Congratulations to the three ESG-UQAM winners of the GOMAC 2023 competition!
The GOMAC (Global Online Marketing Academic Challenge) is a global competition open to all students enrolled in a first or second-cycle course at a higher education institution. Student teams, in collaboration with a client, compete to create, execute, optimize, and generate reports on marketing campaigns using Google Ads and other digital advertising platforms/channels.
This year, 101 teams (357 students) from Germany, India, Lithuania, Switzerland and, of course, Canada took on the challenge.
For many years, adviso has been supporting participants from the ESG (École des sciences de la gestion de l’UQAM) in the competition by offering a $2,000 scholarship to the team that performed the best.
This year is special because the top-ranking ESG team is also the overall winner of the competition!
We would like to warmly congratulate Alexandra Defert, Marika Labrie and Natalia Gomez, all of whom emerged as the winners of this challenge.
Under the supervision of Professor Luca Sole, the team collaborated with The Aristopaws, a non-profit organization whose mission is to save, care for, and find new homes for abandoned dogs and cats in Quebec requiring significant and/or urgent medical care.
For several years, our media practice director, Nicolas Villeneuve, has been involved in training ESG students in digital marketing, particularly in mentoring GOMAC teams.
This year, in addition to the scholarship, we offered Alexandra, Marika, and Natalia the opportunity to participate in an "Ask Me Anything" session with our CEO, Elizabeth Henry, our president, Jean-François Renaud, and our media practice director, Nicolas Villeneuve. Here are some excerpts:
Alexandra: “What is the most fun/challenging project you have worked on?”
Jean-François Renaud: “There have been many. What I love is when we can unblock something—when we’re participating in changing perceptions and bringing a different point of view to a situation faced by the client. This is another aspect of the agency reality: Consultants have a kind of superpower because they look at things from the outside. This is what lets them get around barriers to processes. This is what brings the most value, in my opinion.”
Elizabeth Henry: “What I find most stimulating is when we get down to what’s most important: the consumer. When we’re asking real questions about what customers are experiencing on the ground. I’m thinking for example of our client National Bank: During Covid, consumption trends and the concerns of customers changed. We saw in search intent and by talking to consumers that everyone was asking a lot of questions about “what’s going to happen with my investments…” etc., and customer service was swamped. Marketing should help respond to consumers’ concerns. That’s how the “Banque de réponses" initiative came about, which respected the brand’s existing connection with its customers and facilitated answers to consumers’ specific questions.”
Marika: “What is the everyday experience of working at an agency like?”
Nicolas Villeneuve: “In media as with our other areas of expertise, there are several types of activities. There is a practical aspect: designing media strategies, activating campaigns, tracking performance and campaign results. We have quite a few internal and external meetings (operational scrums, alignment sessions, continuous consulting sessions with clients…). And we have a lot of sharing sessions, whether it’s between different areas of media expertise but also outside of media (interdepartmental alignment sessions, lunch and learns, etc.). This allows us the most objective, 360 view possible so we can make the right decisions and get the best results for our clients. So it’s a good mix of performance, fun, talent, training and learning. The market is constantly evolving, so helping each other lets us all take our performance up a notch.”
Natalia: “Given our current economy, when every penny matters for companies, what is it like working at the agency?”
Jean-François Renaud: “It’s true that marketing is often seen as an expense by companies. We’ve already experienced this situation in 2008. In this kind of context, companies emphasize performance and the need to wisely invest their money where it will have the biggest impact. Adviso is well-positioned to fulfill that—the profitability of our activities for our clients has always been our obsession.”
Nicolas Villeneuve: “Part of our role as a consultancy is to help our clients choose the right channels and to suggest optimizations that will lead to better results with the available budget”.
