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Results out for Wunderman's Z Academy 'Marketer of the Year 2021' competition
The winners are being awarded an all-expense paid trip to this year's Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
Wunderman's Z Academy Marketer of the Year 2021 competition has produced two sets of winners -- Sybil Mulokwa and Brandon Viney of VCU Brandcenter in Virginia, and Alvin Wee and Liat Beng Neo of Nanyang Tech University in Singapore.
The quartet will travel to this year's Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, and again in 2021. The winners will get to be a part of the delegation, and will be provided with round-trip airfare, hotel accommodations and attendance at the Wunderman Global Creative Meeting.
Contestants were required to pretend to have been named Marketer of the Year in the year 2021 and submit acceptance speeches, videos and campaign ideas. They were required to tell the story of how and what they did to make themselves so successful. Some contestants chose to create new products and approaches to marketing, while others revived existing methods.
Congratulating the winning teams, Stephane Faggianelli, president, Wunderman Asia-Pacific, expresses in an official communiqué, "It is refreshing to witness the innovative work that these young stars have produced. In the Asia-Pacific region, we need to cultivate more young talent to lead the industry."
Mulokwa and Viney comprised 'Team Cardinal Collection', while Wee and Beng Neo operated under the pseudonym 'Marketyr'. The former duo was inspired by the concept of how losing a new business pitch could present a philanthropic opportunity for the advertising industry, if the creative energy involved is channelled appropriately. The latter duo's idea revolved around the ability of social networking platforms (SNPs), and their ability to offer consumers instant feedback and multiple opinions; their 'Friends-with-Benefits' entry was a hybrid of viral marketing and buzz marketing.
"Singapore's obsession with social networking has inspired us. We wanted to simplify the way marketing is done for both consumers and producers by seamlessly weaving it into our lifestyle. We want to revolutionise the way social network marketing is done and move away from hard-selling forms of advertising," say Beng Neo and Wee of 'Team Marketyr'. The duo believes that consumers are more likely to trust their friends' endorsements of products, thus making the combination of technology and social marketing a potent one that creates a ripple effect inside a given community.
Z Academy is Wunderman's international learning programme for tech-savvy digital and design students. Since its launch, Wunderman has selected only those schools that meet its criteria in collaboration, digital and design skills, and commitment to innovative learning models.