Durban — Westville Girls’ High School (WGHS) performed extremely well by finishing first and second during the Regional Vega VIBE Inter-School Challenge at Durban Campus on Saturday.
WGHS spokesperson Sesethu Senene said these sorts of challenges were important as they exposed pupils to the variety of fields of studies within the marketing and brand management field.
“It’s important that girls in Grade 11 and 12 are starting to think about life after high school and the university they would like to attend as well as the career path they would like to follow,” said Senene.
Pupils had to come up with an innovative way to market to GenZ, as BirdLife is perceived to be a brand that speaks to an older generation.
With English teacher Tayla Constance’s guidance, the pupils were able to identify and analyse the Swot (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis, and therefore derive a campaign that fulfilled the goal of the challenge.
She said the pupils came up with a campaign plan that would make use of GenZ technologies, such as an app from Team One and Team Two introducing a fashion aspect to BirdLife which would appeal to GenZ.
Grade 12 pupil Kwanelile Mchunu, a Member of the winning team, said it was a great experience for her to be able to combine her knowledge of business and love of drama in the presentation.
“Working as a team, we were able to combine our different strengths to meet the expectations of the brief and tackle the challenge brands face with connecting with Gen Z,” said Kwanele.
Campus head IIE Vega Durban, Naretha Pretorius, said the aim of the challenge was to allow pupils to gain real life exposure and experience in the industry.
“It gives them a taste of industry experience as well as what it’s like to study at IIE-Vega School being a brand-focused school specialising in design, brand and business.”
She said the challenge was a national initiative run across the four IIE Vega campuses nationwide. She said they usually invited schools regionally and proceed to award the top school with a prize and qualification into the national tournament, where they compete with the winners from the other regions.
Pretorius said they had to solve a real-life client brief. This year’s client was BirdLife South Africa, a registered, non-profit organisation dedicated to bird-conservation.
Westville Girls High School sent two teams and their first team qualified for the nationals, and their second team finished second. Durban Girls’ High School finished third.
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