KOTRA Awards 'University Student Digital Marketers' Supporting Small Business Overseas Expansion

[Asia Economy Reporter Suyeon Woo] KOTRA held an awards ceremony on the 13th to select outstanding teams among the participants of the 'University Student Digital Marketers' project, which was conducted to support small business owners' entry into overseas markets.

Since July, KOTRA has been promoting the 'University Student Digital Marketers' project and selected 31 university student marketers based on their content creating experience and foreign language skills.

They formed teams consisting of 3 university students, 1 small business owner, and 1 export specialist, and directly produced various marketing contents such as ▲foreign language websites ▲product introduction videos ▲web catalogs. Additionally, they conducted about two weeks of non-face-to-face promotion using online platforms mainly used in the target markets where the small business owners hoped to enter, such as SNS, utilizing the completed content.

At the awards ceremony, based on the content created by each team, five awards were given in total: one grand prize, one excellence award, and three encouragement awards, selecting the teams expected to be most helpful for small business owners' entry into overseas markets. Lee Ui-ho, director of Arirang TV and a judge, evaluated, "The quality was so high that it was hard to distinguish the ranking, as it was hard to believe it was made by students."

KOTRA held the award ceremony for the 'Cheer Up Small Business Owners! Digital Marketers' training project on the 13th. Kim Yuntae, Head of KOTRA's Small and Medium Enterprises Division (tenth from the left in the photo), is taking a commemorative photo with the students. Photo by KOTRA

Company A, which manufactures chicken seasoning powder, had China as its main export country but rolled up its sleeves to enter the U.S. market through this project. First, to build a friendly brand identity, they started using a chicken character designed by university students. Recently, they have been focusing on targeting overseas consumers by uploading a product introduction video, which has recorded 3,000 cumulative views on SNS, to an online shopping mall. A representative of Company B expressed satisfaction, saying, "Compared to videos made through outsourcing companies, the results were much more creative and diverse."

Meanwhile, most university student marketers responded that this activity would help their future careers such as employment and entrepreneurship. One participant said, "It was a more valuable experience than internships at other companies in that I could experience practical work in the export field," and another participant said, "I learned a lot in a short time by planning and executing a marketing campaign myself and receiving consumer feedback."

Yoo Jung-yeol, president of KOTRA, stated, "Based on the local networks of 127 KOTRA overseas trade centers, we plan to promote content created by young people and support it to lead to export contracts," adding, "We will continue to help excellent small business owners and young people grow together in the global market."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.