Nissan India rolls out Student Brand Manager programme

Nissan Motor India Pvt. Ltd. (NMIPL) has announced the ‘Nissan Student Brand Manager’ (NSBM) Program 2011, a unique initiative to promote its brand in India. This is the second year of the initiative and this program will invite applications from 150 colleges spanning across 15 cities in India. The company aims to target 1,200 entries for appointing 20 NSBM’s and the tenure of the program will be for a period of a six (06) months starting from July to Dec’2011. The 20-selected Student Brand Managers will play a key role in bringing brand Nissan closer to both - the student community and the public in general through innovative marketing initiatives. After undergoing training, the students will work closely with company officials on a variety of initiatives. Besides an array of key initiatives, it will include creating unique events to create buzz about brand Nissan among the student community. Some of the short-listed colleges for selecting students include K.J. Somaiya Institute of Management Studies and Research, S.P.Jain MIR- Mumbai, IIFT - Delhi, University Business School - Chandigarh, IIM - Kolkata, IIM - Ahmedabad, Loyola Institute of Business Administration- Chennai, Department of Business Studies, Christ University - Bangalore amongst others. Addressing students of K.J.Somaiya, Dinesh Jain, CEO, Hover Automotive India (HAI) said, “The Brand Manager program presents a unique challenge to the students to create a niche for them and raise the standards of excellence for their future. The idea of this program is to channelize the creative minds of the youth in the best possible manner. It also presents them an opportunity to learn various real life tasks with some of the best minds of our own. Going by the response to the program last year, we are expecting the feedback to be even better this year.” This year, the jury members consists of eminent personalities from the Advertising and the Automobile fields such as Prahlad Kakkar, Ad Guru, Genesis Films, Harish Bijoor, CEO of Harish Bijoor Consults Inc, etc. The Nissan Student Brand Manager is an honorary position with the company and does not guarantee employment with Nissan. During their tenure, each student brand manager will get Rs. 30,000 as stipend and Rs. 20,000 as marketing budget to implement their initiatives for the full program. Apart from that each NSBM will be trained by the Nissan Corporate trainer and get a NSBM Kit (Digital camera, Visiting Card, T-shirt and Jacket) which equips them to conduct their initiatives in a professional manner. Also each NSBM can get a “Nissan Micra” based on their requirements which further help them to understand marketing activities of an automobile brand.