To provide hands-on learning opportunities to students at the IFTM Tourism Retail and Marketing Management Programme, an industrial project was designed to help a newly established food and beverage company called Sol Garden. By applying their visual merchandising knowledge, students produced 15 seconds and 30 seconds social media styled videos and uploaded on four social media platforms: Instagram, Facebook, Little Red Book and Douyin.

These videos aim to highlight the target market, the core message, the hook, the selected merchandise, store setup, visual merchandising, lighting and sound as part of their design. The videos were assessed to evaluate the effectiveness of their design and selected social media platforms, creating a fruitful learning opportunity for the students. The co-founder of Sol Garden, Mr. Ernesto Rodrigues César was particularly grateful for this project because IFTM students produced 30 videos in total and generated tens of thousands of video views and engagement via multiple platforms.

The course leader Dr. Fernando Lourenço contends that hands-on learning approaches connected to real-world situations offer students quality learning opportunities that go beyond classroom-based lecture and textbooks.