages. I'm bilingual since birth and I also speak Croatian, English, and French.
I have always traveled and moved a lot. I moved to Trieste for my bachelor's degree and to Rome for my master's degree. I fell in love with this city, its people, the weather, and the sea. Even though Rome might seem chaotic, hot, and messy to someone from the north, I learned how to manage its complexity.
What brought you to JCU?
I was working at one of the biggest Italian marketing agencies when Professor Riccardo Maiolini invited me to give a guest lecture in his class. By that point, I had already given a few lectures at Bocconi and the Sole 24 Ore Master’s programs, and this vocation for teaching had started to take shape inside me, though I couldn’t fully see it yet.
At the end of 2019, I interviewed for a teaching position at JCU, and in 2020 I taught my first course as a Digital Marketing Adjunct Professor, a course I still teach to this day. From there, I fell absolutely in love with what I was doing. At the time, I was still working in the corporate world, but over time, the desire to bring academia and the professional world together grew stronger until it became my daily mission. In recent years, I decided to become an independent professional, fully dedicating myself to this mission, both in academia and as a consultant, across all levels of education, from bachelor’s to executive programs. I believe that actions express our priorities, and that you have to genuinely dedicate yourself to something if you want to see it grow and bloom.
What is your teaching style? How do make your classes interesting for students?
I believe there are three things that make my classes memorable. First of all, I try to approach marketing from different angles. I stay up late at night looking for new trends, so that I can come to class the next morning and tell students about my discoveries. I think having fun and engaging students by exploring current trends and new marketing insights is important. I try to let my students experience concepts first, and only then do I introduce the frameworks. Hybrid teaching is my methodology: blending marketing frameworks adapted to modern scenarios, creativity and design tools, and live experiences.
You recently set up a marketing agency called "Natural Digital Creatives" with a former student of yours. Tell us about it.
Natural Digital Creatives is a marketing studio that helps businesses develop authentic brand identities, marketing strategies, and visual communication through consulting, design, and tailored business support.
It's still a work in progress. My business partner, who was my very first student, is a true digital nomad. She is only 27 and has already visited 52 countries, which is one of the reasons our company works remotely. Since my specialty is Experience Marketing, we combine our knowledge to create a unique experience for our clients.
People like me usually partner with someone with more experience, but the exciting part about partnering with a young person is their perspective. Being from another generation, she sees the world through different lenses than I do. I bring professional experience, and she brings a fresh look and expertise. Most of our clients come through my network, because I worked in agencies and different industries. I always handle the strategy part, and she works more on visual branding.
What are the most in-demand skills in today's marketing industry?
Today, people want money, speed, and reputation. This is what you really must sell and market. Not products or services, but the ability to know what humans are really looking for. You need to be a human marketer.
You also need to master public speaking. Today, both personal brands and even very big companies need to be heard. If you are not a skillful storyteller, people will not listen to you, regardless of what you are trying to market. As humans, we've always been storytellers. Sitting around the fireplace, telling stories. The difference is that now more people are listening, and they can react to that story.
Nowadays, with such dominant technology that collects every piece of information and puts it together, it’s fundamental that you drive the narrative. You need to be the most interesting voice of your brand. That's why I love teaching Digital Marketing and Integrated Marketing Communications — they go well together.
What advice would you give to students who are seeking a career in marketing?
Nowadays, marketing is really influenced by culture. If you don't understand what's going on from a cultural point of view, you cannot really understand the market. I was asked a difficult question at the end of the semester. One student came to me and asked how to stay up to date with current marketing trends. You need to have more than one source of information. You cannot understand marketing by just reading marketing papers or marketing books. You need to watch tennis and see the brands at Wimbledon. You need to go on a trip and see the advertising around you. You should know about geopolitics and the forces that are subtly leading the markets. Explore other languages and, see how other parts of the world do marketing and advertising. Be a citizen of the world, if you want to be a marketer.
The biggest advice I can give is this — marketing is everywhere. Keep your eyes open and look at the world from different angles, with different lenses beyond just textbooks.
One more thing. I've always been a fan of technology, which is why I specialized in digital marketing after I finished my studies. But at the same time, I’m a big fan of analog formats. I always try to remind my students that technology is a part of our everyday life and the future of our profession, but a good marketer still needs to know which parts should stay non-digital.
AI will be all about process optimization, but we are also returning to in-person marketing. That’s the next big thing. And when all brands start offering “offline” experiences, what will they do to differentiate themselves? The real difference won’t come from which AI model you use, or which subscription plan you have, or which app you choose. It will come from the knowledge architecture you build around it - how you organize your work, your content, your ideas, your calls, and your numbers into a map that AI can actually navigate. Soon the battle won’t be about who uses AI better, but about who has built the best structure around it and who can turn that into memorable, human experiences offline.
