Pitching experience for Guildhall students
Date: 01/05/2015
Our postgraduate events students were invited to the Oxford Street office of the award winning experiential marketing agency Sense London. As part of the module Event Experience Management, the students pitched ideas for a live brand experience campaign to an expert panel comprised of key industry professionals. The pitches were based around a real life brief put together by Sense London exclusively for our students.
The panel was made up of four senior managers from Sense (Nick Adams, Sally O’Brien, Rose McDonnell and Adam Curry), the editor-in-chief from leading industry magazine Event (Yasmin Arrigo), and two lecturers from the Guildhall School of Business and Law (Henrik Linden and Tom Lunt).
Students Hannah Heimann and Kali Bradford both agreed that “being able to pitch in front of actual event professionals was a valuable learning experience – their feedback and encouragement will definitely help us learn and grow so we can become the best in our industry.”
Their colleague Chiara Centenaro added that “the pitch and the group work have been a good opportunity to test ourselves as a part of a team – it has been a challenging and interesting experience.”
Lisbeth Kristensen, another student, said about the experience: “It was a great pleasure doing this presentation and having the opportunity to be practical in an academic world.”
The panel was impressed by the amount of preparation that had gone into the presentations and said that the students came across as both enthusiastic and professional.
Yasmin Arrigo, editor-in-chief at Event commented "Both the student teams had worked hard to really grasp the client aims and delivered confident pitches demonstrating core event management competencies. I was particularly excited to see the channel of experiential used so well to really create an absorbing brand experience - and I definitely spotted a couple of candidates that I'd love to work with in the future. I shall follow this group's career development with much interest."
Henrik Linden, senior lecturer in creative industries and module leader for Event Experience Management, said: “It is encouraging to see that our students possess not only great presentation skills – something that is crucial in the events industry – but also strong strategic and creative ability.”
Tom Lunt, a principal lecturer, added: “The collaboration with Sense shows the central importance the teaching team place on ensuring that students and industry work together. This year we were very pleased that Yasmin Arrigo from Event was able to join us, her insights and feedback along with the Sense members of the panel to students were very much appreciated.”
The knowledgeable panel provided the students with valuable feedback, including praise as well as constructive criticism. All agreed that this was a positive experience indeed.
Sense is a leading experiential marketing agency that works with major global brands such as Coca Cola, The Times and Sky.
Event magazine is “the UK’s leading brand for the event industry, focusing on brand experiences and the channel of experiential.”
For more information about London Met's MA Events Marketing Management degree programme, contact course leader Maggie Gold at m.gold@londonmet.ac.uk
