Youth in Action

Future Marketeers on the Go

Promiti Prova Chowdhury

With an opportunity to 'Experience the Thrill of Real Business', Unilever Bangladesh Limited (UBL) kicks into the scene again with 'Unilever BizMaestros,' a much popular name among the students of the business fraternity of Bangladesh today. 'BizMaestros,' if broken down, the term stands for 'Master of Business.' The competition began in 2010 and is based on a case study with the aim to find the brightest, young marketeers in Bangladesh. Being an intra and inter-university competition at the same time, 'BizMaestros' provides students a unique opportunity to work on live business plans and meet the challenges that Unilever is encountering. Only the students who are studying in their final year of undergraduate studies are eligible to take part in this competition.

The winning team with the judges.

This year, the entire competition spanned over three weeks, starting with Jahangirnagar University on September 13, 2012, followed by Department of Marketing of University of Dhaka, Institute of Business Administration, East West University, BRAC University, North South University, Independent University, Bangladesh, Khulna University and Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology. Through the Facebook page, 'Unilever Bangladesh in Your Campus', UBL reached around 3000 students from these nine campuses. The graduating students were invited to form groups of five and solve a live case concerning Unilever. UBL selected the best team from each of the universities. Out of the 57 teams that participated, the best nine teams made it to the finals.

At last, the much-awaited gala round commenced on September 27, 2012, at the La Vita Hall of Hotel Lake Shore. With sheer excitement, the gala was held in two rounds. In the first round, nine teams gave presentations on a live case study on the Brand Rexona in front of a panel of judges comprising of the senior managers in marketing and sales of Unilever. They selected the top three teams who then competed for the title of 'Unilever Bizmaetros 2012' in the final round where the judges were none other than UBL's top leaders--Kamran Bakr, Chairman and Managing Director, Jerry Jose, Human Resource Director, and K S M Minhaj, the Brand Building Director.

	Department of Marketing, DU- the Unilever Bizmaestro 2012.

The teams came up with innovative and, in some cases, humorous ideas to create a market for Rexona anti-perspirent for ladies, aging between 15 to 25. “We focused on the content of their presentation skills, communication skills, during the question-answer session, and their overall promotional campaign. Some of them are unique but still require a lot of grooming. They need to be tuned to be applied in the relevant field,” says Tahmina Ferdousi, Senior Brand Manager at Deodorant and Hair Care, UBL.

The top three teams to make it to the finals were from East West University (EWU), Institute of Business Administration (IBA), and, University of Dhaka. The team from University of Dhaka were the proud winner of Unilever Bizmaetros 2012 while IBA and EWU stood as the runners-up and 2nd runners-up respectively. “In these three years, we have been expanding our horizon because we believe that talent can be found anywhere. For students, it is an opportunity to experience a business environment by solving live Unilever issues. It allows students to link theory with practice and also provides them with a challenge to compete with students from different campuses and win a Unilever accreditation. On the other hand, for us, it is an opportunity to engage with the talented students of key campuses in Bangladesh, which helps us to strengthen our brand as an employer among the students,” says Jerry Jose, Human Resource Director, UBL.

Nusrant Sharmin Moutushi, one of the members from the IBA team explains, “We have participated in many other competitions before, but making a marketing plan for a real brand of Unilever was a challenge indeed. We learned a lot from the esteemed judges as they scrutinised our presentations and pointed out the areas of improvement.”

DID YOU KNOW?

Niels Bohr

Nobel Laureate and Physicist, Niels Henrik David Bohr was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, on 7 October 1885. His father was professor of physiology at the University of Copenhagen (it is his name which is given to the Bohr shift or Bohr Effect). Despite having a religious background, he later resigned his membership from the Lutheran Church and became an atheist.His brother was Harald Bohr, a mathematician and Olympic footballer who played on the Danish national team. Niels Bohr was a passionate footballer as well, and the two brothers played a number of matches for the Copenhagen-based Akademisk Boldklub. In 1903, Bohr enrolled as an undergraduate at Copenhagen University, initially studying philosophy and mathematics. In 1905, prompted by a gold medal competition sponsored by the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, he conducted a series of experiments to examine the properties of surface tension, using his father's laboratory in the university, familiar to him from assisting there since childhood. His essay won the prize, and it was this success that decided Bohr to abandon philosophy and adopt physics. He continued as a graduate student at the University of Copenhagen, under the physicist Christian Christiansen, receiving his doctorate in 1911.

Information Source: Internet