14 April 2022
In the past, students on the course developed proposals for promoting the Edinburgh Science Festival and increasing their donations. This year, a few months after COP26, Edinburgh Science asked our students to develop sustainability resource proposals for implementation throughout Scottish schools. Specifically, Emily Stone and Stephanie Maia of Edinburgh Science challenged them to help Scottish schools respond to the climate emergency.
"We wanted the students to come up with something which would help schools to empower pupils to take action in response to the climate emergency, thus boosting pupils’ sense of wellbeing and confidence," said Emily, the Climate and Sustainability Business Development Manager of Edinburgh Science. "We were keen for the resources that the students specified to be of minimal effort for time-stretched and overloaded teachers to deliver, and we deliberately kept the brief open-ended to encourage creativity and innovation."
Stephen Dunne, the course leader, was keen to emphasise how the project enabled students to address the climate emergency as marketers. "While marketing is often blamed for encouraging over-consumption and, with this, environmental degradation, this brief urged marketing students to help alleviate the climate crisis. There are no ready-made solutions to problems of this magnitude but this cohort underlined how marketing should be understood as part of the solution."
Over the course of several months, eight student teams worked alongside the client to form their proposals, before four teams were shortlisted to present their final pitches. After tough deliberations, Barney and Friends were chosen as the overall winner.
Katharine Wilson, a member of the winning team, said: "While the name is reminiscent of a purple dinosaur, Barney and Friends was founded on the idea that ‘Believing is Achieving Revolutionary results through Networking and Empowering the Youth’ of tomorrow. The name speaks to the values we find are important in inspiring students to pursue their future career goals and motivate them to have a positive outlook on climate change, and we wanted these core values to shine through as we worked on this project."
Although there could only be one winner, we are delighted to report that the team at Edinburgh Science plan to incorporate elements from each proposal into their ‘Learning and Climate’ work-streams. We look forward to seeing these ideas coming to life.
To find out more about the MSc Marketing Applications, contact Stephen Dunne.
This year's Edinburgh Science Festival is running from 9 to 24 April, with over 100 immersive and inspiring STEM-based events taking place across the city.