USI-Evansville Regional Airport Marketing Challenge is open to all currently registered USI students in any major.

Rules 

1. All applications must be submitted in English.

2. All team members must be currently registered USI students.

3. To participate, you do not have to have a team.  You can go solo.

4. Team Applications will be accepted now until the deadline on Monday, October 17, 2016.  Only one person needs to submit the initial log in/register application. The team leader can then invite their team members, which will send them an email message and ask them to create a profile to check out the application. All deadlines are in (CDT).

5. After completing your initial team application, there will be three more rounds of the challenge requiring updated deliverables/applications.  Each round is a judging "gate" to determine whether or not your team continues to move forward to the next round.

Goal of Challenge

Your challenge is to develop an original marketing campaign to capture more of the air travel market share for Evansville Regional Airport. Yes, this is very broad in scope.  But, this is your challenge.  You need to create a campaign that is specifically focused to grow travel market share. You need to determine what demographics and why, what media to employ and why, etc. Think of Evansville Regional Airport as your client, and you are going to pitch them a campaign for travel share growth. Start working immediately on your research so you will be adequately prepared for the Round 2 Q&A session with Evansville Regional Airport executives. This will be the opportunity to ask questions and converge your ideas, research, and overall campaign before Round 3.   

Judges

The winners will be selected by a panel of judges who are looking at a range of criteria including market share growth potential, passion, creativity, level of marketing campaign development (messaging, branding, and advertising mediums used to deliver content), "Wow Factor", and your pitching skills. Each judge’s score is weighed equally.

Prizes

1. $500 cash prize to winning team.

2. Internships at the Evansville Regional Airport to two of the students of the winning team (Members of the winning team will be interviewed by an executive team from Evansville Regional Airport, individually, to determine the internship recipients).

Final winner(s) will be determined during Global Entrepreneurship Week: November 14-20, 2016.

To Have a Chance at Winning

Create a competitive marketing campaign to:

• Increase Evansville Regional Airport's air travel market share

Make sure your campaign has:

• Relevant components of a sales and marketing plan
• A timeline to market

Design a campaign with:

• Messaging, branding, and advertising mediums to deliver content
• Visual renderings
  • Graphics will help sell your idea
  • Rendering of what campaign looks like in action is a plus
• Creative elements
  • Can you add video of your campaign being tested?
  • Do you have ideas for extensions to the campaign?

Think of all your customers:

• Purchase influencers
• Purchase decision makers

Keep the competition in mind:

Research the existing competition - for example, what are competitors in the market doing. Understand the experience of passengers who use alternative airports in the region.                              

Make a great pitch:

There is much information available online for making a great pitch.  From these resources, extract what is relevant to the pitch you need to make to your client; Evansville Regional Airport.