The core to generating sustainable customer demand for a product is the term we know as ‘branding’. In this competitive world to make the most out of demand generation, marketers need to keep up brand promise and create position. As challenging as it can be, sometimes brands are struck by unexpected situations such as public complaints. Such kind of challenging events threaten a brand's perceived ability to deliver expected benefits, thereby weakening brand equity.
To develop the creative ability of the potential brand leaders and manage such challenging situations, East West University Business Club (EWUBC) came up with the concept of an intra-EWU business strategy competition named 'Brand Aid 2018'. Brand Aid is a unique initiative designed to teach students to recuperate brand from catastrophes with their innovative ideas.
The registration for Brand Aid 2018 started off with an audiovisual clip where it was featured that a brand in crisis is looking for three creative young minds to solve a critical situation at the moment. A total of 68 teams comprising more than 200 members registered for the competition.
The competition began on June 25, 2018 with an inauguration ceremony and workshop. Jawaad Bin Hamid, group organisational development manager of Rancon, was the keynote speaker of the workshop. He guided the participants on how to solve business problems by sharing his own experiences. The intense battle commenced after the inauguration ceremony and the workshop. After two on spot rounds, top six teams made it to the final round of Brand Aid 2018.
In the final round, the top six teams presented their ideas in the open presentation round in front of the judges and audiences. Later that day, the results were disclosed, and achievement of the winners was celebrated in the gala award ceremony held in the EWU premises. The chief guest of the programme was Professor Dr Fakrul Alam, pro-vice chancellor, EWU. Dr Tanbir Ahmed Chowdhury, professor and dean, Faculty of Business and Economics of EWU was also present as the special guest of the programme. The other guests from Bangladesh Edible Oil Limited (BEOL) were Kazi Mohammad Jafar Sadek, manager- organisation development, Faisal Mahmud, marketing manager and Istiaq Mahmood Sifat, brand executive.
After the long and intense battle, Team Basitos became the champion of Brand Aid 2018. Mohammad Husain, Tazrin Ahmed Toma and Jubair Alam were on the winning team. Team The Last of Us and Team Blancos became the first runner-up and second runner-up of the competition respectively. The other three finalists teams were Team Terminal Velocity, Team Brainiacs and Team Ambitious. The guests and judges awarded the winners and the finalists with certificates. The guests along with the moderators of EWUBC announced the winners' names and handed over the trophies to the winning teams. The efforts of the finalists' teams were also acknowledged through awarding certificates.
Husain, one of the members of the champion team, said, "In every round, we faced some unexpected situation and that time we did not go for any difficult business theories to solve that. We just thought simply within the box".
EWUBC has been undertaking a lot of seminars, workshops and competitions to develop the students' capabilities. The president of EWUBC Md Adib Bin Shahid shared his thoughts behind organising Brand Aid: "This competition was organised to unleash the critical thinking ability of the students, how they work in a complex situation. Everyone who is going to work in the corporate world is going to face this issue. So we organised this competition so that students can be a bit prepared for this scenario."
Promoting a competitive platform such as Brand-Aid 2018 among the students can develop the creative abilities of the future leaders. This kind of initiative should be taken more prominently so that students are inspired to use their analytical skills.
The writer is a student of East West University and she can be reached at [email protected]
