A Student Team from the School of Economics is the Europe Winner of Google's Online Marketing Challenge
The team of students competed with a campaign they created in the Digital Marketing course. “Learning by doing really works”, says the winning team.
The students of Turku School of Economics’ Digital Marketing course took part in the Google Online Marketing Challenge last spring. In the challenge, the student teams get 250 dollars each to run a campaign they design for a real company.
Thousands of teams participated in the challenge. Two teams from Turku School of Economics at the University of Turku qualified for the finals in the Europe series. A team lead by Team Captain Nina Tapio won the series. The team designed a campaign based on the products of a Finnish company called gTIE.
Authentic Cooperation Inspired the Student Team
When doing online marketing, both the ad and the search result should match the words used in the online search.
‒ The company we created the campaign for makes novel accessories, creative jewellery and neckwear, which was challenging, because not many people in Finland google neckwear, Nina Tapio describes the campaign which by the rules of the contest was ran for three weeks.
Team member Iida Vanhanen explains that the field of business of the company governs how competed the relevant search words are.
‒ We really went out of our way to summarise the creativity of the company in one, effective AdWords campaign. To run an authentic campaign we thoroughly explored how digital marketing is done in practice.
The Groundbreaking Course Gets Recognition
Doctoral Candidate Joni Salminen from the discipline of Marketing at the School of Economics leads the Digital Marketing course.
‒ Real life projects are an important part of education, especially when it comes to applying the learned theory. Without these experiences, applying the knowledge is left waiting for stepping into the working life. The teams here succeeded great and did good work.
The Digital Marketing course is in the School's curriculum for the third year running. The topic is hot, which is confirmed also by the popularity of the e-Commerce Course offered by the discipline of Information Systems Science.
‒ It is great that the School is ready to renew its courses open-mindedly. It is crucial that we stay on the crest of the wave regarding the interests of companies, Salminen says.
Fresh views in teaching please the students, too.
More information:
>> More information and all the results of the challenge in the Google Student Blog
>> Do you need an enthusiastic worker for a fixed-term project? Could your development project use a new perspective? Please, read more about the possibilities of cooperation wth our students!
Text: Taru Suhonen
Photograph: Beantin webbkommunikation