Upper St. Clair students second in marketing competiton
Upper St. Clair High School students placed second in the Cultural Communications Alliance (CCA) Marketing Competition held recently at the University of Pittsburgh’s Katz School of Business.
The team consisted of juniors Phillip Markovitz, Priyanka Palayekar and Ben Wasson, as well as sophomore Susan Liu.
Teams in the competition were tasked with creating a marketing plan for GNC’s Beyond Raw Precision BCAA (Branched-chain amino acids) to be sold in Mexico. Each team delivered a 12-minute presentation to a panel of judges, followed by a three-minute question and answer session.
Teams were evaluated on the appropriate exploration of language and culture, logistics, marketing, demographics, use of resources, creativity of approach, effective use of multimedia, presentation skills and responses to judges’ questions.
“I’m really proud of our team for staying committed to the competition,” said Joanna Darakos, a Spanish teacher who served as team sponsor.
The marketing competition was open to all high school students studying a world language. Teams could have a maximum of five members.
The Pittsburgh Creative and Performing Arts (CAPA) won the competition while Pine-Richland took third-place honors.
According to its website, “the Cultural Communications Alliance works with Pittsburgh area high school teachers to introduce international business concepts to their students using an international case competition. High school teams work on their project throughout the year before the competition final presentations.”
CCA works in cooperation with the Katz Graduate School of Business, the Global Studies Center and the University Center for International Studies at the University of Pittsburgh and other entities to create and administer the events and competition.