CREDIT: GOMAC
Fanshawe students Priscila Báez Monsanto, Rehan Benny, Zahira Khan, and Varsha Kunhimangalam brought home first place in the Global Online Marketing Academics Competition (GOMAC).

Fanshawe College has placed first in the Global Online Marketing Academics Competition (GOMAC) in the Americas region. The winning team consisted of Marketing Management students Priscila Báez Monsanto, Rehan Benny, Zahira Khan, and Varsha Kunhimangalam.

“As soon as we knew we would enter this competition, we were excited, and from the beginning, I wanted to compete and do our best,” Báez Monsanto said. As the team’s captain, she assigned each team member a task or tasks to complete. Meanwhile, Lawrence Kinlin School of Business faculty member Liz Gray, also a member of the GOMAC organizing committee, supervised the entire process and the team.

“It’s quite an amazing feat to think that they were number one among all those entries across Canada, the US, Central and South America,” Gray said. Báez Monsanto credited Gray with helping the team prepare for the competition.


“She was always lecturing us through the process, how to set up and use the budget wisely, all the warnings,” Báez Monsanto said. “And, based on all her experience (she has many years already running this contest) she also clarified what we should not do, what to do, and where the better things to look for when creating the reports.”

GOMAC is open to both undergraduate and graduate marketing students from around the world. During the competition, teams work with an industry client to develop, execute, and optimize digital marketing campaigns involving platforms such as Google Ads and other digital advertising channels.

“The judges, a worldwide panel of academics, will look at the documentation the students submit,” Gray explained. “There is a pre-campaign report that outlines what the strategy will be and a post-campaign report that outlines the results of the execution. And the judges are looking to assess who put together the best campaign.”

Fanshawe’s team was assigned with creating the marketing campaign for Reimagine Co., Ontario’s first and only package-free grocery store in London. The store offers organic and vegan products and promotes zero waste through community activities. For that reason, it was a priority for Báez Monsanto to bring this client to a target, which is to raise awareness to drive sales for the business.

“So usually, it’s a small business or a nonprofit organization that needs marketing help,” Gray said. “And that organization benefits from having the students create a digital marketing campaign that can include advertising on different platforms.”

According to the GOMAC website, the judges were impressed with the Fanshawe team’s high-quality campaign, which was well-designed, visually appealing, and had consistent themes. The judges were particularly impressed with Google Data Studio’s excellent reporting use.

According to GOMAC, “The group’s excellence stood out in their situation analysis, as they went above and beyond their peers by exploring additional social media campaigns and explaining the results properly. The submission was straightforward to follow and highlighted highly favourable results for the nonprofit, showcasing an excellent use of integrated marketing tools across platforms. The campaign emphasized data-driven insights and actionable recommendations, displaying high-quality strategic thinking, which earned a commendation from the judging panel.”