Florida Tech Bisk College of Business Team Wins First Place at Direct Effect Innovation Challenge.

By Space Coast Daily // June 11, 2024

teams from six universities addressed a real-world marketing challenge

A team of students from the Bisk College of Business won first place in the Direct Effect Innovation Challenge. The participating students were senior Joy Zhang and juniors Peter Voltaire, Harsheet Sandhu and Blake Lewis. College of Business assistant professors Alina Malkova and Samuel Sekar were faculty coaches. (Florida Tech image)

BREVARD COUNTY, FLORIDA – A team of students from the Florida Tech Bisk College of Business won first place in the Direct Effect Innovation Challenge. The participating students were senior Joy Zhang and juniors Peter Voltaire, Harsheet Sandhu and Blake Lewis. College of Business assistant professors Alina Malkova and Samuel Sekar were faculty coaches.

The Challenge, held in Jacksonville in mid-April, was an immersive, daylong experiential learning event where teams from six universities addressed a real-world marketing challenge from a live client by conceptualizing and presenting a marketing campaign.

The marketing challenge was presented by LEGOLAND. The challenge was to create a campaign geared to build brand awareness and connect with the target audience possible for Legoland New York. The student teams worked to come up with solutions that included a marketing campaign with at least three channels, such as social media, mail and phone calls, and design a mock-up for direct mailing.

Teams had just three hours to develop their campaigns and five minutes to pitch their direct mail marketing concepts to a team of judges.

“Our students did a great job, and their efforts and creativity were acknowledged by the judges,” said Sekar, who also provided useful preparation materials. “These students were so passionate and driven and it was such an honor to be given the opportunity to be their faculty advisor for the day.”

The judges were impressed with the team’s detailed presentation on how Legoland Resort NYC can tackle its biggest marketing challenges. “It made them consider a new approach to how using direct mail can draw an audience to this destination for the summer,” Direct Effect noted in recapping the event.

Through hands-on experience, students learned about key campaign considerations, channel integration and how sequenced, multi-channel approaches can boost results.

In addition to Florida Tech, the other participating universities were Fayetteville State University, University of South Florida, Florida College, University of North Florida and Bethune-Cookman University.