branding niigata

Brand Management presentation was the culmination of many weeks of hard work. The lecturer warned us in the first class that it was going to be heavy, and we shouldn't complain about it in the course evaluation!

I decided to take it anyways coz I felt that if I had a genuine interest in the course, then it wouldn't be as bad as if I was forced to take it. True enough, we had week after week of group discussions, meetings and case studies. The only thing that sustained me was my interest.

The final project was to brand the Niigata prefecture. And it was going to be a competition amongst the 4 groups. Truth to be told, there's nothing that sets Niigata apart from say, Tokyo (sights and sounds of a metropolitan city), Kyoto (ancient capital, temples & geishas), Hokkaido (Snow Festival, wide expanse of land) and Okinawa (American naval base, southern most island).

Niigata has a little bit of everything, hence their machine-gun approach to marketing their prefecture. The best rice and sake in Japan. Temples, palaces, museums. Fresh sushi & sashimi. Tulips and camelias. Sado island and gold mine.

Our task was to position the prefecture in such a way that would compel foreign tourists to make Niigata a preferred destination for their holidays. We had briefings by the city officials through our lecturer, sponsored-trips to visit the Northern Culture Museum and a hot spring, weeks of brainstorming and discussions, research and translation work and many discarded ideas.

The big day finally came. We were the 1st group to present to the city officials who had drove in the snow to our campus to judge our proposals. Even with few rounds of practices, I was still nervous. I never liked public speaking anyways. The fact that before that, some members were not contributing to the group, did not help make things better.

I had to sacrifice sleep to redo some of their work just because it wasn't up to mark. Another team member also took the initiative to compile work as the previous effort by another member was such a mess. We were keenly enthusiastic about what we've come up so far, and didn't mind putting in extra effort.

It was well worth every drop of sweat and blood and late nights. We were thrilled to be announced the winner in class the next day! In a way, we kinda expected it as we had a video made to crystallise our proposal, and our positioning had a different slant compared to the other groups. The judgest liked what we presented, and so did our lecturer.

We were initially awarded a night's stay at the Niigata Grand Hotel so that we could join the Sake tasting festival this weekend. Some of the group members still had papers due, so we decided to forgo that. Instead, we were offered a sushi lunch this Tuesday with our professor. I must say it isn't an equivalent reward, but winning the competition itself was reward enough.

I wouldn't have been able to do this without Him!