The Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) case challenges students to think creatively and strategically in a realistically time constrained situation. It is assumed that the students have received a briefing (in the form of a case study) one week prior to the meeting. As a judge in this event, your job is to assume the role of the client described in the case scenario and evaluate how effectively each team presents their Integrated Marketing Communications Plan.
The Case Scenario
The students will have received the case information one week prior to the meeting. During the week, they will have access to any broadly available resources, although they will have been instructed not to contact the client organization, and to work on their analysis and plan on their own, with no input from faculty, peers or industry professionals. Within the scenario of the case, it will be assumed that the Integrated Marketing Communications team has not yet met the judges/client, but has received the brief case outlining the situation.
General Judging Considerations
The students’ role in this event is to present an Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) Plan. Students will be expected to identify the key challenge(s), propose objectives and recommend strategies to address those challenges and ultimately provide an execution plan for the client. Through practical application of integrated marketing communications components, typically the situation will be based on a B2C market and will call for a strategic and creative IMC plan. Students should be able to discuss their plan using industry standard terminology. It is assumed that each judge is from the client company.
Event Objectives
To demonstrate the students’ ability to:
- Analyze a problem situation
- Develop appropriate marketing recommendations utilizing available Integrated Marketing strategies
- Justify their recommended strategies based on the marketing issue identified, target market and budget
- Present the proposal in a convincing manner
Eligibility
- All students must be from marketing or marketing-related programs.
- Please note that post-diploma, graduate certificate or degree program students are not eligible for OCMC.
- Repeat OCMC students cannot enter an event in which they previously participated.
Student Preparation
- Participants should familiarize themselves with the evaluation criteria. Please refer to the case evaluation form for details.
- Students are not allowed to contact the client company in any way (phone or email) when preparing their plan. They may research the website for information about the company, but personal contact is forbidden.
- Once they have received the case scenario, students are expected to work on the analysis and plan on their own, with no input from faculty, peers or industry professionals.
Presentation
- Presentations must not exceed 15 minutes. There will be a five-minute question period following the presentation with judges.
- Participants are responsible for managing their time when presenting. Judges will be conscious of time when listening to presentations and will ask a team to stop if necessary.
- At the conclusion of the question period the students will leave the room.
- The judges will use the remaining minutes in the cycle to complete the evaluation form.
Evaluation by Judges
- Judges are to ask questions of the students (challenge the students) at the end of each presentation.
- Judges will not provide any verbal feedback to participants during the competition. They are permitted to ask questions during the official question period.
- Judges will complete an evaluation form with numerical scores and appropriate summary comments.
- Judges will rank each team from top to bottom. In the case of a tie between any of the top 5 teams, they will re-evaluate those teams to break the tie. There cannot be a tie amongst teams ranked one to five.
- Judges decisions are final!
Feedback
Each team will receive feedback from the host College approximately three weeks following the competition.
Event Scoring
| 1st Place | 10 points |
| 2nd Place | 8 points |
| 3rd Place | 6 points |
| 4th Place | 4 points |
| 5th Place | 2 points |