BYU Marriott School of Business hosts Cotopaxi case competition

A team of BYU marketing students won the Cotopaxi case competition hosted by the Marriott School of Business on Jan. 18.

The four students spent a week preparing a marketing plan for Cotopaxi’s Questival event, happening March 24-25, then presented their plan to a panel of Cotopaxi judges, who graded them based on feasibility, organization, professionalism and overall presentation.

BYU senior Ava Curtis was on the panel of judges for the case competition. Curtis works at the BYU Marketing Lab and volunteers at Cotopaxi’s team. “I was kind of the person on both ends,” Curtis said. She said she helped set up the competition and ran it for other students.

Students learned about their prompt on Jan. 12 when they came to the opening night at the Marriott Center. “Essentially, here’s the problem Cotopaxi has, we want you to come up with some ideas,” Matt Madden said of the competition’s structure.

Madden is the director of the BYU Marketing Lab, and he helped coordinate with Cotopaxi to set up this opportunity for the students. Teams worked together to answer Cotopaxi’s prompt, which centered on encouraging BYU students to sign up for Questival.

According to their Facebook page, Cotopaxi’s Questival is a 24-hour scavenger hunt that can be completed with groups of 2-6 people. These groups will travel around their cities completing various challenges in order to “build friendships, push yourself, experience your surroundings, and have a whole bunch of fun.” Cotopaxi plans to announce more information about this year’s Questival on Thursday, Jan. 26.

Curtis said the Questival is a “great way to get out there and have something fun to do, but also create some really close friendships and cool memories.”

BYU junior Lexi Olsen was one of the students that participated in the competition. Olsen said she “loves the marketing program” at BYU because it pushes her to be better. “It requires me to think harder and problem solve,” Olsen said. She gathered a group of friends that were interested in the competition and began working on their project.

Olsen said there were many different directions to approach the prompt from, since Cotopaxi did not give them direction on what the students’ approach should be. She said she liked the ambiguity of the prompt, and their team focused on bringing students together on BYU campus before Questival began to create things that could then be used as part of the main Questival event.

Olsen’s team did not make it into the top three teams, but Olsen said their team was not expecting anything, and that the winning team “deserved 100% to win” the competition.

BYU junior Joseph Wood was on the winning team and said they 2-3 hours every week night, asking themselves why Cotopaxi approached BYU for this competition.

“We decided that it was because they needed the resources that BYU students have, and they need to know how BYU students think,” Wood said.

They designed their presentation around that idea, reaching out to over a dozen different businesses both on and off campus. Their final presentation focused on utilizing the different businesses and clubs around BYU to spread the word about Cotopaxi’s Questival.

The top three teams from the competition received Cotopaxi bags and other merchandise as part of their reward. Even though Wood already has an internship lined up with another company, he likes what Cotopaxi stands for.

BYU students interested in learning about Cotopaxi events tailored towards BYU can sign up for their email list with the QR code listed below. More information about the upcoming Questival will be emailed out on Thursday, Jan. 26.