Management and evaluation of crafting creativity initiative

Abstract

Bangladesh advertising industry has come a long way in the post-independence period. Now there are over 500 advertising agencies, 60 such production houses and more than thousands of digital marketing agencies operating in Bangladesh. This sector employs more than 10 thousand people in different roles. Yet, the industry is not getting good human resources. Thus this can hamper the progress of the industry as well as have adverse impact in the marketing and branding fraternity, as advertising industry is highly linked with the mentioned industries. There is a gap between students and advertising industry of Bangladesh. To minimize this gap, collective approach was required. Bangladesh Brand Forum being an industry stakeholder and advocate took the initiative of bridging the gap between students and creative industry through “Crafting Creativity” under Commward. Crafting Creativity is a connecting session for the students and the agencies. 6 sessions were executed within last week of July to August 10, 2017 at six different universities. The sessions of Crafting Creativity constituted of the 6 top agencies of Bangladesh to visit 6 universities and present some of their previous campaigns in front of these students and explain them the concept behind Crafting Creativity within their own experiences. The session focused on sharing how being creative can influence student’s personal life and also in professional life. Also, how creativity can solve different social problems and how the agencies execute different campaigns. The session engaged 591 students where the target was to engage with 500 students in the primary phase. From organizational perspective, the campaign was a successful one meeting all the KPIs. Also, from the student feedback we can see that the session was enlightening for the students about the work process of the agencies through real life experience. Though the campaign was successful, yet there are room for improvements. It is recommended that the sessions should cover industry perspective along with agency perspective. Also, the number of students reached and number of universities should be increased.