MBA 2019 candidates Meghan Archibald, James Prince and Brendan Thompson are celebrating a second place win thanks to their creative video pitch submission in Unilever’s UniGame Case Competition

UniGame is an international competition addressing a range of relevant business challenges. Teams are tasked with producing an innovative video proposal to tackle their choice of real business needs. This year’s challenges included:

  • Turning ice cream into a year-round treat
  • Targeting male consumers with a subscription order model across brands and retailers
  • Making Lipton Recipe Secrets Onion Mix more relevant for millennials

Choosing the latter, the team’s video earned them a spot in the New York semi-finals, ultimately winning them a $5,000 team prize.

Recipe for Success

So how do you make Onion Soup Mix attractive to a millennial audience? The team focused on creating a character for millennials to engage with through social media: “Grandma Lipton” is digitally savvy (she has her own Twitter and Instagram handles), and the team describes her as “part sass and part love.” The brand persona is designed to engage with her audience via social media and an Augmented Reality app teaching young adults to make quick and inexpensive meals.

“We also added positive environmental and social impacts to the purchase of the product,” said Meghan Archibald, team spokesperson. “[Our pitch included] a Track-Your-Impact element and “soup4soup campaign,” which donates a meal to a family in need for each meal purchased.”

Not Your Grandma’s Case Competition

Accepting only video submissions from its first round of competitors, UniGame’s competition format demands creativity, entertainment and impact from candidates.

“There were so many unique aspects in this case competition,” said Meghan. “Given that the initial submission is a video instead of a deck, this allowed us to channel our creativity and execute the idea through social media as proof of concept — instead of just talking about it on a slide.”

License to showcase so much personality, and to choose their own team challenge, helped bring the idea to life and set the competition apart.

“Another point of differentiation in this case competition was the ability to choose an issue we fundamentally felt we could solve, allowing a range of diverse teams to produce their best work,” adds Meghan.

“It was fantastic seeing the creative ideas and caliber of work produced by students from across Canada and the U.S.”

Check out semi finalists’ submissions below!