On 21 October, as part of our Open Days, students were invited to unleash their ideas and take part in a marketing campaign.

Source Academy, a concept devised by Camberley based company Source Supplies, ran a competition at the College. Students were given the opportunity to raise awareness of a product or service offered by their company and present their ideas via an innovative and clever marketing strategy and dare to be different! 

The teams were given a brief, two days in advance and had from 9:00am on the day to develop final presentations, which were shown to the judges at 6:00pm. Joining, Ollie Rastall, Director of Source Supplies and Katie Marlow our Community Engagement Manager, as judges, we were delighted to welcome back, ex student James Corlett, now a Senior Account Manager at OgilvyOne Business.

Over 30 students took part and the event helped teach them about the creative processes and considerations, when designing marketing campaigns. The winning team of Hannah Bowen, Kennedy Robinson and Mohammed Dawud, will see their ideas rolled out in a real business.

Source Supplies are Associates of the Community Matters Partnership (CMPP), who are working together to help raise the aspirations and progression of local young people.

Katy Marlow, Project Coordinator for CMPP and our Community Engagement Manager, explains how the campaign was conceived “At a recent Community Minds event, hosted by CMPP, we identified a need to make young people more work ready, through creating concepts which could be turned into real marketing campaigns.  As one of the judges of the final presentations I was delighted to be able to represent CMPP and contribute to this valuable experience for our students.”

Ollie Rastall, Director of Source Supplies adds “Source Academy was an idea I had in which students would visit our business and work in each department, honing existing skills whilst developing new ones.

Taking this concept on the road and creating specific projects, seemed an easier way to engage with a larger number of students, without them having to take more time than necessary away from their studies.

The application from the students was very impressive and the groups all produced ideas that were credible and remained true to the brief. Not only have we created some interest in marketing, many students were quizzical about entrepreneurship too.”

Anja Harwood, Subject Leader, Business, commented “The competition brought students into contact with a real business and helped them to understand the competitive environment. They were able to create something tangible in a day and appreciate the concept of working as a team.  As a result of taking part, one student, who hadn’t previously considered applying to university, has decided to take that route, two students have the opportunity of work experience at a prestigious advertising agency and one student is using the prize money to help fund a summer community project in Bali."

Jack Jones, who along with Tamlyn Izzett and Harrison Maddox, was part of the team who were runners up, said “It was a fantastic day and really gave an insight into something I would love to do in the future.”

Other students who took part commented “I learned a lot about marketing and working in a group”, “The experience will be my driving force for the challenges I’ll be facing in the future” and “It helped me to determine to study marketing at University”.