THE WARWICK BUSINESS SCHOOL MARKETING CHALLENGE

IB9040
This assignment counts for 20% of your final grade
Introduction
‘Marketing’ is often used as a shorthand term for many of the ills associated with today’s
world of business. If something is ‘just marketing’, it seems to indicate it lacks substance, and
exists purely to make money, without inherent value. Indeed, many of today’s societal
problems are directly blamed at least in part on marketing and its tools, such as childhood
obesity, personal data misuse, mis-selling of financial products, and the like.
However, the tools, techniques, and key concepts of marketing can just as well be used with
positive intent, to help today’s society. Indeed, without the input of expert marketing thinkers
and the excellent use of marketing techniques, many of today’s problems look intractable.
The purpose of this assignment is to help you think creatively about the use of marketing with
positive intent.
The task is to deliver a 10 minute pitch, which must adhere to the following criteria:
1. The pitch must be 10 minutes. There will be 5 Minutes allocated after for questions.
2. Your pitch must be completely self-contained, in that it does not rely on pre-prepared
supplementary material / appendices that the viewer is required to refer to.
3. The pitch must involve all group members in some manner. However, this does not
mean they must all present as part of the pitch itself. You must provide a document
which states each member’s contribution, signed by all members.

Pitch Topic: Strategic Marketing Challenge

Choose one of the societal challenges from the list given, and come up with a potential
product/offering which can contribute to solving this challenge. You must:
1. Describe the challenge, your product/offering, and how it will contribute to solving
the challenge
2. Identify the target market and offer a justification for the choice
3. Explain how your product can be differentiated from the competition.
4. Explain how your product is feasibly/profitably deliverable at scale.
Remember, products are more than just physical. They can be goods, services, experiences,
ideas, information, and so forth. Further, remember that the essence of marketing is satisfying
customers while meeting organisational objectives.
 Societal Challenge List 2019
This is a non-exhaustive and non-ranked list of potential challenges facing our world today.
Of course, there are many other challenges facing the world today, and this list is not meant
to imply importance or unimportance of any other issue you can think of. Some of the
challenges are more or less applicable to different countries, economies, or regions, while
some span the globe. Further, some challenges are more specific than others, but in general
they are meant to be broad and open to specific interpretation. Be creative in your topic
selection.

 Artificial intelligence and its  Mass migration

implications  Overpopulation
 Childhood health  Overuse of plastics in consumer
 Climate change products
 Consumer product packaging  Personal information privacy / data
 Consumption of harmful products protection
(e.g. smoking)  Political disengagement by young
 Education and social mobility people
 Environmental harm  Racial equality
 Fake news  Recycling
 Food shortages  Renewable energy
 Gender equality / Female  Science denialism (e.g. flat-earthers,
empowerment anti-vaxxers)
 Healthcare provision  Social media over-use
 Helping refugees  Species extinction
 Human trafficking  Water scarcity
 Income inequality (within countries
and/or across countries)  Other (but please check with Emma
Macdonald before continuing)

Assessment criteria:
Four equally weighted criteria:
1. Identified and evidenced a societal challenge and a product/offering to address that
challenge.
2. Identified a target market and justified that choice applying tools, techniques and
concepts from the Marketing module.
3. Explained how the offering was differentiated from competitors and substitutes.
Considered the feasibility / profitability of delivering at scale.
4. Presentation quality: Including teamwork and integration across sections, clear
expression of ideas, impact and originality.