Algonquin students had an outstanding performance in the Ontario College’s Marketing Competition at Fanshawe College on Nov. 15-16.
“It’s a prestigious marketing competition,” said business professor Jim Neubauer. “It’s the right thing to do for the students, to expose them to the best of the best.”
Neubauer said this has been the most successful year for the college at the competition, having an average of second place in most of the events.
The best result this year was from Josh Dieter and Shawnae Mutch, who won first place in the Prospect Pitch event.
Neubauer said all of the students faced challenges regarding time. This is a co-curricular course and by week four, they start to have many assignments and most students have a job.
As a result, some students drop out of the program but the ones who do not, have “one of the best experiences of their lives.”
Second year business marketing student Trisha Leger participated in two events: Quiz Bowl and Direct Marketing.
For Quiz Bowl she was teamed up with three other randomly-selected students. For her that was the biggest challenge of the event because, for Direct Marketing, she had 12 weeks to meet Ammaarah Hafeez — her teammate and practice partner.
“That was pretty intense,” said Leger in regards the difficulty level of that event. Second-year business marketing student, Matthew Kirk also participated in Quiz Bowl. Algonquin won second place.
For the Direct Marketing event Leger and Hafeez had to read a case scenario, understand it, come up with a solution and then present the solution. They also won second place.
Kirk participated in the Entrepreneurship event and was teamed up with Claudia Brown, a business management student. Unfortunately, they placed fourth in their event.
“The experience as a whole was amazing,” said Kirk in an email exchange. “The friendships made will last forever and networking with other colleges was awesome to see how they prepared and what their thoughts are on marketing in Toronto.”
Leger had three coaches, two for Quiz Bowl; Charmaine Akiwenzie, OCMC Alumna and Renay Dixon, OCMC Alumna and staff member at the college, and one coach for Direct Marketing, Aaron Quinn, who is an OCMC Alumnus.
This year, there were five alumni volunteering and multiple teachers and none of them make a profit out of this.
Each of the participating colleges have their time to host the event. Last year was Algonquin’s turn but the competition was cancelled because of the five-week-long work stoppage across the province.