The 2008 Google Online Marketing Challenge, which attracted 8,000 global participants, is the focus of a special session at the Australia New Zealand Marketing Academy (ANZMAC) annual conference today at Sydney Showground.
A panel of academics, including Larry Neale from Queensland University of Technology and Jamie Murphy from the University of Western Australia will discuss the outcomes of the first ever Google Online Marketing Challenge. Ashley Gorringe from Google will also join the panel.
“The global initiative was started in Australia and the first Challenge was held this year. With Google on board we were able to make it global and achieve a phenomenal participation rate,” Dr Neale said.
“We had 1,600 student teams participate from 47 countries located across the Asia Pacific (including Australia and New Zealand), the Americas, Europe, Middle East and Africa. Winners from the regional areas then competed to be overall global winner.”
The overall winning team from University of Western Australia marketed a rock climbing business. The Asia Pacific winning team from the Australian Graduate School of Management marketed a bakery from California. All teams used Google AdWords with the competition running live online in real time.
Teams sought permission from small to medium enterprises (SMEs) with websites to market their businesses. The SMEs did not have to be local to the team and spanned a number of areas such as small tourism, IT and even local councils.
Two unexpected but welcome outcomes was that 70% of SMEs wanted to increase their associations with the Universities and students across the world reported taking up new jobs as a result of their participation in the Challenge.
The special session will evaluate the 2008 Challenge and discuss how 2009 may run differently. “We aim during the special session to take the audience through the process of how to get involved with the Challenge, the lessons learned and what we can do to improve the process for 2009,” Dr Neale said.
Hosted by the University of Western Sydney, the ANZMAC annual conference attracts over 500 delegates made up of academics and students who come to network and exchange ideas about the world of marketing.
