Students solve real brand challenges

The pitches were part of a Work Integrated Learning (WIL) project for the final year students from the Advanced Diploma of Business (Public Relations).

Students chose to work with one of three industry clients that partnered up with RMIT’s School of Vocational Business Education for the project.

Murrindindi Shire, ISSI and Beaurepaires briefed the students on their current marketing challenges early in the year, and the students spent the semester developing a solution for them, assisted by their teacher, Alain Grossbard.

“These projects present students with real life companies who have challenges that need to be addressed, and we spend the semester seeing what our students can do to solve these issues,”Grossbard said.

One group of students worked with ISSI on its Golden Ticket campaign, which focussed on growing the Institute’s online presence through a website revamp and social media update.

Rosemary O’Connor, Executive Chair to the Board, said, it had recognised that there were problems with brand awareness, as many people did not know what ISSI stands for.

“We would like to rectify this and we are aiming to do it sooner rather than later,” she said.

Another four groups of students pitched their ideas to representatives of the Murrindindi Shire.

The aim was to come up with a public relations strategy that could create awareness and increase visitor numbers to Murrindindi Shire towns, such as Alexandra, Yae, Kingsville and Marysville.

Beaurepaires’ challenge to the students was to find a way to reposition the brand at the forefront of the tyre market, as the place to go for high quality, yet cheaply priced, products.

Students recommended improving website usability and features, including a click and collect function and presented a plan for boosting social media presence.

Beaurepaires Marketing Manager, Todd Avery was extremely impressed.

“I found the click and collect function to be a great idea and understand that social media is an important part of reaching a specific market,” Avery said.

“I thought the students’ presentations were well thought out and they had a very good understanding of marketing strategy development.”.

Overall, the students were thrilled to be working on real-time industry-based challenges and the clients were delighted to gain the insight of a new and fresh market during this live WIL project.