The Titans win Microsoft Protégé 2010
UTS Business undergrads walked away with the two top awards at the inaugural Microsoft Protégé Grand Finals, held this week at Microsoft’s Australian headquarters in Sydney.
The challenge: to create demand for MS Office 2010 – successor to MS Office 2007 – among tertiary students.
Not a simple ask. The target market is cash strapped students, who spend up to $400 a year on textbooks, and only upgrade their software when they absolutely have to – unless it’s an iphone app of course. A spreadsheet with new features is, after all only a spreadsheet with new features.
The prize: a tantalizing paid month’s internship with Microsoft for the winning team – a resume must-have for all marketing gonna-be’s.
There was no shortage of creativity when it came to ideas to put Microsoft back on the map for gen y undergrads: a mass lambada against piracy at the ANZ stadium, a scavenger hunt (on the 20th of the 10th, with a prize of $2010), a customise-my-error-message competition, lipdubs and flashmobs.
Winning team, The Titans, ‘nailed a touch down’, in the judges words, with a presentation that combined detailed market research, structured analysis and a creative campaign. The five UTS students, Jack Pilon, Sabrina Selvaratnam, Lyall Sundel, Steve Pillon, and Timothy Cummings, combined their intimate understanding of the target market (they are after all, the target market), with a clear map of how to convert brand awareness to sales. Outstandingly, The Titans were the only group to use the Microsoft Office 2010 software to build their presentation. Smart thinking!
The winners were thrilled: ‘when we started we thought it would be amazing to win, then we just assumed that somebody else would,’ said Jack Pilon, modestly.
The judges, including Managing Director of Direct Marketing agency, Wunderman, Jo Lloyd, and an arsenal of Microsoft top guns, praised the ‘exceptional commercial thinking and marketing know-how. Your presentation was schmick and the piece-de-resistance was using the software. Well done!’
The People’s Choice award (voted by the audience on their mobile phones, a la Idol) was taken out by UTS group All Star Solutions, who proposed a nationwide lipdub competition to raise awareness, and create a little cool for the brand. (If you are not sure what a lipdub is, follow this link.) Sophie Green, Ayumi Yoshida, Elizabeth Mercer, Jodie Rivers and Wai Yan Ha backed up an excellent presentation with solid research and smart analysis.
Microsoft Protégé was the brainchild of Oscar Trimboli, Director, Information Worker Business Group Australia at Microsoft. It was open to undergraduate marketing students enrolled in any university marketing course or TAFE college.
The initiative was embraced at UTS by marketing academics Simone Peres, (tutor to the winning team), Dr Kyuseop Kwak and Chelsea Wise, who worked together on the original brief so that it could be incorporated into the work of the 14 week Research for Marketing Decisions course: ‘From week 1, my students simply began working on the MS brief, like they would do in any typical semester. Except this time the problem was a real-life problem. With a real incentive too. Paid work experience for the winning team!’, explained Ms Wise.
Microsoft received sixty submissions which were whittled down over a two stage judging period to the final six who were invited to present at the Grand Finale. Four out of the six teams represented the University of Technology, with excellent entries from Macquarie University and Sydney University.
All entrants clearly had eyes on the internship prize, which represents a unique opportunity to test classroom skills in the very tangible world of budget constraints and deadlines while learning from the high performing Microsoft team.
But the winning Titans had a look that suggested they were thinking beyond the month’s internship, and that they would only be satisfied when they had secured the keys to the executive bathrooms.
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