Humber Polytechnic students in the Bachelor of Public Relations program used skills learned in the classroom that will serve them well in their future careers through a project and competition that had them designing a business plan for a local company.
The students were tasked with creating a plan for OHO Coffee as part of their Business Fundamentals class that considered market competition, recommendations about communications strategies and ways to maintain customer relationships outside of the farmer's market season in Toronto. It helped the students build their business acumen using a budget and a cost/benefit analysis related to a real business.
They also presented their ideas to OHO Coffee owner Greg Latham, which allowed the students to practice their presentation and influencing skills.
The winning team received $600 in prize money from NEXT, Humber's internal advertising agency.
"As a PR student, having the opportunity to pitch ideas to a real client was an incredible experience," said Lucy Luc, who was part of the winning team that included Jasmine Marcial and Tanishk Srivastava. "The challenge of limited access to business information turned into an opportunity, offering our team the freedom to rebrand and establish strong brand awareness for OHO. However, none of this would have been possible without the collaboration of our team. A business idea requires extensive recommendations and our team's diverse backgrounds and experiences made the planning process seamless. We were able to cover all aspects of business development - from creating brand guidelines to expanding networking efforts - ultimately driving sales and building a customer loyalty program."
Marcial said the project allowed the group to understand the importance of aligning business objectives with effective communication strategies and gave them an opportunity to use communication skills in a real-world scenario.
"We are incredibly grateful for this recognition and it means a lot to know that our hard work and dedication have paid off," said Marcial. "This achievement is a testament to the collaboration and effort put forth by our entire team. Winning this contest has further inspired us to continue refining and developing our ideas as we move forward."
Latham said he plans on taking some of the ideas suggested by the students and implementing them for his business.
"I really enjoyed working with the Humber students as they developed business planning to grow my coffee roasting business and I was completely blown away by the extensive and clever ideas the groups came up with," said Latham. "Now I have some excellent ideas to put into practice and I'm very appreciative of the time they spent working on this project."
Find out more by visiting the Bachelor of Public Relations website.
