A peek inside the marketing process

MONTREAL - The ad agency brief was clear: Get more people shopping at a Montreal bicycle store. The creative talent came cheap: 30 marketing students working free-of-charge for two weeks. And after an evening of pitches to a panel of judges and the selection of winners, the end game now approaches: A $10,000 publicity campaign to be launched in April.

“Go for it!” said organizer Frédéric Vennat (BCom’12), the McGill grad who heads business development at Cloudraker, as the first team stood ready to pitch for 15 minutes. Calling themselves Teenage Mutant Ninja Adsters, they came with two hand-drawn poster boards and used buzzwords like “metrics” and “incentivize” and “inclusivity.”

“Great job, neat concept,” said career adviser Peg Brunelle, who works at McGill’s management faculty. But she wondered whether students are really the right target; they’re “transient” and probably won’t ever buy a bike at F&F. What if nobody goes for the idea? asked consultant Robert Hoppenheim, formerly of Aldo Shoes. “‘Build it and they will come’ is a risky strategy.”

BCom students Gabrielle Chamberland, Nianqi Tang, Gabriel Bensoussan, Veronique B-Fowler, Simon Hudson, Rachel Kirby, Karishma Joseph, Coralie Iroudayassamy, and Laura Easton are members of the winning teams.

Read full article: Montreal Gazette, February 5, 2013