The winning team
The winning team
A team of students from Strathclyde has been triumphant in the final round of a marketing competition which saw them pitting their marketing wits against teams of students across Scotland to win first prize of a trip to New York.
Boom Marketing was one of 21 groups from Strathclyde's Advances in Marketing Communications course and one of 100 groups from all across Scotland tasked in the competition with coming up with inventive ideas for promotional offers and incentives that would drive footfall and raise awareness of a new free events website - www.itison.com - which launched earlier this year.
The competition, run by DADA marketing agency and sponsored by News International and ticketSOUP, challenged 4th year marketing students to get as many members of the public as possible to sign up to the website.
Boom was the only Strathclyde team to make it to the final by impressing a team of experts with their successful marketing campaign.
The team - Jenna McLauchlan, Ross Dempsey, Rachel Grant, Yuliya Galimova and Euan Brown - then had to present their results during a tense three hour final. The team won over judges by ditching conventional mass flyering methods to focus on groups such as exchange students, dating site users and those visiting internet access points throughout Glasgow. They also utilised social media networks to get clubbers and night clubs on board.
The final's judging panel - Allan MacAskill of News International, Sean Murray of SECC and Oli Norman of DADA - reviewed showcases by each group and made the unanimous decision that the Strathclyde students deserved first place.
Allan MacAskill, marketing director for News International, said, "This really was a tough competition and the five winners from Strathclyde University should be very proud of themselves. Their presentation proved their originality and creativity and, although it was a tough call in the end, the judging panel all agreed that the Strathclyde students were deserving winners."
Dr Eleanor Shaw, reader in marketing at Strathclyde Business School, said, "The students are thrilled to have won a trip to New York and the chance to see their favourite bands for free for the next year. The students have taken the project very seriously as it counts towards their final grade; working on a real time marketing campaign has been invaluable experience for them."
Ross Dempsey said, "On behalf of the group, I can't stress enough how beneficial this class was to the students. Yes, we won the competition so may look on it more favourably, but I guarantee that we would all have said the same thing 6 months ago when the competition had just got underway.
"As marketing students, we could have gone through university and whilst we would have gained a degree from one of the best business schools around, we would have lacked real life experience. One of the greatest things about this project was that we were in complete control; we were simply given objectives and could go about it in any way we wanted. This allowed all the students to get creative and innovative by putting the theory we have learned over the years into practice whilst getting to know and compete with classmates.
"There is no doubt that Advances in Marketing Communications has been the most valuable class in our time at University - not only has it allowed us to build up our CV with essential marketing experience, but it has given us an idea of how well we can apply ourselves in marketing and opened our eyes to how we could be capable of working in the marketing industry in the future.
"For a marketing course, we feel it is important not just simply to get your degree through passing exams and learning theories. Marketing is all about how you can apply these in the real world and this class gave us the perfect opportunity to do so."
As well as the trip to New York and the chance to see their favourite bands, the Boom team has also won summer internships with marketing agency DADA.