BUSIDAYS

Case 1: International Communication in Marketing

Buddy in Ghent: BIG

Group Members: Marie-Maxence De Jaeger

Laura Enache
Azadeh Armon
Elvira Perdomo

Introduction
Coming to a new city as an international student can be one of the most fulfilling experiences someone
can go through. However, confronting a new language and culture entirely on your own can be very
taunting. Integration to a new culture comes with time and lots of active effort from the newcomers and
we thought it would be ideal if we could find a way to speed up this process.

We came up with a platform that will make it easier to connect citizens of Ghent, gentenaars with
international students. People who live or work in Ghent would then have the opportunity to meet
international students and become their buddy, mentor or friend, depending on the amount of time and
effort they are willing to put into the relationship.

In the following report we would like to present our project and how we selected our target audience,
what we discovered during the interviews in our field research, what the objectives of our platform and
marketing strategy are, the channels and actions we are going to implement and the phases in which we
will develop them, as well as its timeline and an estimated budget assigned for the realization of this
platform.
Target Audience
Interviews

We interviewed a total of 14 people, and our findings were t

How did sign in

Name Occupation Met Int. Students meet Activities motivation platform <25 >25 >50
working-study-
JEROEN family no / / no time no x

CHRISTIAN teacher no / / likes idea no x

wants to (culture, mindset and
AXEL student no / going out communication) yes x

FEMKE student no / cooking , shopping help them, make new friends yes x
LINGKON
G teacher (int.) yes work share interests making new friends yes x

FRANCIS working no / cultural activities discover the (cultural) differences yes x

CAROLINE working no / / not interested no x

knowing more international people,
TOM working yes in class sport language yes x

LIVA retired no / / not interested no x

going for a drink, christmas
SARAH student (int.) yes in class market getting to know new people yes x

WOUTER student yes met online all sort of activities discover the differences yes x

SARAH student no / / maybe because of the different culture no x

Nr Occupation Know Motivation Sign in

Working 6 No 8 not interested 2 yes 7

Student 6 Yes 4 no time 1 No 5

Other 1 explore their culture 5

meet new people / friends 4

Interview Results

OCCUPATION
working student other

DO THEY HAVE ANY INTERNATIONAL

FRIENDS?
No Yes
 WHAT'S THEIR MOTIVATION TO
MEET FOREIGN PEOPLE?
not interested no time explore their culture meet new people / friends

WOULD THEY SIGN UP FOR THE

PLATFORM?
yes No

When interviewing people in Ghent for our field research we found out that most people were willing to
help international students, but they often simply dont have the time to engage in long term activities.
There were also some students or younger people who were very willing and interested to get to know
international students as a means to get to know another culture, languages and socialize. That is why we
decided our target audience would be:

- Students who want to interact with international students (mostly younger than 25 years old)
 - Working people who are interested in socializing with international students (around 25 and older)

We decided to make this our target group because the people we interviewed who were older than 50
years old did not show any interest in interacting with international people and also, they have the
language barrier (most younger people speak English)

Objectives
1. Providing information to the international students

The first objective will be to provide general information about life in Ghent for international students.
It would have links to most important websites in Ghent (uitingent, city of Ghent, emergency number,
police, information about transportation, useful apps, events for students, health insurance,
accommodation, libraries, sport facilities, student associations).

2. Providing a platform for friendship/coaching/mentoring.

We would like to create a platform that allows international students who just arrived in Ghent or
who are living for a while here to get information about daily life, to interact with Ghent citizens and
to have someone they can come to for questions about life in Ghent. For this purpose we want to
offer the possibility to Ghent citizens to be a buddy who can provide this information. This is
particularly attractive to people who want to help or get to know international students but that dont
have a lot of time to invest in bigger activities. We think allowing people to be some kind of a coach
who can sporadically answer questions that international students may have would attract the part
of our target audience that would like to be involved but doesnt have a lot of time. It would be some
sort of a in-city penpal

3. Creating the opportunity for Ghent citizens and international students to meet in person and get
involved in activities together.

Our platform aims to promote not only the exchange of information among students and citizens but
also real-life interactions. For this purpose we will promote competitions among our social media
outlets. An in-bassador

Action + Channels

In the end of the campaign is at least to have 500 sign ups in the site after 3 months of campaign.

Marketing strategy
Our marketing campaign will be focused on bringing people to the launching event of our platform and in
that way already start bringing people together. It will have 5 phases:

Phase 1: A floor Advertisement Campaign

There are companies who offer floor advertisement campaign which is writing down publicity on the
floor thats washed out only after a few weeks. The painting they use is also environmentally friendly. That
way, we would have a way to reach the target audience thats out of the box and that would surprise
people who are walking around the city (we would have these ads on the streets near some of the
campuses in Ghent and other places like parks, the city center, etc).

Phase 2: Flyer Campaign (I, II)

The flyers we will distribute will be of two kinds:

I: A flyer to be given at the City Hall at the moment international students register to live in the city and in
the Internationalization Office of each University. The target audience of these flyers are the international
students. We have made the calculations of how many flyers are needed based on an estimate of the
amount of international students in Ghent every year (around 5000). We want to print an estimate of
10000 to make sure we attract at least 1000 students.

Phase 3: Social Media Campaign

Promotion of the event will be also shared via social media and we will count on the city of Ghent to
promote our posts. We will have accounts on the best known social media outlets. The use of the hashtasg
#beBIG will be used to create expectation about our campaign. We will post promotion of the flyers, and
pictures of international students sharing with Ghent citizens in the most recognizable spots with the
hashtag. This will happen 2 months before the event to announce that theres something big going on and
create curiosity.

Examples of the activities and competitions we would organize to promote our platform:
- Funniest picture/most liked picture
- Competition of the best Belgian activity picture e.x Eat a waffle with your buddy! And post it on
your social media accounts. The winner would get a prize. The prize would be provided by one of
our sponsors. For this purpose we will use Ghentrepreneur and other entrepreneur associations
in Ghent so our budget lowers and we can get products for free in exchange for exposure. Startups,
growing companies and rising young entrepreneurs would benefit from the exchange.

Phase 4: Event

We will make use of the public press, media coverage and make sure to involve as many international
oriented organizations as we can gather as well as companies who would be interested in exposure
(startups, Madam Bakster and other Ghentrepreneurs) They can have stands in our venue in exchange for
some products we can place in the goodie bags we will hand in to the people that come to the event and
find an international buddy or that have signed up for the website. People who prove that they liked the
page even if they dont want to sign up yet, can receive a small souvenir as an incentive.

Free drinks can also be offered instead of a souvenier if we manage to contact de stropke brewery, we
want to find material incentives we can promote to make sure people come to the event and they will
depend on what we can agree with our sponsors. Meet and greet activities will be a main focus of the
event, which will be a meeting point for Ghent citizens and the international students. It will be the first
step in real life integration.

Phase 5: Ongoing social media presence and Monthly Meet and Greets
Through picture competitions, the use of hashtags to promote the activities with buddies and a stamp
system which allows the buddies to save up for gaining certain prizes once they have completed a number
of activities, we will encourage the platform to keep going after the event.

Once a month we would like to encourage a networking activity that will be seasonal related: walk through
the cities, getting to know the city life (Gentse Feesten), Christmas markets, Workshops, etc.

Budget
Website 25
Domain
Designer
2 kinds of Flyers 250-350
papers
cutting & printing
Floor ads 500
colors
workers
Event 600-800
Drinks
Venue
Tables & Chairs
Workers
Music equipment
Lightings / Projectors
Goodie bags
Social Media -
Ads
Personnel
Buffer 200

Timing

3 periods: August, September and October

August: Floor Ads

September: Flyers + Social Media Campaign

October: Beginning - Flyer 2 (street performance)

End of October: Launching Event