Digital Communications & Media Lecturer Marcus Gilles traded flying planes for building brands and teaching students to navigate an industry in constant motion

By Natalie Bowers

Marcus Gilles still remembers the looks on passengers’ faces when they’d peek into the flight deck and see him at the controls. “Are you the pilot? How old are you?” they’d ask, surprised to find someone so young in charge of the aircraft.

It was an unusual start to a career that would eventually lead to the front of a Northeastern classroom. But for Gilles (pronounced “Zheel”), the path from aviation to digital marketing strategy makes perfect sense. Both require split-second decision-making, the ability to navigate complex systems, and an understanding that the landscape is always changing.

A Flight Path to Marketing

Gilles’ journey began in New Jersey through Eagle Flight Squadron, a program offering flight lessons to high school students with strong grades. “It was a great way to experience the universe as a teenager,” he recalls. “It shifted my gears into thinking maybe that’s what I wanted to do.”

After high school, he pursued aviation and aeronautical sciences at Daniel Webster College in Nashua, New Hampshire, adding a business degree along the way. While immersed in his college studies, a social media marketing elective caught his attention. “I was like, ‘this is great!’ I wanted to add a third degree,” he says, though the cost kept him focused on his original path.

But timing was not in his favor. When Gilles graduated, the economy was in recession, and high-paying opportunities in aviation were scarce; the length of time from entry-level to a well-paying role felt too long. When someone approached him to lead marketing for a startup company, he took the leap.

“I wanted to switch careers to something more aligned with marketing,” Gilles explains. That first role required him to lead all aspects of marketing, develop multi-channel strategies, create go-to-market plans, and manage everything from content to campaigns. “From there, the development of my marketing career grew.”

Building Expertise Across Seven Companies

Gilles moved to Cambridge and immersed himself in the biopharma and life science sectors. “What drew me to that work was the focus on rare disease.” Driven by his passion for that work Gilles worked at seven different companies within Nestlé Health Sciences’ portfolio, where he managed substantial advertising budgets, focusing on digital ads, display campaigns, and search strategies. “My role there focused on developing innovative strategies for transforming their budget into a strong ROI and quickly growing the customer base,” he says.

At SmartLabs, a company that builds ready-to-use research and development centers for biopharma, Gilles led a marketing team responsible for events, traditional marketing, and advertising, developing a well-rounded body of work that informs his teaching approach.

Throughout his corporate career, he has noticed a pervasive pattern: small teams at promising companies often lack the branding foundations and support needed to compete. “Companies fail to invest enough in their marketing teams, and the foundations to build a clear brand strategy are developed too late to be effective,” he observed.

That gap led him to launch DiActa in 2024, a branding company focused on helping smaller organizations establish strong strategic and visual identities. “Branding is something I teach in my classes, combining strategic direction and strategic expression,” Gilles explains. “I want to help companies that can’t afford traditional agency prices get the foundation they need at a speed that’s currently unavailable in the market.”

From Practitioner to Professor

Teaching, it turns out, had always been part of Gilles’ DNA. “Throughout my career, I’ve done a lot of mentoring, coaching, and educating people to build their capabilities from the ground up,” he says. “I love setting up frameworks for best practices. Long before I saw a classroom as a professor, I was already teaching and influencing in my professional roles. Even outside of work, I find myself naturally leading others.”

When he saw a Northeastern faculty posting in 2024, he applied. “It was more happenstance than anything else,” he admits. But once he was in the classroom teaching Digital Communication Strategy (CMN3410) and Principles of Marketing (MKT2100), he discovered something unexpected: he was a walking library of case studies.

“There are so many compelling business cases that students can learn from,” Gilles says. “Almost every concept I teach, I have a real example ready that can demonstrate to students what this aspect of marketing means and give them a tangible understanding.”

From Netflix’s evolution from DVD mailers to streaming giant, to the shift from multichannel to omnichannel advertising strategies he witnessed at Nestlé Health Sciences, Gilles fills his lectures with real-world context that makes abstract concepts concrete.

Teaching for the Real World

Gilles’ approach to teaching reflects his conviction that higher education should prepare students for actual workplace success, not just academic achievement. On the first day of class, he asks students what they hope to get from the course, then shapes the curriculum to deliver it.

He structures each class like a business meeting, encouraging students to speak up, share ideas, and practice the kind of verbal communication that will serve them in their careers. “A big part of my class is encouraging students to do things that are best practice,” he explains. “In order to succeed in a new role, you have to add value — add value in every meeting. If you can find a way to engage, ask a question, and contribute, people will notice that.”

It’s a deliberate shift away from traditional essay-heavy coursework. “Not because essays are bad, but students might not be learning as much due to their use of AI,” Gilles says candidly. “I’m trying to engage students in an experiential format.” He incorporates group brainstorming sessions where students collaborate, share ideas, and receive real-time feedback, mimicking the collaborative problem-solving they’ll encounter in the corporate world.

This emphasis on practical engagement resonates especially with international students. “There are three components to any successful team: clear role, clear goal, and clear communication,” Gilles explains. “When those three components come into play together, almost anyone can succeed.”

The Omnichannel Evolution

One of the concepts Gilles is most excited to teach is the industry’s shift from multichannel to omnichannel marketing, a transformation he witnessed firsthand in his corporate roles.

“With multichannel, each channel is its own thing, its own strategy, and doesn’t talk to other channels,” he explains. “With omnichannel, each channel uses specialized tools to talk to each other and filter the same message to make sure you’re having a single experience with the brand or product.”

He calls it “surround sound” marketing, coordinated touchpoints that create a seamless customer or patient experience rather than fragmented messages. Through connections with former colleagues at companies like Nestlé Health Sciences, Gilles brings current examples of this evolution into his classroom, showing students how major organizations are implementing these strategies in real time.

Preparing Students for an AI-Powered Future

Perhaps nothing in marketing is changing faster than the role of artificial intelligence, a topic Gilles addresses head-on with his students.

“AI is the future. It’s shaking up everything, every industry, including the aviation industry,” he says, recounting a recent incident where an airplane landed itself during a pressurization emergency while pilots monitored. “We have cars driving themselves. Every business is focusing on automation. If AI gets ignored today, businesses will operate within a dated framework from the past, and they probably won’t succeed.”

But Gilles emphasizes responsible AI use. “We can’t let AI do our jobs for us. It’s important we’re able to do our job and build the future we want, not let it lead the change when we don’t necessarily understand how to use it.”

That philosophy drives DiActa’s approach as well. “AI is a tool that helps things move faster, but businesses today must retain active responsibility over its use and stay present in the process of its adoption,” Gilles notes. “How do we use it in a way that a machine is not making decisions for us? It is critical to understand how large language models work and operate. We have this promising, powerful tool at our disposal, and we must understand how that tool can aid us in our current processes, but also how it can undermine our efforts if not used responsibly.”

“AI is a tool that helps things move faster, but businesses today must retain active responsibility over its use and stay present in the process of its adoption. How do we use it in a way that a machine is not making decisions for us? It is critical to understand how large language models work and operate. We have this promising, powerful tool at our disposal, and we must understand how that tool can aid us in our current processes, but also how it can undermine our efforts if not used responsibly.”

Marcus Gilles

For students, Gilles stresses that grasping AI’s capabilities and limitations isn’t optional, it’s essential. “Students need to understand how impactful it is and how to use AI in a way that is ethical and to their advantage.”

Beyond the Classroom

When Gilles isn’t teaching or building brands, he’s indulging his creative side. He loves watching movies (especially horror), playing video games, traveling, and learning about science and technology. 

And yes, he still thinks about aviation. When asked what he’d be doing if he weren’t in communications, he laughs: “Probably flying airplanes!”

But for now, he’s content guiding students through a different kind of journey, one where success depends not on altitude, but on the ability to adapt, communicate effectively, and add value in a business landscape that’s constantly shifting beneath your feet.

“Business is changing constantly,” Gilles says. “That’s how I frame my classes.” It’s a perspective shaped by years of navigating turbulence in his own career, and one that’s preparing the next generation of marketers to do the same.

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Marcus Gilles teaches Digital Communication Strategy (CMN3410) and Principles of Marketing (MKT2100) in Northeastern’s College of Professional Studies. He is also co-founder of DiActa, a branding company whose goal is to make branding feel effortless and empowering, so teams can move forward with clarity. Connect with him on LinkedIn or learn more about DiActa at www.diacta.com.