Brandwitz 2014: Dare. Dream. Discover.

Brandwitz is an inter business school marketing competition held annually by IBA Communication Club of the Institute of Business Administration, University of Dhaka. Every year, the competition hosts undergraduate participants from various business schools around Bangladesh who apply their understanding and expertise to solve real-life business and social problems. Since its inception, the competition has served as a platform that brought students and reputed business leaders of the country under one roof.

Brandwitz '14 kicked off with road shows at 20 different universities across four divisions -- Dhaka, Chittagong, Sylhet and Khulna. Road shows were held outside Dhaka for the first time at Shahjalal University of Science & Technology, Chittagong University and IUB, Chittagong. In fact, out of the 42 teams, 6 were from outside Dhaka. A daylong workshop marked the official inauguration of this competition on August 6. The first session of the workshop was conducted by Drabir Alam, Associate Director at Cookie Jar. Ali Hussain, Head of Marketing at Philip Morris International Bangladesh, conducted the second session of the workshop.

The competition unfolded in four challenging rounds. Round 1 was a case competition, Round 2 focused on product branding, Round 3 dealt with practical marketing and the final round was based on a social awareness campaign. The first two rounds were held at the IBA premises. With only 12 teams surviving through, the third round was held outside Dhaka at St. Nicholas Missionary High School, a 100 year-old school located in Gazipur. From the initial 42 teams, filtered from the best business schools of Bangladesh, 5 remained to fight it out for the title. After a nerve-wracking final at the Radisson Blu Water Garden on August 30, team A-Dim -- comprising of four second-year IBA students, Inamuzzaman, Arka Moin, DM Emtiaj Shahjahan and Iftekhar Mahmud -- came out as the winner. Simplex from IBA was the first runner up and the second runner up was JJ & the Chowdhurys from NSU.

The judges' panel for the gala round included Mir Nowbut Ali, Head of Marketing, Airtel;  Bitopi Das Chowdhury, Head of Corporate Affairs, Standard Chartered Bank; Javed Akhtar, Brand Building Director, Unilever; Anisur Rahman, Deputy Chief of Party, Winrock International and Khondokar Ibrahim Khaled, Chairman of Krishi Bank. The champion of the tournament was awarded a cash prize of BDT 150,000, with the first and second runners-up bagging BDT 75,000 and BDT 50,000 respectively. This year, the main sponsor of the event was Bombay Sweets and associate partner was Prothom Alo. Channel i and ABC Radio were the media partners.

With most local business competitions centring around Dhaka, Brandwitz stood out in its attempt at being more inclusive on a national level. From branding Ludu to designing awareness campaigns against food adulteration, the competition tested the teams on many different levels. The challenges posed in the four rounds had a recurring theme though. They were hugely relevant to the current Bangladeshi context. Most teams came up with out-of-the-box but highly feasible solutions to the problems. This further reinforced the message this event conveys.

Brandwitz is less of a battlefield and more of a grooming session for the upcoming business leaders of Bangladesh who will be able to see through the problems that have plagued the lives of the common people.