In 2020, Voice of Business returned with a new season of BRANDrill-The Ultimate Branding Showdown. “IPDC Finance presents BRANDrill’20 Powered by Eclectic Education” was the third season of the signature national branding competition. BRANDrill was first introduced in 2017 to assist students in learning more practically about branding and give them hands on experience of corporate branding through multiple phrases. Some well-wishers also shared their words of encouragement for our event, they are: Bushra Humyra Esha, Senior Lecturer, Department of Business Administration, East West University, Moin Reza Nadim, Assistant Professor, Bangladesh University of Professionals (BUP), and Monsurul Aziz, Head of Brand Marketing, Nagad.
The competition kick started on 6 October, 2020, with only online registration available through 20 club partners from various universities across the country. This time the competition took place entirely online following the world COVID-19 pandemic. Keeping in mind the safety of all the participants, the entire competition was designed to fit this new normal. More than 200 teams had registered that year and entered the first round. The competition had a total of two rounds and ended with a grand finale. Only 40 among the participating teams qualified for the semi-final round. Also, there was an online workshop in between these rounds on Branding insights and guidelines for the second round.
The second round which was held at 23rd October consisted of OVC & slide submission which also included presentation. Only most qualified 8 teams could make it pass this round to the grand finale. In the finale, the finalist teams had to do an IMC campaign planning with an online presentation of it. Honorable Jury Members for the Grand Finale were Tareq Islam Shuvo, Head of Company Strategy, Brand & Corporate Communication, IPDC Finance; Grace Kanta Sarkar, Head of Marketing, Shohoz and Md Iftekhar Alam, Head of Brand Strategy & Creative, Marketing, Grameenphone. The Grand Finale was held on 5th November, 2020 in the presence of Dr. Muhammad Abdul Moyeen, Dean, Faculty of Business Studies, University of Dhaka as our Honorable Chief Guest and Rizwan Dawood Shams, Deputy Managing Director and Head of Business Finance, IPDC Finance as our Honorable Special Guest.
Team NSY from Bangladesh University of Professionals was crowned as the Champion Team of BRANDrill’20. Team Extra Drill from IBA, University of Dhaka was the First Runner - Up and Team UNDISPUTED from North South University became the Second Runner - Up. A Total Prize Pool of 1,00,000 BDT was the prize money for the winners. There were also some exclusive rewards for the winners of the competition beside the monetary reward which were access to the fast-tracked Interview Round of Banglalink’s Advanced Internship Program for Champion Team and access to the fast-tracked Interview Round of Nagad’s Internship Program for Finalist Teams.
The competition wouldn’t be this successful without some help from our collaborations who deserve our sincere gratitude. The list of our collaborators are: Media Partners were jagonews24.com as online media partner along with The Business standard & Daily Bonik Barta (বণিক বার্তা) as print media partner. Outreach partner was chalkboard and radio partner was jaago FM 94.4. Dipto TV worked as broadcasting partner. E-learning partner was Bohubrihi with Torun being the youth engagement partner. Banglalink and Nagad worked with us as our strategic partner. And last but not the least, our heartfelt gratitude to our sponsor IPDC Finance Limited & Co-Sponsor Eclectic Education.