Toronto, November 10, 2011 - LPR Global Inc., the Toronto-based marketing consultancy that specializes in South Korean trade with the West, awarded a cash prize to the winning team in a competition that was part of an independent study program conducted with the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. Now in its third year, the hands-on program is facilitated by LPR Global executives and Rotman professor, Becky Reuber, and sees Rotman MBA students develop real-world, lean marketing strategies for helping exporting manufacturers launch new products into Western markets.
The teams, composed of students from the Rotman MBA program, are each given a different new product from LPR’s US Korea Hotlink initiative, http://www.uskoreahotlink.com, and must develop and execute an integrated product launch plan for their specific product. Each team must conduct independent market research then apply their newly learned online marketing skills including search engine optimization, social media integration, web content development, and web analytics to drive their marketing plan.
The 2011 winning team is Sarah Ong and Sharath Janakiraman, who will share a $2,500 prize for their launch of Qnics surveillance systems – a solution set of home, business and military-grade security cameras. The ‘Qnics team’ narrowly beat out tough competition in the two other teams, who covered industrial valves and LED lighting. Although all teams were impressive, the Qnics team of Sarah and Sharath had a particularly daunting task: facing a heavily-saturated, mature security camera market, the team needed to isolate and identify the product’s differentiating factors before they could even begin to devise a marketing strategy. After intense research, the team ultimately determined the product’s differentiation and created a unique marketing strategy driven by the users’ perspective instead of the traditional technology or product-base marketing approach. The team’s innovative strategy, combined with brilliant search engine optimization, has projected the product to the top of the online market in its category.
“Online marketing has become a critical tool – even for industrial manufacturers throughout the world,” said Professor Becky Reuber, who teaches strategic management at The Rotman School of Management. “LPR Global’s online marketing strategies provide the students with a unique and valuable opportunity to learn how to quickly and effectively test the market by launching a new product into while gathering and analyzing real-time marketing analytics.”
“Marketing is a mix of science and creativity,” said Mikah Lee, CEO of LPR Global and also a graduate of the the Rotman MBA program. “Sarah and Sharath did an outstanding job on the mix. Their research was very thorough and their analysis was brilliant. Their strategy had to be creative in order to successfully promote their product in a mature and crowded market. They did a great job.”
LPR Global is a marketing consultancy headquartered in Toronto, Ontario with affiliated operations in the US and South Korea. Founded in 2001, LPR Global provides advisory and business development services to companies, government organizations, and professional services firms doing business between South Korean and Western markets. Visit LPR Global website at http://www.lprglobal.com or the US Korea Hotlink at http://www.uskoreahotlink.com/