Online Marketing Challenge: Our Teams Stand Out On Their First Try

September 15, 2011

Three teams from HEC Montréal joined the world’s top-ranked winners in the most recent edition of the Google Online Marketing Challenge. For the competition, students had to create an effective online marketing campaign using Google AdWords, the targeted advertising platform developed by the Internet search giant. This year, 3,082 teams from 95 countries took part in the competition.  

The first team, made up of Émilie Gauthier, Marc Di Gaspero, Benjamin Devienne and Sébastien Tremblay, placed in the top 100. The other two teams, made up of Christina Bellevue, Guillaume Taillefer, Salim Soweif, Jean-Philippe Langlois, Romain Tiry, Léa Racioppi, Patrick Perrier and Chérif Abda, ranked in the top 10% worldwide.

Each team had to work with a small or medium-sized business to develop an effective AdWords campaign. Two companies, Mamie Clafoutis and Bedon Branché, along with Professor Christian Dussart (to promote his book), came on board and offered the teams highly fertile testing ground for the exercise. For their first time in the competition, the HEC Montréal teams were coached by professors Sylvain Sénécal and Danilo Dantas and assisted by online marketing experts Sylvain Amoros (NBS Marketing), Marc Poirier (Acquisio), Dany Pednault (Touché ! PHD) and Antoine Théorêt-Poupart (Adviso).

“The results of these first entries are very encouraging. Our students worked very hard to produce three effective campaigns and we are proud of the recognition they earned,” says Danilo Dantas. For his part, Professor Sylvain Sénécal says that “the Online Marketing Challenge is a great competition, because it allows students to hone their online marketing skills, a must for modern companies.”