Last week I had the pleasure to help out a good friend who teaches at the University of Makati. He teaches a marketing elective class to high school students who are in the new 11th grade. FYI for those not familiar the Philippines is in the process of instituting two additional years to the education system here so its on par with the US and many of the countries in having a K-12 program.
Anyway, El asked me to be part of a panel of judges for the class as they gave group presentations based on marketing plans that they developed. The plan was based on a project they had been working on for a while which is to set up an operate as a small business. It’s a great way to train future entrepreneurs and would be marketing majors and it made me feel a little like Simon Cowell.
I was honored to be one of three judges and we spent about two hours as the five groups of 5-10 students each presented their plans. And the best part was all of the 5 groups had set up food sales businesses and had samples. It was a lot of fun and the food was masarp (Tagalog for delicious).
As each group presented their plan I gave them feedback mostly on how did they validate their assumptions, did they collect any data, did they survey, how social media could play into their plans, etc. In all cases, I stressed the importance of showing data and visualizing it in ways that could be more impressive to potential investors.
I hope my feedback and advice helped them fine tune their marketing strategies and I would love to see them again when they are ready for OJT “on the job training” for their college internship requirements.
It was a lot like the TV show SharkTank but with great snacks! 🙂
Decision-Making, Analytics & Intelligence > Philippines 