Testimonials

On screen title: QUTopia Staff and Student Testimonials

Professor Rebekah Russel-Bennett: Welcome to market day 1 of QUTopia this semester. It’s going to be a busy one the students are all prepared with their businesses, we’ve got about 55 businesses here today. We’ve been running QUTopia now for 8 years so we’ve done this 16 times. We’ve put through about 3,000 students who’ve gone on to do marketing as careers. Basically the students develop their own product and get sponsored by industry who provide a lot of free samples. We have about 60 real businesses involved every semester. The students then package it up, sell it for fake dollars which we print, then they evaluate their success or failure at the end of the semester through a case study. There is lots of real world learning, there are no marks that are given for the amount of money they make so we encourage them to take risks and be innovative. The most important thing about this subject is what you can learn by really implementing the theory we teach here at QUT.”

Associate Professor Amanda Gudmundsson: “Hi my name is Amanda Gudmundsson and I’m at the QUTopia day. I’m Assistant Dean for the QUT Business School and I’m always really impressed at what our 2nd year students are able to produce at this event. One of the things that is really important for us at the QUT Business School is integrated learning and giving students the opportunity of having their learning applied in real practice and there is nothing more real than trying to do your own market stall and convincing others to purchase your product. Our students have fully integrated stalls here, they have their marketing plans and activities all integrated in the hope of making wonderful sales at QUTopia. You can see behind me that it’s a real buzz the students find this a really insightful and entertaining experience so a wonderful learning opportunity.

Leo (Past QUTopia Participant): Hi my name is Leo, I participated in QUTopia in 2009. My stall was stall 51 and we had a ball throwing service and we did quite well. I really enjoyed QUTopia because it taught me how to deal with people and talk to business owners and try to get sponsorship and get people involved, and also think about strategies for the market days and evaluate those strategies afterwards. It’s really helped me and now I’m doing online marketing strategies for a company based in Brisbane.

Dominic (Tutor): What can I say about QUTopia, I think it’s great. After 10 weeks of doing this to see all the students actually coming out, putting their stalls together. It’s always good to see how they change things as well. The best part about it I think would be seeing everybody engaged, seeing everybody actually putting in practice things they have learned, being able to buy things that they’ve got sponsorships for. It’s really worthwhile and I think they learn a lot more than just marketing. I think that’s the most that I get out of these.

Professor Gayle Kerr: Hello, I’m Gayle Kerr I work here at QUT teaching advertising. I wish this was my subject because it’s an absolutely fabulous learning experience for the students. I’ve actually found a few of my stray students in there and had to support their stalls. I think it’s a wonderful opportunity to really delve in a get an inside experience of how marketing works, so well done!

Karen (Let’s Spoon): Hi my name is Karen and our stall is Let’s Spoon. We have designed little hot chocolate dipping spoons to go into milk or a hot drink. We’ve had a really fun day here at market day, QUTopia was a great experience for us in terms of branding our product and creating a great marketing strategy which we’ve found has worked really well. I think maybe a bit of advice for the future QUTopian marketers would be just to make sure you’ve got great branding on the day, be really energetic and just really get out there and sell your product.

Scott (Game of Scones): I’m Scott from stall 14, Game of Scones of the House Baratheon. Basically we are a baked goods stall. What we’ve been selling is an assortment of goods, savoury and sweet. The main thing that I’ve learnt going from week 1 to week 2 is time is of the essence. What we found was that we spend too much time doing manual labour things when we should be talking to customers so today we’ve prepacked all our gear.

Bridie (Paper Press): Hi my name is Bridie and I’m the marketing manager for Paper Press. Our store sold beautiful handmade products predominately made out of paper and from recycled materials. We’ve had terrific sponsors that provided us with bags and they were Lush. John did Fully and Fancy so with our beautiful store design and we also had T2 provide us with some of the bottles that they hadn’t used and had left over from some of their iced tea range so that really helped us make some of the products that we had on offer today. We’ve done really well, we’ve had a terrific experience in QUTopia and we’ve enjoyed it so much. It’s really been thrilling experience and you get to make new friends out of a really lovely group. We’ve had a terrific time.

Jess (Jingle Balls): Hi I’m Jess form Jingle Balls. We’re selling customised Christmas baubles that you can get your name glittered onto them. We’re sponsored by Dreamworld who gave us these wonderful costumes and our Santa costume as well. From market day we’ve learnt so much and we’ve also learnt a lot from the mistakes we’ve made too.

Alannah (Sense): Hi my name is Alannah and I’m the product manager from sense. We did a him, her and home line which started with fragrances for men and women and also some scented candles which were inspired by Chanel No.5, Armani Code and Apple Pie. One of the biggest things I learnt from this experiment was how to gain sponsorship and build relationships with people. We were sponsored by Identity Cut and Colour, L'Oreal, Hugo Boss and also Martin Schluter design and John Webber. One of the greatest things that I’ve learnt from here was how to actually make my own product and after Market Day I'll be contining to make these scented candles as a little side project. It was a really nice thing for me to get the confidence to do something like that after Market Day. The thing that I’m proudest of is that all our candles we sourced from St Vincent de Paul, Lifeline and the Asthma Foundation so over 15 per cent of our product expenditure when to charity.

Amelia (Banana Bar): My name is Amelia and my stall is Banana Bar and I’m the marketing manager. We sell banana smoothies, banana bread and bananas. This market day we’ve expanded into doing banana lollies as well. We found that bananas weren’t selling as much as we previously thought because there is a lot of competition with the health food stalls. We’ve changed from our health orientated to making it a fun experience to draw people in. We have a very yellow based branding that’s bringing people in and just making it fun.

Harry (Iced): My name is Harry and I’m the promotions manager of Iced, our stall for QUTopia Market Day Semester 2 2013. We choose to do iced tea as an offering here at the stall because we thought it would be a good product. We took our inspiration from T2 who we sought as sponsors as well. We were lucky enough to get them as sponsors and they gave us a lot of stuff which was really good that we were able to offer as prizes as well as our actual product. Things that we’ve all learnt from Market Day have been practical business. It’s been really insightful dealing with customers and dealing with a product that we actually have to create, then market, then create a stall. I think this has been one of the most practical subjects I have ever done at uni. It’s been a lot of work going into it and I think the end product is really good, it’s a really fun day that everyone really enjoys and everyone gets a lot out of. Having two different market days is really good as well we have a few weeks in the middle to work out what we did well and what things we need to improve on. It’s just a great practical business learning experience and I would recommend everyone do this subject, even if it’s an elective it’s a really great subject to do.

The Fourth Artisan Coffee Co: I would recommend this unit to aspiring marketers or advertisers just because it gives you a bit of a background knowledge on the logistics of obtaining the products, making it yourself, marketing it and the way to distribute it when you’re at the Market Day stalls. Obviously there is a lot of tough competition out there, there is a lot of people doing the same types of products as us so we have to try to differentiate our product from the rest and that came through education of the consumer, talking to them about what’s different, our different point of sale and we went from there. It’s very difficult to sell your product to a very limited market, a very saturated market but it’s a great learning process, it’s very lifelike and it reflects the real world.

Gareth (Pulse): My name is Gareth this is our stall Pulse. Basically we’re giving people the chance to win extreme adrenalin experiences. On the first market day we gave away a $270 lighter racing experience and this time we’ve given away a 12 lap v8 supercar racing experience worth $550. We’ve also just had our TopGear competition where whoever gets the fastest lap win a $300 pro rally experience so all up we’ve had around $1,200 worth of prizes so it’s been really really good. We’ve had quite a niche market but the people that are into it are crazy about for it. We’ve had guys like this gentleman here come back numerous times to get their hot laps so it’s been fun. By far the best QUT assessment ever.