LIT Tipperary student scoops top Marketing Award

Surecom NS Ltd was delighted to present this year’s winner of the Surecom Innovative Marketing Award to a business student from LIT Tipperary. The contest is open to first year marketing students across LIT Tipperary’s range of business courses.  Competing students presented their service marketing plans to a panel of the judges comprising Sinead Healy Commercial Manager Surecom NS Ltd and Brian Keating Regional Manager with Shannon Development. The victorious student: Breda Clarke was applauded for her concept – Mobile Salon.  Finalists in the competition were: Ian Dolan, Flan Markham and Michael Ryan from the Thurles campus. The Thurles teams were coached by Laura Dargan. Finalists from the Clonmel campus were Ciara O’Dwyer, Fiona Ryan and Adam Quinlivan. The Clonmel teams were coached by Fiona Browne. Sinead Healy from Surecom who presented the award, commended all the groups who reached the final of the competition on their creativity, insight, teamwork and marketing expertise. 

Established in 2005 and headquartered in Cahir (with offices in Dublin and Athens), Surecom is a leading provider of engineering solutions and services to the telecommunications and IT industry in Ireland and abroad. They have a staff of 90 highly qualified and experienced engineers providing a single source of managed services to business partners such as 02, Meteor, Vodafone and Ericsson. Surecom are no strangers to awards ceremonies, having received an array of awards and accolades over the years including SFA, Ulster Bank Business Achievers and Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the year award finalist 2009. More recently Surecom was named as one of Ireland’s ‘Best Managed’ companies in the Deloitte Best Managed Companies Awards Programme.

The presentation piece for the award entitled “The Fruits of our Labours” was the creation of the Nenagh based, avant-garde wood sculptor Damase Morin with his unusual, innovative and slightly surreal abstract sculptures.  “When I was commissioned to make this award I thought of reward for our labours. So I thought of a simple fruit tree as the design of the presentation piece. I exposed the roots of the tree to show that it has strong roots which means to have a strong fruit bearing tree you need strong roots, i.e. a good foundation”, says Morin.  The perpetual award is a really impressive piece carved out of Elm, with the winners receiving a smaller version of the award to keep.

The competition now in its fourth year enables students, through their studies to practice the development of their analytical and presentation skills. It was evident from the range of marketing plans presented that the skills needed for developing new ideas are being honed in LIT Tipperary.