Goodluck presents Brandrill 2018, powered by Click and organised by Voice of Business (VoB), is a branding based competition among the undergraduate students of Bangladesh. Like the previous year, the competition created much hype this year too and got a massive response countrywide among the youths.
Around 200 teams from more than fifteen universities took part in this year's BRANDrill 2018. The competition started with its online case submission round on April 15, 2018, where around 700 students participated. Among them, best 50 teams for their outstanding branding ideas moved to the second round. Before commencing the second round competition, a workshop was held for the participants to provide them with a better perception of branding. The workshop was followed by television commercial (TVC) making round. After that, the teams presented their TVC. After facing a neck and neck competition, only ten teams made it to the finale.
The finale of the BRANDrill 2018 took place on May 14 at Nawab Ali Chowdhury Senate Building, University of Dhaka. After a fierce competition among the ten qualified teams, Goal Diggers from Faculty of Business Studies, University of Dhaka managed to be the winner of nationwide branding competition and was awarded Tk 0.1 million. The first runner-up team is Neophytes from the Islamic University of Technology, and the second runner-up team is Pyro from IBA, University of Dhaka. The teams were awarded Tk 60,000 and Tk 40,000 respectively along with certificates and crests.
The judges of the finale were Sajjadul Islam, senior brand manager of PRAN-RFL, Md Iftekhar Alarm, brand strategy and creative lead manager of Grameenphone and Muhammad Ismail Hossain, professor, Faculty of Business Studies, University of Dhaka. Some other corporate individuals and faculty members of the University of Dhaka were also present at the finale.
BRANDrill 2018 aimed to aid the personal development of business students by making them more aware of personal branding. According to Tanveer Ahmed, president of Voice of Business, "A competition of such stature will help to develop and enhance branding knowledge of young business minds.''
Farah Haque, a participant of the competition- whose team later emerged as the champion-said, "Participating in BRANDrill was a major learning experience for all of us. It let us discover that creative side of us by constantly pushing ourselves. We were given chances to present our ideas in front of some amazing brand personalities, which is an achievement in itself".
Voice of Business, the largest student-run publication and business club from the Faculty of Business Studies, University of Dhaka, is now in its twelfth year. Since its inception in 2007, VoB has created opportunities for the business students for skill development and knowledge enhancement through connecting with prominent business leaders of the time. It also publishes business magazine every year.
The writer is a student of the Department of Marketing, Faculty of Business Studies, University of Dhaka. He can be reached at ather.sabuj@gmail.com