Fanshawe students place first in worldwide Google challenge

Header image for Interrobang article CREDIT: ISTOCK (PTASHA)
Two student teams from the Lawrence Kinlin School of Business have won big in the 2020 Global Online Marketing Academic Challenge (GOMAC).

When it comes to online marketing, Fanshawe students mean business.

That’s why a pair of student teams from the Lawrence Kinlin School of Business have placed first in two categories — Global overall winner and first place in the Americas — in the 2020 Global Online Marketing Academic Challenge (GOMAC).

The international competition sees student teams work with an industry client and compete to create, run, optimize and report on digital marketing campaigns that include Google Ads and any other digital advertising platform.

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The Global Winner team includes Sonam Walmiki, Chioma Bernice Udeogu and Josephone Aiteobhor. They worked with WES for Youth Online, a non-profit and free online counselling service for youth dealing with mental health issues in Ontario.

According to GOMAC’s website, the team stood out to the judges for its digital marketing strategy and attention to detail. The team experimented with regional campaigns targeting key cities in Ontario so that local language could be used in keywords and ad copies, ultimately exceeding their KPIs

Their campaigns resulted in 59 new registrations on the website — an all-time high for WES for Youth Online.

The Americas Regional Winner teammates are Gustavo Pettinato Lucio, Kate Seliverstova, Nicolas Herrera and Sergio Luis Ramos Martins. They worked with the Better Business Bureau of Western Ontario, a non-profit website providing information for consumers to help them make good buying decisions.

The judges praised the team’s data visualization skills and specificity of their report. They were also impressed with the cost-per-clicks that the team was able to achieve.

Both teams were supervised by Professor Liz Gray.

“Fanshawe students involved in this competition worked very hard to bring awareness to 16 great non-profit organizations this semester. Our winning team connected more than 50 Ontario youth directly with the free, online counselling they were seeking. I’m so proud that we were able to help WES for Youth Online, a 20-year-old organization founded to teach young people that it’s OK to have problems and it’s OK to ask for help,” Gray told Interrobang in an email. “Congratulations to all of the graduate level Marketing students in the Lawrence Kinlin School of Business who were involved in the Global Online Marketing Academic Challenge and who brought invaluable exposure to their non-profit partners. Thank you to Google who generously funds NGOs from around the world with free Google Ads and thank you to the GOMAC organizing committee and judges.”