XLRI marketing event gets international flavor, huge FB support

An annual marketing competition launched by the students of XLRI has become hugely popular with its Facebook page getting thousands of likes and over 1.7 lakh page views weekly.
The premier B-school recently organized XLRI-MAXI LEGALIZE International -3.0, a surrogate marketing event where teams were asked to market a product or a social cause masked under a different product by means of a 90-second advertisement.

The event witnessed overwhelming participation from almost all the noted B-schools in India and Asia. The participating institutes included IIM-A, IIM-B, IIM-C, IIM-L, IIM-I, IIM-K, IIM Rohtak, FMS, MDI, NITIE, XIMB, MICA, SP Jain, IIFT Delhi, GIM, TAPMI, AIM Phillipines, AIT Thailand, and IIT Bombay.

The online presence of the event reached a new milestone with 8000 likes and a weekly reach of 1.7 Lakhs on the MAXI Facebook page. One of the impressive campaigns was also re-tweeted by Shashi Tharoor, the newly appointed minister of state in the Union human resource development ministry.

The event was conducted by the oldest committee on the XLRI campus, Marketing Association of XLRI, better known as MAXI. Though initiated in 2010, this is for the first time that LEGALIZE attained a real international character with ample participation from overseas B-schools.

Innovative concepts like chalk covers as a surrogate for prevention of AIDS or that of a mobile phone for saving paper were received. The advertisements touched a variety of genres like child labour, prostitution, alcohol, protection, adoption and racism.

The world has become modernized but is still not devoid of taboos. There are a lot of social issues prevalent in the society, people are aware of them but are still hesitant to accept them. Everyone needs a constant reminder of these issues ranging from the shy away issues like use of condoms to avoid spreading of STDs and social acceptance of prostitutes to critical issues like saving paper to save trees. MAXI decided to launch an international-level competition as an attempt to create an impact on these issues in a viral way, Jitender Bansal, secretary of MAXI, said.

XLRI-MAXI LEGALIZE International-3.0 kick started on September 22 with a big launch party at the XLRI campus. Shareable online content was created through this launch party. The photos of this launch party shared on the MAXI Facebook page attracted a lot of views and generated the initial drive. According to the organizers, the 50 per cent weightage to the LIKES on Facebook became one of the major reason for different teams to market their advertisements and gather online support. The rest 50 per cent weightage was allocated to judging of the concept by marketing faculties of XLRI and the creative element by one of the leading advertising agencies in India.
The results are expected in the first week of November. The winning team takes home prize money of $1,000.

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