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CBA Students Win Nissan Marketing Competition
After advancing to the finals at Nissan's U.S. Headquarters in Nashville, Tenn. and competing against master's students from Texas A&M, students from the University of Pittsburgh won the Nissan cube® collegiate challenge. Associate Professor Robert J. Gilbert said, "Our students did an outstanding job of presenting their integrated marketing campaign to 100 Nissan executives and senior managers. I couldn't be more proud of our students. They were poised, professional, and extremely well-prepared." The College of Business Administration (CBA) team won $3,000 for first place.
The competition is designed to promote the new 2009 Nissan cube® among the members of Generation Y on college campuses, and involves mobilizing marketing students to increase awareness among the target market. Students in CBA's business elective course Projects in Marketing have established an in-class working marketing agency, PROSinMOTION, which is responsible for researching, implementing, and evaluating an integrated marketing campaign to fulfill Nissan's needs. All ten universities that have been chosen will be competing for the chance to present their creative ideas to Nissan executives at the semester's conclusion. CBA has participated in competitions such as this five times previously, winning first place three times and placing second and third once each, setting high expectations for this year's class.
The Nissan cube® collegiate challenge, as well as the Projects in Marketing elective course, provide Pitt's marketing students with the opportunity to create a marketing campaign for a worldwide corporation. Nissan has provided PROSinMOTION with a $2,500 operating budget to implement their campaign on Pitt's campus. Students are currently conducting their first phase of research to learn more about the target market. Based on its findings, the student agency will create and implement a strategy for reaching the target market, working with Nissan throughout the process. At the end of the semester, students will prepare a formal presentation for the client summarizing their campaign results and successes.
According to Jaclyn McCormick, the CBA student selected to be agency coordinator for PROSinMOTION, the program has many advantages: "Projects in Marketing gives students the unique opportunity to get real marketing experience with a major corporation like Nissan during our undergraduate studies. As a class we function like an actual marketing agency with departments dedicated to research, campaign strategy, advertising, and public relations. It is really exciting to see how a marketing campaign is built from the ground up and the great ideas that surface from each department. Already, as an agency, we have come up with a lot of really dynamic ways to promote the Nissan cube® and we are excited to put them into action."
The collegiate challenge is sponsored by Nissan and organized by EdVenture Partners, an organization dedicated to developing innovative industry-education partnership programs. Watch for more information about the Nissan cube® collegiate challenge at the University of Pittsburgh throughout this spring semester. For further inquiries regarding the project, please contact CBA student Mark Boucher at 814-450-1611.