Ad-Venture

Event Introduction

The billboard screams at you…the newspaper calls out…The RJ bleats it out on prime-time radio…A new player is on the lookout for opportunities. He needs an effective campaign to overcome the cut-throat competition in the market and reign supreme in the increasingly media savvy world or run the risk of being labeled ‘another run of the mill’ in the crowd…. Here’s Ad-Venture…

Problem statement

The client

Client is an early stage technology start-up established in April, 2007 by four experienced professionals. The client is operating from Mangalore with its sales office located in Bangalore. The client specializes in web technologies and has till date designed, developed and implemented several projects including an ERP package for educational institutions and an online LMS (Learning management system) among others. But all of these were B2B solutions and none of them were accessible to the general public. The following are some details for financial year 2008-09:

No of employee at the beginning of  financial year:   15

No. employees now:                                    34

INCOME(INR)                                       (In lacs) 

Sales                                                 170 

Service                                               15

Consultancy                                           10

TOTAL                                                 195

EXPENSES

OPEX                                                  105

CAPEX                                                 30

TOTAL                                                 135

NET                                                  60

The auditor has estimated the market worth of the company to be close to 10 cr.

The client has not worked much on branding aspects. Most of the employees are techies except for few HR executives and a team of three business executives which is essentially involved in giving project proposals and presentations to clients.

The client has been working on a new product for the past 4 months and now has a fully functional version of the software.

The Product

The client has come up with a product based on SaaS (Software as a service) framework. Though the product is fully functional , the presentation layer, Logos and the front-end have not been much worked upon. The product is an online web application for facilitating placement procedures of colleges/Educational institutions. It brings together the recruiters and the students on the same platform facilitating the recruitment procedure.

Revenue model

• From subscribing institute- There will be subscription packs available of various durations (for e.g. 1yr, 2yr, 5yrs, lifetime) each with fixed number of free login ids for e.g. 200 ids with 1 year pack, 500 ids with 2yr pack, 3000 ids with 5yr pack etc. After allotted ids are over new id packs can be obtained after paying a certain amount.
• From companies- companies have to pay a certain amount as basic fee for them to be listed on the site. After that, they can subscribe for services like résumé search, online interviews, online exam etc.
• From Online Advertisements: a fair amount of revenues can be generated from online advertisements.

• • Google Adsense
  • Doubleclick.net

• • Educational accessories
  • Computers and computer peripherals
  • Mobile phones and other electronic gadgets
  • Higher Education/ Certifications / Ability measurements tests / Educational Institutes
  • Air travel
  • Educational sites etc.

Functionalities

Educational institutes:

Create institute’s profile, Create ids for bona-fide students, résumé templates, search for companies, send invites to companies, Create placement calendar, organize web conferences, webinars etc, MIS reports, placement graphs, notice boards, file uploads, etc.

Companies:

Create company profile, create job profiles, view institute’s profile, search institute by course, view resume’s, shared whiteboards, online presentations, video conferencing , online interview, online test etc.

Bona-fide students

Résumé creation, placement calendar, Notice boards, company registration, downloads, create profile, online tests, online interviews, placement Report, Download center, previous year placement papers, create blogs, higher education guides.

Guest Users

Read blogs, Forums, Partial access to previous placement papers.

NOTE: if you think any extra feature which adds value to the product can be incorporated, feel free to have a discussion with us.

The Deliverables

The client is looking for a good marketing strategy, Advertisement campaign for its new product – an online placement portal. The client has certain budgetary constraints as it is an early stage startup. Client is ready to experiment and is open for non-conventional ways of advertising. The client has yet not finalized the product’s name, logo and theme and they need your help with the same.

The client has tentatively identified three kinds of prospective customers.

• Companies
• Educational Institutions
• Guest users

Client wants to have a report on whether three different marketing strategies need to be adopted for these three or a single campaign will suffice. What are the different marketing materials required, such as brochures, CDs etc. And how much will each cost. You also need to provide them with exact plan of action along with correct specifications.

For example, if a newspaper ad campaign is involved then

A multicolored, quarter page ad in Times of India, Ascent supplement on 3rd page in first week of September. This ad will have Mr. XYZ posing for us. This will cost Rs. 1000000.

The client does not have much brand value associated with its name. In one of the client’s internal meetings an idea was coined to try to create a brand image for the company by piggy backing product publicity campaign by using new company logos, tagline etc. However, nothing has been finalized yet as no consensus was reached. Some people said that being essentially a B2B solutions company, branding is not that important and incorporating it in the new product campaign may have adverse effect on sales. But, other people rejected this saying that if they want to move into product domain then they have to create a brand image for themselves. So, the client wants you to do an impact analysis of doing the same.

Event Format

Stage 1: Off-campus

Product Logo- In either of JPG, JPEG, PNG , GIF, BMP format

• Name, USP, Tagline
  • A DOC file mentioning these
  • An image file In either of JPG, JPEG, PNG , GIF, BMP format with fonts, size, Colors, Alignment and arrangement.
• Main page design of the online website for the product – In either of JPG, JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP, HTML, SWF format.
• A plan of action as described above along with exact timelines, description, and costs involved.
• Impact analysis study as described above.

Stage 2: The Showdown

• Hard copies of all the marketing material listed in plan of action report(2 copies)
• A sales presentation either for Educational Institution or a Company or both

Rules and Regulations

• Team size is limited to a maximum of 4 members and a minimum of 2.
• All the deliverables of stage 1 should be zipped and named in format <college_name-team_name-one_contact_number>.zip
• Size of zip file should not exceed 4 MB.
• Last date for submission in of stage 1 (off campus) is 15^th October.
• Submissions should be mailed to ad-venture@engineer.org.in
• Stage 2 of the event will be held during ENGINEER- golden jubilee edition, 29^th oct to 1^st Nov. Exact dates will be notified soon.
• Creativity and feasibility are the only judging criteria.
• Inability to produce hard copies of marketing material listed in plan of action report during stage 2 will be penalized.
• New product features can be added only after a feasibility discussion with us.
• Do NOT make any assumption. Contact us if you need to.
• Be Creative and innovative! ALL THE BEST!

Contact details:

• Mudit Gupta : +91-9916816957
• You can email your queries to ad-venture@engineer.org.in