20 January 2022

Three Westminster students awarded silver prize in Data and Marketing Association Breakthrough Award

Three Digital Marketing Management MSc students have been awarded the silver prize in the Data and Marketing Association Breakthrough Awards competition. 

The Data and Marketing Association (DMA) is Europe’s biggest community of data-driven marketers. Its initiatives feature inputs from creative leaders, innovative data and marketing practitioners, and some of the industry's most pioneering thinkers.

The Data and Marketing Association Breakthrough Award is a competition hosted by PWC at the DMA Breakthrough Award Lab, where ten teams from various universities around the UK compete for the top three places. The industry-recognised award challenges students to impress some of the biggest names in marketing by working on a creative brief for a real client.

The teams worked on a response to a brief set by PWC which was provided to them on the spot for real life clients. They were tested on creative thinking, their marketing knowledge, teamworking skills and ability to convey their ideas concisely and passionately. Two teams represented Westminster, one of which was selected for the top three places.

The three shortlisted teams further pitched to three PWC judges, which was then refined based on the judge’s feedback. The Westminster team, comprised of Mollie Stevens, Sharmini Jaya Kumar and Francesca Boffini, were named winners of the Silver award.

All students were set the task of coming up with a marketing campaign to help the UK food and beverage industry get back to growth after the pandemic by doubling the number of hot drinks sold, whilst at the same time, halving its impact on the planet. The Westminster team named their campaign ‘The Pret Juicebox’, which involved gamifying the Pret app by promoting a juice leader board and profile section to encourage consumers to move further up the leader board with every juice purchase. 

In order to half the impact, the Westminster team introduced recycling ‘juice boxes’; vending style machines that take the plastic bottles in exchange for points, updating the profile, and donating to charity with every 10 bottles.

Dr Brenda Patil, Lecturer in Management and Marketing at Westminster Business School, said: “The DMA Breakthrough Award is a marketing campaign challenge, which was a great opportunity for our students at Westminster Business School to gain an industry exposure. It was a challenging competition aimed at testing their on the spot thinking, creativity and marketing skills against many other competitive competitors. Our winning team has made us all proud of their brilliant performance delivering their creative pitch to industry experts and bagging a silver.” 

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