University News Last updated 15 December 2011
On 30 November three students from Birmingham City Business School were proud runners up in ‘The Pitch’ competition, a marketing competition launched by the Diabetes Awareness Group and the Chartered Institute of Marketing, which was held at Aston University.
The Group, which includes The Department of Health, Diabetes UK, Action Kids Foundation, Bristol-Myers Squibb, University of Huddersfield, Novo Nordisk, Oxford University and Oxford Health Alliance, launched the competition on 20 June 2011, and its representatives made up the judging panel. The competition was arranged to coincide with the promotion and awareness of Diabetes and World Diabetes Day on 14 November 2011.
The apprentice-style competition called for marketing students to develop an innovative diabetes awareness campaign in teams of up to 3 people, and present a 3 minute pitch to the panel of leading industry experts from the Diabetes Awareness Group and the Chartered Institute of Marketing. The best two teams were then asked to re-pitch their campaign.
These teams consisted of current BA (Hons) Marketing, Advertising and Public Relations undergraduate students from Birmingham City Business School (Yuji Isayama, Deva Shinh and Jadean Taylor) and a group of Masters students from Leeds University. Despite giving a fantastic final presentation, unfortunately our students just missed out to the other team.
Nicola Gittins, Undergraduate Course Co-ordinator for the Marketing Programmes at Birmingham City Business School said; “All the teams did a fantastic job, each having three minutes to present their ideas in response to a real brief on Diabetes. It was a tough panel consisting of very senior staff from the CIM, as well as the team responsible for developing the national diabetes marketing campaign.”
It was a great opportunity for the students, and they relished the chance to develop and put into practice the marketing skills they have learned including team work, strategic and communication planning, creativity and presentation skills.
The other students that took part from the faculty were Christoforos Adamou and Inderbir Pannu; and Kristina Dimitrova, Justina Doveikaite and Viktoriya Yordanova.