Thursday, 12 June 2008

It's not often that university students have the opportunity to use ‘real' money and work with ‘real' companies, but over 200 undergraduate and graduate students from The University of Western Australia have just spent three weeks honing their e-marketing skills as part of an international competition.

The Google Online Marketing Challenge involved student teams from UWA's Business School helping 30 local businesses to develop their online marketing.

The UWA students were among almost 10,000 students in 47 countries competing in the Challenge.  Each team received a US$ 200 credit to use towards the AdWords program, which allows businesses to run sponsored links on Google searches based on key words that users are likely to type when searching for products.

UWA's Associate Professor Jamie Murphy, the key academic organiser of the global competition, said students worked with businesses to determine the key words.  Students managed the AdWords account for three weeks.

Professor Murphy said the challenge gave students the opportunity to develop their skills and experience in e-marketing.  "It's a great way for marketing and advertising students to gain practical experience before they enter the job market," he said.  "Students work with real money and real businesses, rather than doing a simulation exercise.  And businesses appreciate the free advertising campaign."

Each student team had to submit pre-campaign and post-campaign summaries.  Experts at Google will prune the 1600 teams to 15 teams.  An academic panel, including Professor Murphy, will judge the written summaries to determine the winners, although Professor Murphy will not be a judge if one of his teams makes it to the final 15.

The winning team will visit Google headquarters in California to meet the people who created AdWords.  The Asia Pacific region winner will visit Google's Sydney office.  Based on positive feedback from participating businesses, students and lecturers, Google and A/Prof Murphy plan a bigger Challenge in 2009.

The Google Online Marketing Challenge https://www.google.com/onlinechallenge/

The Challenge Global Academic Judging Panel https://www.google.com/onlinechallenge/panel.html

Media references

Associate Professor Jamie Murphy (UWA Business School)  (+61 8)  6488 1979
Janine MacDonald (UWA Public Affairs)  (+61 8)  6488 5563  /  (+61 4) 32 637 716

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