Fizz Wizards

“We had to suggest ways to the company to attain leadership in the new age marketing spaces like social networking sites,” explains Chugh,an IIIT Allahabad passout,who co-founded education portal studyplaces.com. “We asked young people from all over the country about the change they would like to see and the change they would like to be. Based on the feedback,we worked out strategies to make the sub-brands of the company,MountainDew,Miranda,etc. more popular among the youth,”he says,about the plan that got a thumbs up from the company officials.

The contestants were presented an example of what the company wanted. “They had rounded up young people in the United States on a portal called dearmrpresident,asking them what changes they would like President elect to affect and all the feedback was compiled in the form of a book and presented to Barack Obama when he was sworn in,” says Abhishek Dasgupta,aka ‘guitar hero’,an IIT Kharagpur passout,who is in IIM-L for a major in Marketing and Finance. “We worked on similar lines and used all the aspirations of our youth we could record to work out a marketing plan the company will use.”

Not every idea contributed by their subjects was incorporated and though the winners are bound by a contract not to disclose what they have devised they do speak about what they discarded. “We rejected suggestions of music concerts for brand promotion,as it is an idea beaten to death,” says Suban Walia,whose talent to mix trance music and manage psychedelic lights makes him the official DJ in all campus parties. “We sifted the feedback to reach worthier ideas and modified them to tell the company how they could motivate the 13-to-30 years age group to identify with the various sub-brands,” adds the NIT Hamirpur passout,who has been a systems programmer before pursuing Marketing and Strategy at the IIM. The first and second runners up were teams from ISB,Hyderabad and XLRI,Jamshedpur.

“We named our team 6 degrees in the context of a theory by the same name,which says that if a person is one step away from each person he knows and two steps from each person who is known by one of the people he knows,then everyone is at most six steps away from any other person on Earth,” says Suban,who christened the team,adding that 6 degrees is also the right temperature at which you can enjoy a bottle of your favourite aerated drink. Suban and Akhil have earlier won a similar contest run by Nokia to advise how to launch their N97 model. “In view of our exams,we leave to reach the US on February 1 and return on February 4 after our presentation before Indra Nooyi. I guess there wouldn’t be time for siteseeing,” smiles Suban.

Well,New York can wait!