Beeby Clark+Meyler (BCM), in partnership with the Baruch College Zicklin School of Business, is excited to announce the winners of the second annual Beeby Clark+Meyler Digital Marketing Challenge. This year, BCM declared one undergraduate student team and graduate team winners who will be honored in the coming weeks.
This year, the competition was divided into two categories, separating Baruch College graduate and undergraduate student teams to create a higher level of expectation for the graduate teams. The competition provides students with an opportunity to apply their marketing skills to a real-world scenario.
“Becoming strong brand strategists who develop and execute innovative ideas is the aim of our Marketing students when they graduate,” commented Professor Ana Valenzuela, professor of marketing at Baruch’s Zicklin School of Business. “In its second year, the Beeby Clark+Meyler Digital Challenge and the terrific agency team really gave our students the opportunity to flex their creative muscles while challenging them along the way.”
Eight teams, a mix of 30 undergraduate and graduate students, competed in the Digital Marketing Challenge. Each created a complete “go to market” creative and media plan for a mock startup app. Objectives included:
Final concepts were judged by a panel of Beeby Clark+Meyler judges including Associate Creative Director James Ferraro; Account Strategist Katie Gaines; Manager of Performance (Media & Partnerships) James Mullany and Associate Director (Search/Performance Marketing) Will Ryan, as well as Ana Valenzuela, professor of marketing at Baruch’s Zicklin School of Business.
“We are very impressed with the quality of work and marketing knowledge of the Baruch students,” said James Mullany, Manager, Performance Media and Partnerships at Beeby Clark+Meyler. “The students welcome the opportunity to put their skills to the test in a setting that intentionally simulates a real new business pitch. It’s also refreshing for us at BCM to step out of our daily routines to discuss creative concepts and innovative solutions with future leaders in digital marketing.”
The winning graduate student team was made up of David Bernstein, Mike Cherepko, Mayank Kapoor and Christopher Mooney, all of whom are full-time Baruch MBA students graduating in 2018. The team branded their app Sweet Re-Lease, incorporating a humorous, quirky digital strategy. The group noted, “It was a fantastic experience. By putting together a full-fledged digital marketing strategy we got to experience what an agency is regularly called upon to do: research target demographics, develop a creative messaging plan to speak directly to them, budget for that plan and institute KPIs for measuring its success.”
The winning undergraduate student team was made up of Judah Blumenthal and Michael Rubin, Baruch undergraduates studying economics and graduating in 2020. The team proposed the app Finder’s Feed, which focused on tailoring unique creative messaging to different audience groups based on media consumption and psychographic research. The students shared, “learning how to create a marketing plan, and then getting the opportunity to pitch it to a panel of experts who shared what worked and how we could have improved it, was an incredibly informative and unique experience.”
Beeby Clark+Meyler congratulates the winning teams and thanks all Baruch College competitors for the hard work that was put into this year’s Digital Marketing Challenge.