New Zealand Post has supported graduates into direct marketing disciplines for a number of years. In 2013 they once again involved students in the Student Marketer of the Year award that will bring recognition and employment opportunities with some of the best in the business – and hopefully keep students excited about pursuing a career within the marketing industry.

YMCA Auckland was piloting a new programme called family memberships. Whilst the services included were established, the aggregated proposition was new and as such was being considered a new service at the introduction stage of the product lifecycle.

The brief required students to develop a fully integrated, regionalised launch campaign, to be delivered in Auckland and Waikato, that would be fully commercialised at the end of the pilot programme.

Communication objectives for the campaign were to create awareness of Family memberships and to encourage trial of them. The students had to consider the customer value proposition, recommended advertising budget, design of advertisements, promotional strategy, media selection and schedule, and calculate target financial performance and return on marketing investment.

“There’s so much to do in a day, life can be a juggling act”, thought AUT University’s Jenny Ha, Sarah Mee and Ashton Young, winners of the 2013 New Zealand Post Student Marketer of the Year award. Combining activities would surely be an attractive proposition to people juggling their own fitness regimes with their children’s after-school activities. Their entry, called “The Back to School Juggle”, featured YMCA Open Days in Auckland and Hamilton that were designed to showcase aspects of the new family membership and also remind people that YMCA can help them juggle fun, fitness and family for a reduced price.

The judges felt this year's winners stood out by demonstrating the most thorough understanding of the YMCA's key communication requirements, being ‘stimulate trial and then convert to membership’. Their strategy to achieve this and the communications developed were on-brand, well-designed and ticked all the boxes required for an effective direct response campaign.