News Archive

An entrepreneurial student group and a new social app will benefit from the assistance of 90 third year Marketing students at the UWA Business School.

The Contemporary Marketing Issues students will, under the guidance of Associate Professor Paul Harrigan and his teaching team, run social media marketing campaigns for two Perth-based start-up companies.

Each team of students will create pictures and videos, run competitions, create polls, and engage with communities - and then share the content on social media. Two winning teams will be chosen, with students receiving prizes donated by Business News and Spacecubed .

Associate Professor Harrigan said the challenge would require students to unleash their creativity.

"A successful social media campaign has to create content that provides value to the target consumers; content that entertains or educates them, not pushes promotions on them. This takes some out-there thinking," he said.

"Students will learn that marketing has changed. You can't ‘shout' at consumers to get them to listen; you have to give them something to make them appreciate you. On social media consumers can easily switch off to brands who market to them. The aim of this unit is to teach students how to keep consumers engaged."

Entrepreneurial student group Profectus will benefit from the boost to its social media campaign.

Profectus CEO Mark Shelton hopes the increased marketing will allow Profectus to support more students to create their own businesses and social enterprises.

"From Profectus's perspective, the opportunity to have 50 students experiment with our social media marketing is awesome. I hope the MKTG3307 students learn a lot from the class, and I hope that Profectus can help inspire them to get involved in start-ups in the future," Shelton said.

"I can't wait to see what the students come up with! I'll be on the judging panel for the final presentations and I'll be reading the final reports. I'm definitely keen to learn from the students' experiences during their social media projects, so we can refine our marketing strategies at Profectus and get more students engaged in entrepreneurship."

Students in the other half of the class will run a social media campaign for Tiinkk , an app which allows users to post photos to be voted on by their friends, networks, or the wider public.

Tiinkk founder Josh Winterton wants to expand the app's reach into the United States, and hopes the student-run campaigns will grow the app's user base.

"I'm excited to see how the students will approach Tiinkk, and how far outside the box they will think in order to engage with people and provoke interest using the tools at their disposal," Winterton said.

"I believe there isn't one way to marketing, and as much as my team and myself have thought about the ways of marketing and development it will be interesting to see the fresh, new and objective ideas the students come up with."

The teams will deliver their reports and presentations at the end of May. For further information, contact Associate Professor Paul Harrigan on +618 6488 1979, [email protected] or @drpaulharrigan.

Media references

Karen Della Torre (UWA Business School)                               (+61 8) 6488 8538
Verity Chia (UWA Business School)                                        (+61 8) 6488 1346