Cass students take London’s Rising Star prize
07 December 2011
Five undergraduate students from Cass Business School have beaten competition from both undergraduates and postgraduates across London to win at the London Rising Star Higher Education Institutions Challenge event.
The event, hosted at the Houses of Parliament, matched teams to three real companies in London with actual marketing objectives. The team's task was, in one day, to develop a sales and marketing strategy for their assigned company and present to the judges. The judges were Lord Wei, member of the House of Lords and Richard Strudwick, Founder and Director at The Enterprise Collective, a network of high profile individuals who support young entrepreneurs.
The students, Bohdan Maksak, Salvador Briggman, Amun Reechaye, Charles-Edouard van de Put and Sam Smith all study at Cass and were invited to take part in the competition as a result of their involvement with City Spark, the City University Big Ideas Competition.
For the Rising Star competition they had to complete market research, including demographic breakdowns, marketing strategies and financial forecasts before receiving feedback from a consultant prior to their final presentation.
Commenting on the day Sam Smith said, "It was an eye opening experience that I not only grew my business knowledge and understanding from, but also thoroughly enjoyed and would very much like to be a part of again."
Richard Strudwick explained why the team from Cass were chosen as the winners, "The team from Cass Business School just edged it through their team-work and practical approach. The question that helped Lord Wei and I finally select a winner was "if it was our money, which team would we want to run our business?"
For me the clean, succinct opening to their presentation, the compelling statistics, customer empathy, innovative marketing and sales techniques and their focus on expansion plans matched the obvious team-work and group effort to make them a winning team."
Print page