Creativity in developing marketing campaign

CreADive has been a flagship event of Bangladesh University of Professionals Business and Communication Club (BUP BCC) since its inception four years back. Starting out as an intra-university competition centring on making of advertisements, it has now become widely known as one of the most challenging platforms for showcasing marketing and advertisement making talents.

With three consecutive inter-university competition seasons, the competition has become popular among undergraduate students and continues to garner an overwhelming response across the country.

CreADive 2017, powered by Rexona, was kicked off on October 30 in collaboration with Unilever Bangladesh Limited (UBL). The journey began with 230 undergraduate teams from universities all across Bangladesh. Throughout the competition, groups were rigorously tested of their marketing and advertisement-making skills.

In the very first round, teams were required to solve an online case about Clear Shampoo, a product of Unilever Bangladesh Limited, and only 48 teams made it through to the second round. The second round required the teams to come up with 360-degree marketing campaign and television commercial (TVC) for a product assigned to them from an assortment of UBL's products. Only the best 18 teams made it to the third round where they had to design product activations for Rexona. In the end, after a rigorous judgment, only six teams made it as finalists of CreADive 2017.

The six finalist teams who made it to the finals were assigned to develop a multi-phased holistic campaign (with ATL and BTL channels) among parents, children and society to present failure as an opportunity to learn. The product that was to be integrated into the plan was Surf Excel. The idea was to encourage learning among children instead of creating an environment of unproductive competitiveness that is seldom of any benefit to the development of the children.

The single-line proposition for this campaign that the contenders were asked to develop was "Sometimes you succeed, sometimes you learn", and the teams had one week's time for preparation. The finalist teams were Team Kemistry from the Institute of Business Administration (IBA), University of Dhaka, Team Dream from IBA, University of Dhaka, Hawk Insights from BRAC University, Clean Slate from North South University, Triunfo from Bangladesh University of Professionals, and Team Inception from BRAC University.

To make this year's CreADive possible, Unilever Bangladesh Limited's Rexona sponsored the venture of BUP BCC. The digital media partner was Analyzen Bangladesh Ltd., and radio partner was Radio Foorti 88.0 FM, Print media partner was The Financial Express and the hospitality partner was Le Meridien Dhaka.

The Grand Finale was held on the evening of December 20 at Le Meridien Dhaka in the presence of Pro-Vice Chancellor of Bangladesh University of Professionals. Prof. M. Abul KashemMozumder, PhD was present as the special guest. Finale's judge panel comprised of experienced managers of Unilever Bangladesh Limited. Reenat Akhter, Senior HR Marketing Partner, Marketing, Nadia Tabassum Product Group Manager, Skin Cleansing, Ehsanul Karim, Customer Development Excellence Head, and Parvez Sarwar, Head of Consumer and Market Insights, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka were present at the event as judges.

The team which bagged the championship title of 'CreADive 2017 Powered by Rexona' was Team Kemistry from IBA, University of Dhaka. Not only did they take home the glorious title, but also bagged a prize money of Taka 0.15 million (1.5 lac). The first and second runners-up were Hawk Insights and Clean Slate with a prize money of Taka 90 thousand and Taka 60 thousand respectively.

When asked about the experience of this year's competition, Anindya Shubhra Banerjee from the champion team said, "CreADive 2017 for Team Kemistry was a truly enlightening and enriching experience. We've challenged our limits in every step of the journey and learnt to persevere through it all. We're just glad all the effort paid off!"

Alvi Ehsan, belonging to the second runners-up team Clean Slate, stated, "CreADive was an all in one experience for our team. From the digital space to the above the line/below the line end, it managed to cover it all. However, what made it stand out from the rest of the competitions are the curveballs."

The writer is a second year BBA student at Bangladesh University of Professionals (BUP). She can be reached at [email protected]