Florida International University and Latin Trade magazine recently partnered to launch the Latin Trade MBA Challenge, which offered participants the chance to win a full-tuition scholarship for the International MBA (IMBA) program in the College of Business Administration.
“We saw a unique opportunity to work with Latin Trade to market our IMBA and to use this innovative scholarship competition to attract interested, qualified students,” said Luis Casas, director of marketing and recruiting for the college.
Mike Zellner, publisher of Latin Trade, was equally enthusiastic about the creation of the MBA Challenge.
“We jumped at the chance to make this innovative scholarship program available to executives all over the world,” Zellner said. “Our target audience was Latin América, but we heard from scholarship candidates as far away as Eastern Europe and Mozambique. We credit this tremendous response to the college’s excellent reputation as a top-caliber business school.”
A successful cross-media campaign spread the word about the MBA Challenge.
Working closely with Casas and his staff, Zellner and the Latin Trade team designed an extensive print and online marketing campaign to announce the MBA Challenge to the publication’s 350,000 business readers worldwide.
Internet banner advertisements and email blasts to a large distribution list generated more than eighty million Web browser “impressions” that in turn produced 80,000 click-through responses.
Ultimately, the MBA Challenge campaign attracted 1,200 respondents and 200 leads for prospective graduate students.
“These are impressive results for a first-time scholarship and recruiting promotion,” Casas said. “Building on this positive experience, we are extending similar programs to other publications, such as China Trade.”
And the first Latin Trade MBA Challenge winner is…
To qualify for the one year, full-time MBA scholarship, candidates had to have maintained at least a 3.6 grade point average as an undergraduate and scored 600 or higher on the GMAT. In addition, they had to submit an essay that persuasively answered the question, “What would an MBA do for your career?”
The winner, Livia Esteves Guedes Muzzi, a Brasilian native currently living in Miami, is excited to be given the chance to pursue an International MBA as part of her career strategy for moving from civil engineering into finance.
“I feel that winning the Latin Trade MBA Challenge will open many new doors for me,” she said. “I am so grateful for this opportunity, and I believe that an MBA from Florida International University will make it possible for me to achieve my goals and succeed with a new career in private banking.”
Muzzi will begin her MBA program in August, 2007. She looks forward to starting classes, where she feels she will “connect with and learn from interesting people with different backgrounds who are all committed to advancing their careers through the college’s outstanding graduate program.”
