Top award for Malaysia's climate change marketers
Against some tough competition, students at the UniSA partner
institution in Malaysia, Taylor's College, recently won the second
Marketing Agencies Association (MAA) Worldwide Global Academic Challenge
2008.
MAA Worldwide, based in Connecticut USA, is a global trade organisation
with a membership drawn from CEOs, Presidents, Managing Directors and
Principals of marketing services agencies. The MAA Worldwide Global
Academic Challenge was open to students from business and communication
schools around the globe.
A group of five final-year degree students studying Public Relations in
the Bachelor of Arts (Communication and Media Management) defeated more
than 30 teams from around the world to win the first prize - "The Globe"
which was presented at the MAA Annual Awards ceremony in Toronto,
Canada.
Team members Hilayah Binti Mohd Raffick (Team Leader) Alison Seow Ai
Lee, Benjamin Henry Teoh, Leanne Wong Lai-Yin and Stephanie Mill a/p
Sasoo were challenged to develop a marketing campaign around the theme
"Change Climate Change".
The team devised Unplug - a powerful marketing communications campaign
encouraging young people to use less energy.
The competition required teams to assume the role of a promotion and
marketing agency and to prepare a six-month campaign encouraging
households in the largest city of their home country to save
electricity.
Calling themselves the Red Ant team, the Taylor's-UniSA students won the
challenge with a campaign high in creativity and hooked into a young
audience. The team provided several innovative strategies to communicate
to its target market, including a Go Acoustic music carnival and
creating a buzz on Facebook and other social networking websites.
And the Red Ant entry won high praise from the judges.
"The Unplug concept was very strong and brilliantly dramatised by the
experiential event," London judge John Williams from MAA Worldwide said.
"The methodology evaluation was also well considered."
According to Chris Bean CEO of the Sydney's Wattwatchers the Red Ant
Team Campaign was very sound.
"Unplugging and switching off are the two largest behavioural changes
needed to make a difference," Bean said.
The international judging panel, comprising academics, marketing
executives, climate change consultants and promotion marketing agencies
were satisfied with the high level of experience and creativity of the
participants.