Yesterday there was an inter college business case competition organized by the folks from Singapore in Stanford. My previous post gives you information about the competition itself. Our team from Sweden won a prize in this competition.

The challenge

Zazzle as a company although was making revenue wanted to tap into the student market more effectively as they knew that it was the youngsters who loved to express their emotions and be as creative as they wish to be. However, Zazzle neither spent time, resource or money in focusing on the student market and knew that a normal “advertisement” campaign or a facebook application might not fetch the actual numbers that they wanted. It was clear that the market existed amongst students as students in the US alone represented a spending power of close to 180B USD and as mentioned before, these youngsters are never afraid to express themselves through bold / funny statements. So the case wanted the teams to come up with solutions that could help market Zazzle amongst the students, promote Zazzle as a cool & creative hang out spot on the internet & thereby generate a better brand awareness.

Our idea

We felt that the student run organizations / communities represent the heart & soul of students & that’s where students relaxed, had fun & at the same time did something that they attached themselves to. In fact in NUS there are loads of student run organizations that keep me going even in those stress filled academic days as I get to meet people of similar interest, passion & in the process have fun together. But however, I do not limit myself to the scope of just 1 community that represents my interest, but try to spread my wings into other communities as well. For instance, I am interested in cricket but at the same time love music. So I am an active part of a community for cricket & at the same time a member in the music community in my University. Hence if Zazzle could bring various interested parties all into one ecosystem, it not just covers various interest groups, but also brings them all under one roof. So considering myself as a cricket fan who enjoys music, I tend to have the benefits through Zazzle’s ecosystem / partnership program which allows me to get accessories & other stuff from communities that I like which are in this ecosystem at cheaper rates. So I can get a t-shirt with a guitar on it at a cheaper rate since I am a part of the cricket community which is in the same ecosystem as the music community. Hence Zazzle creates indirect links between the communities (thereby helping forge a strong inter community link) and in the process gains the trust of the students representing different interest groups which in return generates users, revenue, branding & helps promote Zazzle among a very powerful & creative niche. So if a student whose community is outside the ecosystem wants to buy a t-shirt of a community in the ecosystem, he would feel disadvantaged and hence would work in bringing his community into the ecosystem. This creates a viral buzz that brings in more users, creates opportunities for Zazzle to increase its product line & in the process help build a very strong viral network of “Zazzle loyal” users. This combined with a strong facebook & mySpace presence would help make students understand that Zazzle is the place whenever they think of “emoting” through accessories. I have attached the presentation that we made at the end of this post.

The technical difficulties of having people from different time zones presenting through a video conferencing system to the jury in Stanford indeed had some issues thereby making it not very easy & understandable when other teams present. So I did not have much of an idea about other team’s ideas & suggestions to the jury & hence I did not learn much out of the entire process. However, it was a good experience nevertheless. Our team named Hejsan! (greetings in Swedish) started to brain storm at 9PM on Friday night, came up with some random weird ideas by 1AM Saturday morning, split the work amongst us & came up with the presentation by 5.51AM Saturday morning with the deadline at 6AM. Nevertheless, we felt happy, closer as a team & enjoyed working together over one night & day to gain some cash that would make us look back at the event and smile.

Thanks folks from Stanford for putting this for us. We enjoyed being there.

Presentation for download: bizbuzz2007_hejsan_sweden.ppt