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August 15, 2006 ITM Students Present Winning Campaign to Cotton Board On August 9, 2006, FIT Department of International Trade and Marketing students Hae Lee, Richard Lowe, Jennifer Raines, and Liezl Santos traveled with Professor Pamela Ellsworth to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where they had been invited to deliver a presentation to the Cotton Board at the Carolina Inn on the campus of the University of North Carolina. The students were winners of Cotton Incorporated’s cotton awareness campaign, in which two FIT classes (representing more than 50 students divided among 11 teams) compete to develop a compelling message – through research and communication skills – about the use of cotton products in the international marketplace. The first-place winners receive an $8,000 grant to be applied to tuition. Two second-place winning teams split a $4,000 prize. “I was impressed with how well-versed group members were in their subject,” commented Elizabeth King, Vice President, Importer Services for the Cotton Board. In preparation for the final presentation, students are required to thoroughly research cultural and economic details on a country they have selected as a basis for projecting the success of a marketing campaign to a targeted demographic group within that country. Students are also required to track the popularity and level of cotton usage in their chosen country in order to determine how readily consumers might adopt the product. Finally, they are challenged to develop innovative marketing techniques told through a competitive ten-minute PowerPoint, in which winners are chosen by members of the Cotton Board and Cotton Incorporated. Frank Kelly, Vice President, International Trade Compliance for Liz Claiborne, remarked that “the students gave an excellent presentation and I was very proud of them.” Mr. Kelly also sits on the advisory board for the department of International Trade and Marketing. Previously conducted only during spring semesters, The Cotton Incorporated awareness campaign will now also be held during the Fall 2006 semester, courtesy of a $25,000 grant from the Cotton Board. Based on the strong support of both students and faculty for the project, ITM department head Patrick Yanez will continue to submit proposals to Cotton Incorporated with the objective of continuing the project in the coming years. “The success of the campaign reflects a shared commitment on the part of ITM and Cotton Incorporated to generate imaginative yet practical ideas that can be applied to real-world marketing efforts within the industry,” said Professor Yanez.
Additional information: Pamela_Ellsworth@FITnyc.edu
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