Happening Marketing 2012 attracts 500 students
Every year, business students from 10 of Quebec and Ontario’s largest universities compete at Happening Marketing, the largest marketing competition in Canada. On March 23, nearly 500 delegates came to Concordia's John Molson School of Business (JMSB) to participate in this year’s edition, which marked the event’s 20th anniversary.
Co-President of the Organizing Committee, Marianna Luciano, also a JMSB student and president of the Commerce and Administration Students’ Association for 2011-12, began planning the competition last April.
“The organizing team did an incredible job over the course of the last year. Everything ran smoothly and it was very rewarding to receive such positive reactions from the participants,” says Luciano.
The competition, held over a weekend, was divided into three main categories: academics, sports and social. A case competiton featuring five cases made up the academic portion of the event. The cases focused on international marketing, strategic marketing, business-to-business marketing, relationship marketing and integrated marketing communications.
This year’s theme, “What if?” urged students to challenge conventional marketing wisdom, to take risks and to go with their instincts. “Teams really embraced the theme,” says Luciano. “According to the judges, many of the recommendations proposed by the students showed a real willingness to take chances.”
The winners of the competition were the teams from Université de Québec à Montréal’s École des Sciences de Gestion. Concordia’s JMSB finished second, with Université Laval rounding out the top three.
For the first time, the organizers of the competition chose to incorporate a philanthropic component into the event.
“We decided to partner with the Montreal Children’s Hospital Foundation,” explains Luciano. “We committed to donating $5 per participant directly to the charity, along with any surplus remaining in our budget after the competion was over. On the first night of the competition, we also held a charity event to maximize our contribution to the Children’s. We were very pleased to be able to make a donation of more than $3,000.”
Related links:
• Happening Marketing
• Happening Marketing on Facebook
• John Molson School of Business