Students to brand Dhaka as a colourful city

Conceived in 2012, CreADive is a business and admaking competition. It has been one of the flagship events of Bangladesh University of Professionals Business and Communication Club (BUPBCC). BUPBCC is a prestigious and active club of Bangladesh University of Professionals (BUP). This club was established to develop and advance career networking opportunities, social camaraderie and political activism of the students of BUP.

CreADive once served as a platform to screen talented teams of BUP students who would represent the institution in national competitions. But exponential growth has seen it develop to an inter-university event with numerous formal affiliations in five years’ time. It has now become a formidable marketing-based business communication and admaking tournament with two successful, consecutive inter-university editions under its belt, thus securing its place as one of the most prestigious competitions in Bangladesh.

What CreADive 2016 sought from the competing teams was showcasing their integrated abilities of strategy, analytics and presentation. To further stimulate the challenging nature of the rounds, surprise phases called Curveballs were also integrated which set out unconventional tasks for the teams. Cases ranged over diverse products and industries, often with scarce information resources to designing social holistic campaigns. Strict judgment criteria and time constraint only added to the challenge of the rounds.

With this onset trend, BUPBCC recently arranged the Inter University CreADive 2016. Berger Paints Bangladesh Limited was the title sponsor besides media partner being Channel I, youth engagement partner the Financial Express, online access partner Know ‘n’ Rise, radio partner Radio Shadhin and digital media partner Crossword Marketing & Communications.

The competition commenced on November 25, 2016 with a round on instant case solving. As many as 60 enthusiastic teams from different renowned universities of Bangladesh started their journey to battle it out and only 40 teams went through to the second round. The second round was to design a Below The Line (BTL) campaign which was designed to test the creative pursuits of each team and their marketing skills on a grassroot level. After rigorous judgment from esteemed corporate judges, only 18 teams went through to the third round where they were told to develop strategies for services of Berger Paints Bangladesh Limited. Difficult curveballs accompanied the teams through every round, and finally, only six of the very best teams competed for the final battle of glory. They were asked to work on a campaign for encouraging the repainting of the buildings beside the traffic roads of city corporation and got a week's worth of time to prepare their proposed plan to execute the campaign.

Berger Paints is one of the oldest names in the paint industry, both in the national and international scene. Being the gold sponsor for this competition, Berger Paints set out to design the cases which was given to the participating teams to create Television Commercials (TVCs) for Berger Paints' Home Décor Service. For the finale, Berger Paints developed the challenge to create a holistic social marketing campaign.

The event was held on January 16  at Dhaka Regency located in Nikunja. Chief guest of the finale was Mayor of Dhaka City North Annisul Huq. Special guests  of the event were Vice Chancellor of BUP Maj Gen Md Salahuddin Miaji and General Manager - Marketing of Berger Paints Bangladesh Abul Kasem Md Sadeque Nawaj. Other  members from the company were also present.

An array of highly experienced and renowned corporate persons played the role of judges. Team Pringles from the Institute of Business Administration (IBA), Dhaka University achieved the Champion Title of CreADive 2016. The first and second runners-up were team Slightly Agitated Utensils from the Institute of Business Administration, Dhaka University and Tryout from Bangladesh University of Professionals (BUP) respectively.

The champions’ prize money was Tk 1,50,000 with runners-up and second runners-up prize money being Tk 90,000 and Tk 60,000 respectively. In the end Mayor of Dhaka City North Annisul Huq invited the six teams for a lunch meeting and promised them that together they will brand Dhaka city as a colourful city.

The writer completed graduation from BBA programme of Bangladesh University of Professionals (BUP) in 2016. She can be reached at

mashiat.chowdhury94@gmail.com