Marketing students innovate better future for children together with local charity organisations

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Marketing students innovate better future for children together with local charity organisations

Friday, 08 January 2021

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After a successful Semester 1, 2020, partnering with The Daniel Morcombe Foundation and The Smith Family in the New Product Development unit (MKT3600), Semester 2 started strong with new students yet again innovating fantastic products to create a better tomorrow for children.

Senior Lecturer and Course Coordinator for Hospitality and Tourism Dr Greg Willson, says every semester there are new brilliant ideas that can really make a difference in the community.

For the assignment, students were asked to imagine that they were employed as the marketing and innovation managers for one of the organisations. They were then asked to develop a new product that would embrace the theme ‘making a better tomorrow for children’ and espouse the values of the chosen organisation.

“The new product could for example focus on innovation around healthy food and living, products that will reduce childhood injuries, products that increase literacy and educational outcomes and so on,” says Dr Willson.

Jason Bromell, one Dr Willson’s students, says they were taught that most ideas come from “standing on the shoulder of giants”. He says the idea of his group was no different.

“Instead of just a donation to the charity, our idea was to give the consumer the chance to actually purchase an item such as pencils, books or clothing items and entice them to impulse purchase at the online or instore checkout of a strategic alliance retail partner,” says Jason.

But the assignment involved many more components than “just” the idea generation process.

“We worked through customer profile, concept and market testing, brand strategy, packaging and product launch and timing. We also derived metrics to ensure we were achieving our objectives during the campaign,” Jason continues.

Jason continues to emphasis the value of working with real charity organisations in an assignment and how it infused a sense of personal pride.

“A charity is different from a normal business because the consumer doesn’t really consume, they give! So, to work on such a worthy project with a real organisation like The Smith Family was both challenging and exciting. It made us feel that we were contributing to making a difference to children's lives,” he finishes.

Please see below for the winning teams and students (based on highest achieved marks) in the industry assignment:

Daniel Morcombe Foundation:

Darshana Sekar
Joshua Martyn
Emma Yates
Victoria Clinch
Danielle Marazis

The Smith Family:

Natalie Gonsalves
Faith Ng’uni
Ella Magookin
Jason Bromell
Mikayla Coombes
Franzi Ohly-Smith
Emily Calalesina
Rebecca Parker

A very well done to our teams and winners!

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School of Business and Law