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days hours minutes 0 secondsWhat is The Pitch?
The Pitch is back, and the challenge has been set, but have you got what it takes to impress our panel of industry leaders?
The Pitch is an international competition designed to recognise and reward the marketing talent of the future.
Each year we task undergraduate marketing and business students in their second or third year of university with a real-life marketing challenge. This challenge is set by a leading global brand that allows students to apply their learning from their degrees in teams of two or three. The top ten teams will have the opportunity to pitch their ideas and demonstrate their ability virtually in front of true business professionals on 18 March 2022. If they impress the panel, they’ll be in the running for the winning prize to kick-start their marketing career and be named as CIM’s Marketers of the Future.
We are delighted to announce that our sponsor for 2022 is the UK’s pharmacy-led health and beauty chain, Boots.
The Challenge
"Boots and The Prince’s Trust want to bring our ‘behind the scenes’ support for young people across the UK, to the forefront of hearts and minds, ensuring customers know about the depth of our partnership that utilises the expertise of both brands.
Develop a consumer facing creative campaign to raise awareness of this partnership, utilising our team members as well as earned, owned and paid media within a £200,000 budget."
The Prizes
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1st Prize
- Winner of The Pitch 2022 and named CIM’s ‘Marketers of the Future’
- £1,500 cash prize (to be shared amongst the team)
- One-year complimentary CIM membership for each team member
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2nd Prize
- £600 cash prize (to be shared amongst the team)
- One-year complimentary CIM membership for each team member
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3rd Prize
- One-year complimentary CIM membership for each team member
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All finalists
- Specially-produced finalist certificates
What to expect
The best people to tell you about The Pitch are our previous student teams, judges and sponsors. Click here to read their experiences and gain an insight into what’s in store this year.
Testimonials
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Thomas Cooper and Adam Dickson
Winners of The Pitch 2020
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xThomas Cooper and Adam Dickson (Winners of The Pitch 2020)
“While we might not be able to celebrate in person, we are so pleased to have been awarded this year’s title. Both of us jumped at the chance to put into practice many of the theories and marketing techniques that we’ve been studying since starting University. And now to be recognised for our thinking by a panel of respected marketing professionals is the confidence boost we needed, as we start to apply for graduate jobs.”
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Evie Johnson
Winner of The Pitch 2017
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xEvie Johnson (Winner of the Pitch 2017)
“Graduates can’t afford to take a back seat in marketing and as placements become more and more common, they need to find other ways to have an edge. I think The Pitch is a great start and it’s good fun. The money has come in really handy for my relocation too”.
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Sam Willan
Marketing Manager, StudentUniverse
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xSam Willian (Marketing Manager, StudentUniverse)
"Partnering with the CIM for The Pitch, as sponsors in 2017 and as a judge in 2018 has been a hugely valuable experience for StudentUniverse. Hearing fresh, innovative ideas from talented young marketers, who are also right in our target demographic allowed us to gain unique brand insights, that continue to inform our marketing strategy and campaigns. Be prepared for an honest critique of your brand's shortcomings but with twice as many ideas on how to overcome them.
It also allowed us to develop some great collaborative working relationships with students who had been part of the campaign. Siobhan Glover, who was runner up in 2017, and her partner went on to set up and run an Instagram account @backpacksandbeyond. We recently worked with as part of a partnership campaign with Visit Victoria, who approached to help position the state as a student backpacker destination. We knew Siobhan and Andy were perfect candidates for the job, to get off the beaten track and show us everything the state had to offer through Instagram stories and their own authentic approach to influencer marketing. We had the added bonus of them already knowing the StudentUniverse brand through The Pitch - it certainly won't be the last time we work with them.
Being a part of this initiative has also led to us reviewing our hiring policy, and as a business will be looking to bring in marketing staff at a graduate level for the first time. The future of marketing is in safe hands!"
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Sarah Wood
Marketing Director, Wilkinson Sword
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xSarah Wood (Marketing Director, Wilkinson Sword)
“It’s been a revelatory day for me. According to the returning judges, the standard of the pitches was higher than ever before. For me, the level of professionalism was there – some of the ideas were better than we might expect from an agency. The pitches that really worked well were insightful and used targeted market research, with considerations of our audience, to go the extra mile. Those were the concepts I can see us using in the future”.
Articles and Insights
Contact us
For more information, please contact: thepitch@cim.co.uk