Francisco Santos, alumnus and Marketing & Communications Team Leader at Nova SBE Executive Education, and Mariana Coimbra, former master student of Nova SBE and former staff of Nova SBE Executive Education, won in the Marketing category of the 25th edition of the Young Lions Portugal competition.
Article by Nova SBE Executive Education | Reading time 4 minutes
The victory, announced this Tuesday, opens doors for the duo to represent Portugal in the Marketing category at the International Young Lions' competition, part of the International Festival of Creativity Cannes Lions.
For Francisco Santos, who attended the Post-Graduation in Applied Management and started his career at Nova SBE, this is also an achievement for the education sector, «which is not considered sexy or creative», and this is the reason why it is important to «demystify the idea of what is a brand that can be considered institutional, and that, nevertheless, manages to develop talent in the area of creativity and have good professionals, capable of delivering "out of the box" projects».
«Mariana and I used to work together before, and we wanted to challenge this stigma a. The idea was to participate, without any perspective that we could be called. And, as Nova staff, we applied [to the shortlisting phase] only with projects we did for Nova Executive Education», he explained, adding that the national qualification phase was «a very big challenge to understand everything about a brand, its competitors, the benchmark, and what proposal to deliver in order to add value to the customer, in 48 hours», but they did not let themselves be clouded by the nerves of this first participation in the competition.
For Mariana Coimbra, currently Head of Marketing at ERA Imobiliária, has also belonged to the Marketing and Communication team at Nova SBE Executive Education for five years, the victory day was filled with «strong emotions». The quality of the competition, with participants from sectors «that could be more disruptive in this context», having more experience and participated in past editions, made the victory even sweeter.
«We were always aware that we were doing a good job and that we had great results, but in a sector that is not so recognized. And being able to win over companies that are the biggest marketing schools in Portugal is a great achievement! ».
This competition phase serves to determine the winners of each country in seven creative categories. The seven pairs ranked first in each of the areas will have to complete a new communication challenge at the Cannes Lions festival. This final phase will be even more demanding since, instead of having 48 hours to present a solution, the teams will only have one day.
The greater demands, however, do not deviate from the objective nor put greater pressure, guarantees the pair of representatives of Nova SBE Executive Education.
«The expectation is not to win. More than that, it is making a good representation and being confident of the project that we are going to deliver in Cannes».
