Article-19 by Manipal Institute of Communication - eNidhi India Travel Blog

Article-19 by Manipal Institute of Communication

Recession is spreading its tentacles everywhere-Job freezes and layoffs are obvious while most of the campus recruits are uncertain when exactly they’ll get to join. Sales and profits go downwards and no one wants to spend money unnecessarily. Fund raising is tough and sponsorships are hard to come by…

Students of Manipal Institute of Communication (MIC) are reportedly finding it difficult to get sponsors for their Annual National level communication festival, named Article-19. Article 19 is scheduled for Feb 26,27 and 28 2009. This post on their blog reads “…Students are not getting money to do a simple college festival and these corporate big-shots are stealing away gloriously!” Reading the same, thought of writing a few lines about their event...

I’d attended their event last year-Manipal Media Students’ Convention- MMSC ’08. [Experience Account] The students had put up a great show. With a series of sponsors including Times of India, Bank of Baroda, Radio Mirchi, Campus18 and others, everyone envied the way the show went on… Veteran journalist Madhav Kamat did remark- “you people have done a good job getting all these sponsors- Next time I want money for some events I’ll call you”.

A lot has changed over an year. The economy has nosedived and funding this year’s event is the challenge students of MIC are up against. A member of core team with whom I interacted expressed confidence that they’ll still be able to go on with the program in a no-frills manner if no one comes forward to sponsor. They’ve confirmed participation from celebrities like Rahul Bose and Prahalad Kakkar and a series of interesting events.

An electric bulb, code named Bijlee Baba has been chosen as their Mascot and Switching off Manipal for one hour to create awareness on conservation of electricity is one of the events on the agenda.

Main sponsorship costs Rs 3 lakhs (negotiable)-Didn’t know college level events can get so expensive. Taking care of celebrities (air travel, hotel etc) will be the most expensive part I guess. In case your company is interested in sponsoring feel free to contact the core team of Article -19

If you’re a college student you can nominate yourself for any of the express awards. Kiruba Shankar and other dignitaries will be on jury panel (Kiruba gave their event a miss last year)
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Event sites:  * BijleeBola * Manipal University
Near Manipal:Nearby places: * Endpoint Manipal * Karkala * Bekal Fort * Maravanthe

Post event update: Event went really well. They got sponsorship from Airtel, Union Bank, Greenply, Internet Society and others. Rahul Bose, Sandhya Ravishankar, Prahlad Kakkar, Kiruba Shankar and many others made this event a memorable one. Detailed post later.

May 2010 updates: Looks like article-19.com and mmsc-manipal.com are not renewed and I didn't notice much mention of the event this year... May be the juniors couldn't organize it as good as previous years (2009 and 2008)

5 comments:

  1. It is understandable with current situation. The level to which it has rooted can be understood by Obama's inaugural speech - "gathering clouds and raging storms" of war and economic woe..

    In the year 2000, we had a similar techno-cultural symposium in our college and we charged our main sponsor 1.5 lakhs by then.. I don't think 3 lakhs is too much for now :)

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  2. @Mohan- from another viewpoint, yes, 3 lakhs is the cost of few seconds TV commercial-if the same is spent on college events, it will be noticed by a good number of people, though may not be in several lakhs as in TV but brand retention will be much longer than TV ad

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  3. Why cant MAHE sponsor this event.

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  4. MAHE has over 16 colleges under it and it cannot sponsor each college... And I appreciate Shrinidhi's point about brand retention.

    I'm a student of MIC and we're still searching for big money. Hope this helps. Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Well, I am not the right person to comment, but I'm sure MAHE is extending every possible help at the university level...

    Also I feel it won't be a student's event if all the money comes easily from university. Article 19 sponsorship team will get an experience of a lifetime as they need to exhibit top level sales and marketing skills to find a prospective sponsor, sell them the idea of the event and then secure money...

    Best wishes to them.

    ReplyDelete

Appreciate your efforts and interests to comment. Comments may be moderated due to increased spam. Will ideally respond to comments within few days.Use Anonymous option if you don't wish to leave your name/ID behind- Shrinidhi

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