L-R: James Sutton, Phillip Agnew, Eva Pass, Graham Luke

Entrants of the competition with Graham Luke (centre)

Two Sussex Marketing students have jointly won a competition organised by faculty from the Department of Business and Management by developing and pitching a marketing strategy to a real local business. 

Phillip Agnew and Eva Pass - both students on the BSc Marketing and Management (with a professional placement year) - beat five other teams to a £1,000 cash prize by responding to a brief from Brighton-based betting business Blue Riband Bet. Their task was to develop a creative campaign to both raise awareness among the company's target demographic and to acquire new business.

Blue Riband Bet was founded in 2015 by Managing Director Graham Luke. Like many smaller start-ups, the company does not have a dedicated marketing team in-house. For this reason, and because he wanted fresh thinking from undergraduates, Graham agreed to work with Sussex Marketing tutor James Sutton to create a real brief that the students could respond to – the solutions to which would be genuinely valuable to his business.

Graham commented:

“It has been wonderful to see how it quickly the competition developed from a tentative approach regarding the idea to fully developed marketing proposals and creatives. I’ve been impressed with the degree to which the students engaged and developed the brief.

“There are several deliverable concepts that I will look to develop further. I would like to thank the School of Business, Management & Economics, the participating students and James Sutton in particular their effort and engagement in making the competition a successful project.”

James, who organised the competition with fellow Marketing academics René Moolenaar and Chris Storey, added: 

"Teams were given just three weeks to develop their proposals. To their credit, all of the five teams in the competition did some form of research in that time, to help inform their strategy and creative development.

"The presentations were all of a very high standard. Special mention for production of a very good concept film must go to Jin Wang, Geordene Ritarita and Yoana Yordanova. 

"Although all involved performed extremely well, even more so because this was the first time any of the students had responded to a real brief, unfortunately there could only be one winning team - Eva and Phillip had a very mature and intelligent response to the brief, presenting a holistic marketing strategy as well as ideas to help Graham answer his two business challenges."

Jin Wang, whose team received a Highly Commended award, commented:

“Using theories in a practical context with the real client brief definitely created an opportunity for us to have an insight and a real taste on the practical side of marketing.

"Working on a real business case pushed students’ understanding of marketing and communications further and made it less abstract and even more enjoyable.”

Phillip said of his and Eva’s win:

"The competition was a fantastic opportunity for us to apply everything we've learnt in our studies to a real business. We spent weeks adapting what we learnt in class into a tangible and useful business proposal for Blue Riband to use.

“Getting the chance to pitch these ideas in front of the company's CEO and founder was an eye-opening experience and we feel really privileged to have been given his time."

Congratulations to all competition finalists:

• Phillip Agnew
• Stephen Akinwale
• Allie Cleve
• Danny Gibson
• Joss Haring
• Jamie Jardine-Miles
• Eva Pass
• Geordene Ritarita
• Jessica Scully
• Eugene Taheri-Ford
• Jin Wang
• Yoana Yordanova