Royal Challengers win Scottish marketing competition and are named ‘Masters of their Marketing Career’

The Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) Scotland has today announced Bhavika Rathore and Pranav Jha are the winners of its inaugural postgraduate marketing competition, The Challenge.

The competition was sponsored by Highland Park single malt Scotch Whisky, a multi award-winning luxury brand, crafted at the Highland Park distillery in Kirkwall, Orkney since 1798. Entrants were set the task of recommending a brand partnership to reinforce Highland Park’s ‘A Wild Harmony’ positioning and credentials as a super-premium brand.

Teams were also challenged to outline how the proposed brands would work together to engage, inspire, and excite Highland Park’s consumer target audience. The shortlisted teams presented their proposals to a panel of experienced marketers and brand custodians at the finalist pitching day in Glasgow on 21 June.

Bhavika Rathore and Pranav Jha of team Royal Challengers  were crowned the Chartered Institute of Marketing’s ‘Masters of their Marketing Career’ at the competition final after impressing the judges with their pitch at an in-person event in Glasgow on 21 June.

Discussing their experience winning the competition, Bhavika Rathore and Pranav Jha said: “We’re so excited to have won The Challenge and to put the University of Strathclyde on the map for marketing."

“We tackled the brief as we would have approached a live client project, putting everything we’ve studied on our master's degrees into practice. The final presentation was quite nerve-wracking, but we received excellent feedback on our ideas. We’re all glad that we took part and would recommend it to next year’s postgrads.”

The team impressed judges with their creative approach and suggestion of a highly relevant global brand partner and their great rationale and justification of this recommendation.

Discussing the competition Paul Condron, Brand Director, Highland Park said: “It has been exciting to see so many postgraduate students from across Scotland display such talent and enthusiasm for The Challenge. The quality of the teams in the inaugural year of The Challenge was amazing. Team Royal Challengers delivered an excellent presentation with insightful and innovative ideas, which really impressed the judging panel. I would like to congratulate the winners once again; they are wholly deserving of their new title ‘Masters of their Marketing Career’, and I am sure they will go on to do amazing things.”

Ellie Murphy, Chair of the CIM Scotland Committee, said: “We created The Challenge to offer postgraduate students in Scotland the opportunity to highlight their knowledge of marketing in a real-life brief that will challenge them to think creatively. This type of exposure provides genuine value to postgraduate students who are entering the job market and helps brands to work with a key demographic who will play a significant role in our future society. Congratulations to all the shortlisted teams who have worked extremely hard on their proposals, and a huge congratulations to team Royal Challengers whose well thought out presentation really shone through.”

“I would also like to extend my thanks to both Highland Park and Edrington who have been amazing partners throughout this journey.”

Competition runners up included Jennifer Easton, Jade Lorimer, Faith Lingle and Lucie Ryan entering as JJLL from Heriot-Watt University came in second place whilst Ujjwal Kumar, Monish Sareen and Shivangam Vats entering as team Nevis Strathclyders from the University of Strathclyde came in third.

In its inaugural year, The Challenge is a competition run by CIM Scotland designed to recognise and reward the marketing talent among postgraduate students at Scottish universities. It sees students from across the country compete to respond to a real-life marketing challenge, in a bid to win the title of ‘Masters of their Marketing Career’.