Business students compete to advise Borderzine on rebranding effort

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EL PASO — Three groups of business students with names like Corporate Eight, Innovation and Crazy Mariachis presented their semester’s project last week to a panel of judges at the College of Business Administration.

The students, part of professor Denisse Olivas’ Multicultural Marketing class this semester, were eager to showcase their rebranding projects to their client, Borderzine.com. The judges included a professional team from Eureka!, a local design and ad company, and two borderzine staff members, Webmaster Lourdes Cueva Chacón and Program Assistant Ángel Cancino.

The purpose of the projects was to help the organization get more page views, broaden the target audience and provide suggestions for the redesign of the site.

Introduction of Corporate 8

Valerie Garcia introducing her team Corporate 8 and her teammates Brianda Herrera, Eduardo Perales, Pete Ramirez, Linda Gonzalez, María Chavez, Roxana Cabral, and Carlos Perez. Photo credit: Marco Zamora

The winning group was Corporate Eight, composed of students Valeria García, Brianda Herrera, Eduardo Perales, Pete Ramirez, Linda Gonzalez, María Chavez, Roxana Cabral, and Carlos Perez.

“I think it’s a great opportunity to learn more,” said Brianda Herrera, a senior marketing major and member of the winning group “I think it’s a perfect implementation of our knowledge but also to go out there and research a real company, a real brand, a real magazine.”

Olivas said she devised the hands-on project to teach her students the necessary skills that they will need once they entered the professional business world. She was first contacted by Cancino to help with the rebranding project for the website that features student multimedia stories about borders.

“We were having a conversation one day and I was telling him that I wanted to give an opportunity to my students where they could have real-life experience,” Olivas said.

Professor Denisse Olivas

Professor Olivas welcoming the class and introducing the panel of judges. Photo credit: Marco Zamora

“He [Cancino] told me that it would be a great fit since they needed help with their marketing strategies, so we decided it would be a good combination and a good collaboration”.

During the two-hour presentation, each team showed strategies and specific measures to take to help Borderzine achieve its goals. The teams also provided information on the five-year-old online publication’s intended market as well as the weaknesses that they identified the organization had.

The marketing and rebranding project wasn’t easy for the students because they had to take a lot of aspects into consideration.

“It was kind of difficult because some of us didn’t know how to use some programs like Photoshop and WordPress,” said Francis Contreras, a business advertising major and part of the team called Crazy Mariachis. “But I think it was a challenging and a good experience.”

“I want to to go into advertising afterwards so this is definitely going to help me out,” she added.

Senior history major Christina Pretado said that she thought, “it was a new challenge for a lot of us.”

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