Four of the past five years, I have coached a team of students from Oberlin College competing in an undergraduate business case competition put on by Peoples Bank, a large regional bank headquartered in Marietta, Ohio. Oberlin is a liberal arts college, and the all of the other 14-15 competitors are students in undergraduate business programs. This year, on top of the usual challenge of overcoming the gap in business knowledge, our team was comprised of one first-year student and two second-years (one of whom is a Percussion major from the Conservatory). The
competition is a recruiting tool for the bank, and so most of the students competing are third or fourth year students.

The competition is comprised of three deliberations: one involves a comparative financial analysis of products or acquisition targets, another involves a hiring decision, and the third usually calls for the development of a new product or marketing plan, often tying in with the first deliberation. (This is where Oberlin students can show their resourcefulness and creativity.) The coach’s role is to support and guide, but the coach cannot provide any input to the deliberations.

This year’s marketing challenge was to come up with a product that would help the bank achieve their goals for attracting and retaining millennial customers. I charged the students with doing research and coming up with a product by the time they came back from Christmas break
They based their decision on research, much of which came from this Forbes article on how banks could win over millennials:

• 34 percent reporting they are unsatisfied with their current financial situation
• Over 60 percent burdened by debt.
• Only 27 percent of Millennials have sought professional financial advice  in the last five years, and four of the leading banks were ranked by Millennials as a least loved brand.
• 90 percent of Millennials  expect to be impacted by a major financial event within the next 36 months - such as taking on a student loan, or buying a home or car.
• Only 8 percent believe they have the high levels of financial literacy needed to deal with these life events.

Coupling this info with data on the effectiveness of video content, social media, and millennial preferences, they made a strong case for their recommendation—the bank should create a series of personal finance videos. The aim of the videos would be to help millennials fill in the gaps in their knowledge, delivered using their most-preferred media, building their trust in the bank, and increasing demand for relevant bank products. These products would be mentioned casually in the videos, and video views would be followed up with targeted marketing messages. (With the help of the new director of consumer data hired in deliberation two.)

Given that the proposed financial literacy video series was not a typical product (they were supposed to provide a P&L for the suggested product in addition to a marketing budget), I suggested they create a prototype video instead. None of the three had ever done anything like this before. But that did not stop them from coming up with a winner! The Bank executives judging the competition loved it, and the Oberlin team came home with the $1500 first place prize!

Here is the video that brought home the money. (Voice, artwork, and music by Matthew Walton.)

Congratulations to Noemi Duker, Yanjin Wu, and Matthew Walton.

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