ENTRY RULES

Who May Enter | How to Enter | Submitting an Entry | Preparing the Presentation |

Where to Ask Questions | Causes for Disqualification

WHO MAY ENTER?

1. The 2010 Direct/Interactive Marketing Challenge is open to all undergraduate and graduate students worldwide.  Employees, officers, directors, shareholders, agents, representatives, and immediate family members of Microsoft, DMEF, Direct Marketing Association, and their parent companies, affiliates, subsidiaries, and advertising and promotion agencies, are not eligible to participate.
2. Undergraduate team members do not all have to be at the same level; however, undergraduate and graduate students may not combine to form teams.
3. Graduate and undergraduate entries will be judged separately. Only undergraduate entries will be considered for cash prizes.
4. Teams shall be comprised of no less than two (2) and no more than four (4) students. Teams of fewer than 2 members or more than 4 members will be disqualified.
5. Students from all majors are encouraged to participate.
6. Teams may work independently, or have a faculty advisor.
7. Faculty advisors may choose to use the challenge as a teaching tool for part or all of the semester. Advisors may use the challenge as a mandatory class assignment, an optional class assignment, a marketing or advertising club activity or as an independent study project.
8. Faculty advisors may guide in the manner of teaching, but they must not develop the marketing strategy, media or creative plans, or make final decisions regarding the campaign.  No two teams should have the same marketing strategy, media or creative plan.

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HOW TO ENTER

1. View and/or download the 2010 Collegiate ECHO Direct/Interactive Marketing Challenge documents. Each team will have the choice of working on Option 1 or Option 2.
2. Faculty Advisors, and Team Leaders will be required to complete and submit an Intent to Compete form online. While these forms will be accepted up until November 25, 2009 for Fall semester entries and March 22, 2010 for the Spring semester entries, we encourage everyone to submit them as early in the semester as possible. Please visit this Intent link to complete your Intent to Compete form.
3. The Team Leaders must submit their entries by sending an email to DMEFchallenge@live.com with a link to their team's Microsoft Skydrive (see Submitting an Entry for details).
4. In your entry, please do not use your school name, mascot, etc. in your team name. Teams may revise their campaigns after submitting the Interim Summary; teams are not penalized if the final campaign that is entered veers from the Interim Summary.
5. Each team member and their faculty advisor (if applicable) will be required to complete and sign an Official Entry Form and a Participation Agreement which should be posted to the team's Skydrive account in a folder labeled Administrative.
6. It is highly recommended that teams view the Microsoft AdExcellence videos (see Resources) at the time of entry submission.  AdExcellence Certification is optional. If you take the adCertification exam, please print the page confirming you passed the test for each adCertified team member and add it to the folder labeled Administrative.
7. Each team's presentation materials must be posted in a folder labeled Proposal to their Skydrive on or before the deadline.  The Fall semester entry deadline is Tuesday December 15, 2009.  The Spring semester entry deadline is Wednesday, April 14, 2010.
8. Teams may enter in the Fall and/or the Spring, but FINAL JUDGING for both semesters will take place in May 2010.
9. All team members and the faculty advisor (if applicable) must agree that all entries become the sole property of the Direct Marketing Educational Foundation (DMEF), the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) and Microsoft, Inc. for any use whatsoever, and will not be returned to student teams, nor will compensation for services be made now or in the future.  Agreement must be so stated on each entry form.
10. All team members and faculty advisors authorize and grant, by their participation, the DMEF, the DMA, and Microsoft, Inc. the unlimited right to use their names, pictures and/or likenesses for advertising and publicity purposes, whether utilized in print media, television, video, film, radio, Internet or otherwise, without their prior review or approval and without any compensation to them.
11. It will be each team member's and faculty advisor's duty to carefully review all the information/rules and regulations and to be sure that all regulations are fully understood and adhered to.
12. Only entries written in English will be considered.

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SUBMITTING AN ENTRY

THE MICROSOFT SKYDRIVE

1. Team Leaders: visit http://skydrive.live.com
2. You will be asked to sign up, or to sign in.
3. Once you log in, you may create your team folders and post your documents to those folders.  Keep your entry forms and participation agreements in a separate folder (Administrative) from the rest of your submission. Optionally, students are invited to forward their resume for possible opportunities with companies affiliated with DMEF or Microsoft.  Your entry forms, participation agreements and optional resumes should be posted to a folder labeled "Administrative."
4. In order to allow the judges access to your Skydrive folders click Edit Permissions and add the email, DMEFchallenge@live.com, and include a note stating that this Collegiate ECHO Challenge entry is from [your team name]. Please provide us with full access to both your Administrative and Project folders.  The full access choice is worded "Can add, edit details, and delete files" in the permissions area.
5. If you do not receive an acknowledgment from us within one week, please email DMEFchallenge@live.com directly to make sure we can access your entry.

    

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PREPARING THE PRESENTATION

• The entry must be  5-10 pages, paginated Word document summarizing your team's solution to the Challenge.  Title pages will not count against your page limit.

• In addition, the entry should include appendices (maximum 20 pages) with the following information:

1. Detailed Budget (allocation toward services by media) and ROI (prediction of ROI of your campaign)
2. Creative samples
3. Forecast results of marketing campaign
4. Other (team may choose to include other analyses and/or research that support their solution)

• PowerPoint Presentation (maximum 20 slides) -- imagine that you have 10 minutes to pitch your strategy to Microsoft Executives.

• A 2-4 minute video of your pitch to consumers to try the product(s), submitted video should be in MIDI, 3G2, .asf, .wma, or .wmv format. Videos must be posted to the Skydrive, the judges will not link to other sites to view videos.

• All text must be in Microsoft Word (saved as a Word 2003 or earlier version) or a PDF file using 10-point type or higher in a font and size that is easy to read. Student prepared artwork, photography, and computer graphics including charts and graphs may be used. Artwork downloaded from the Internet is permissible.

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WHERE TO ASK QUESTIONS

• If you have a faculty advisor: see if he or she can answer your questions before you post them.  In the meantime, friend our Facebook page.  (See 2. below.)

• If you do not have a faculty advisor (or he/she can not answer your  question) please, friend our Facebook page, "Collegiate ECHO Challenge" and  post your questions regarding the campaign to our Wall.  DMEF will answer your questions here and provide updates and information about the competition on our Facebook page.


• Faculty advisors and team leaders: please do your best to compile your teams' questions before submitting them.

• Neither Microsoft nor DMEF will accept phone calls or receive emails.  DMEFchallenge@live.com is solely to be used to give us access to your agreements and entry on Skydrive.

   

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CAUSES FOR DISQUALIFICATION

Faculty advisors and team members agree to carefully read all of the information provided by the sponsor and DMEF and to abide by the entry rules of the challenge. Violation of the rules of the challenge including but not limited to:

• Ineligible person on your team
• Failure to submit signed agreements
• Failure to meet challenge deadlines
• Soliciting or accepting outside help
• Failure to follow format for presentation
• Plagiarism

will result in disqualification.

In the event any of the submissions are compromised in any way, electronically or otherwise, that is beyond the control of the DMEF or Microsoft, DMEF and Microsoft reserve the right to eliminate these entries and award the prize among uncompromised entries.

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