College Journey

My close group of friends and I have always wanted to participate in a marketing competition together, and was actually interested in the Pitch It! 2017 Competition, which involved VISA as the client. However, the competition clashed with our University schedule, so we had to give it a miss that year.

Hence, when the opportunity for the challenge presented itself again in 2018, we decided to grab the chance and challenge ourselves by joining the NUS Pitch It! 2018 Competition.

Pitch It! 2018 is a Tertiary-wide Integrated Marketing Campaign Competition organised by the NUS CNM Society, alongside a partnership with FRANK by OCBC and GOVT.

The 4 of us, accompanied by 1 other NUS student, were competing with a total of 172 other participants.

Each team had to conceptualise and put together an innovative integrated marketing campaign to address a challenge posed by world-renowned client; FRANK by OCBC.

The challenge was:

How can we improve the OCBC Pay Anyone app to make it more inclusive and easily adopted?

With only a limited time of one week to work on this problem statement, my group and I got to work immediately.

Only the Top 5 out of over 35 groups will be selected to move forth onto the next stage - pitching (Finals). Unfortunately, we did not make the cut.

While we were not selected for the final pitch to the client, this experience has left me with 3 valuable takeaways that can be applied to my future professional career.

1) Setting your own (marketing) goals

Unlike projects and case studies given to us in school, the problem posed to us by FRANK OCBC was vague. On the plus side, this means that we were not tied down by constraints involving budget, target audience, and research methodology. However, without a more specific scope given to us, it took us a longer time to narrow down the problem, and brainstorm on the ideas we want to recommend to OCBC. This meant taking more time during each process, eg. to look into market research, determine the target segment, deciding on the campaign objectives. Hence, this project felt like a simulation of doing marketing in the real world, where it is very unlikely that bosses would provide you with a specific scope and set out steps or guidelines for you to follow. You have to determine your own ways to tackle a problem and set your own limits and goals to overcome it.

2) Presenting without presenting (physically)

As there were over 35 groups participating in this competition, we weren't required to present in front of a live audience/judge. Instead, we had to present our research and ideas via presentation slides. Things would definitely be much easier if we could present our ideas in person. As such, this posed as a challenge for the team as our ideas involved abstract concepts and we had to effectively convey our ideas onto the slides. Thus, this process taught me how to present ideas clearly on the slides, as straightforward as possible, without having to physically present.

3) Letting creative juices flow

Lastly, what I thoroughly enjoyed about this experience was the flexibility to be creative. Due to lesser constraints, we were much more imaginative in the process of approaching the problem. Thereby, this had allowed us to foster greater creative problem-solving and critical thinking skills.

Ultimately, I had an enjoyable experience in this competition. Not only did I gain valuable insights into how pitching to a client works, this experience had also brought my marketing buddies and I closer together. (: