Post Event Report
By: Abhinav Singh Rana
Doon Business School observed its annual fest ‘MANFEST’ from 21 November to 23
November 2019. It was the best annual fest that I witnessed in three years that I have been a
part of this college. The events, entertainment, food stalls and decoration were an upgrade
over the previous fests. For this year’s fest a large range of events were planned and
successfully executed. One such event was ‘Brand Aid’. Brand Aid is an interdepartmental
event were students have to build a functional brand from scratch in the eight days preceding
the fest. In this small window, the participants have to market the brand, produce the products
and do a brand launch for the same. Like previous years this year also the MAM department
participated in this event, as it is a great opportunity for the students to learn various aspects
of management.
We had lot of pressure on our shoulders as we had to improve on our successful participation
the previous year where we won the prize for best public relation. We were given a wide
range of options to choose from for our product category. After discussion, we ended up
deciding that ‘Handicraft’ was best suited for us as it gave us the opportunity to show our
creative side.
We scheduled a meeting on the first day where we formed different teams and placed the
available human resource as per there field of interest. I opted for the marketing team. The
first task that we were assigned was finalising a name and making a logo for our brand. Me
and rest of the members of the marketing team spent the whole night deciding the name and
designing the logo. After going through a huge range of names we felt that the name, which
best described our brand was ‘KARIGARI’. Karigari is a Hindi word that translates to
craftsmanship. Everyone in our department loved this name. The next task on our list was
creating a logo for our brand. After two hours of designing and editing, I created a logo that
was appreciated by everyone.
I spent the next day on building an online presence for our brand. I created the Facebook page
& Instagram page with the help of rest of the marketing team. One of the biggest challenge
for me was to bring in audience for our page. For this, we distributed the work of making
content for our page among ourselves. I started editing images from our production line and
some other images related to our brand. With the pressure increasing on our production line I
also helped our production team in my free time. I suggested some of the designs and three
of them were selected by our production team. As I was a part of the production team last
year, I helped with some of the products. I also helped in painting the posters that were put up
at different spots across the campus. Third day into the event we experienced a lot of pressure
as we were running a bit behind from our plan, we decided to spend the whole night on
expanding our portfolio.
The efforts that we put into online marketing for our brand showed positive results as we
quickly surpassed 400 followers on Instagram. We also had over 20 products on our portfolio
thanks to the efforts of our production team and the whole night we spent on it.
Brand launch plays a huge part in the success of any brand. As per our schedule, we planned
our brand launch for 20 November 2019. With each passing day, the pressure was increasing
on us. On the day of brand launch, we had to decorate the space allotted to us as well as
display our products. For our brand launch we decided to have a fun session with the
faculties, we had many ideas but the idea of drawing stood out. On the day of brand launch,
we were nervous but the whole went as per plan.
After the brand launch we started taking orders, the response that we got was positive as all
the faculties liked our products and gave us helpful feedbacks. Many students and teachers
ordered our products on the first day itself. With such a positive response, we decided that we
would setup up the counter for the following two days as well.
21st November marked the start of MANFEST and we had to present a PowerPoint
presentation to the judges and faculties showing our journey with this brand. Abhishek and
Ananya did a great job of presenting the presentation.
23rd November, which was the last day of the fest, was also the most important day for us as
the results were going to be announced for Brand Aid. With all the other brands performing
well it was a close race. All the effort that we put in for the last eight days came down to this
moment. The moment when we heard our brand name as winner of the best concept award,
we all ran to the stage with joy. It was a special moment for us as we were finally rewarded
for our efforts. We all felt on top of the world and celebrated the till 3 A.M that night.
It was an amazing experience for us as I learned so much from this event. I learned time
management, resource management, event management, planning and coordinating from this
event. I am looking forward to take part in similar events in the future.
