Schulich MBA student, Lexus Canada colleague win bronze Young Marketers prize at Cannes Lions International Festival
First ever Canadian team wins for global sustainability proposal
TORONTO – Tuesday, June 28, 2016 – The Schulich School of Business at York University is pleased to announce that a Schulich MBA student and her co-worker at Lexus Canada have won bronze as the first Canadians ever to compete in the Young Marketers category at the Lions International Festival of Creativity in Cannes, France.
Schulich’s Olena Sapojnikova, BBA ’13, MBA ’17 candidate, and her colleague on Lexus Canada’s digital marketing team, Christian Di Vincenzo, won the bronze medal for their proposed global sustainability program for Lexus competing against teams from 60 countries. The Canadian team proposed that Lexus would issue a recall for all of its models powered only by fossil fuels, providing customers with the opportunity to trade their vehicles in for an equivalent hybrid model.
Described by the competition jury as “either bold or ambitious,” the team’s marketing proposal was credited as being inspiring, scalable and applicable to both individual car buyers and dealerships.
“On behalf of our entire Canada Cannes Lions team, I couldn’t be more proud of Olena and Christian’s win,” says Young Marketers jury chair and Samsung CMO Mark Childs, who was the team’s mentor. “They consistently demonstrate their marketing passion and today they shared it with the U.N., and the world.”
Sapojnikova, who has always had a passion for cars, found her first job at an auto mechanic shop. As well as working for Lexus Canada as a digital marketing consultant, Sapojnikova is now enrolled in Schulich’s Accelerated 8-month MBA program. She and Di Vincenzo won the right to represent Canada in the international case competition after defeating 340 entries in the Young Marketers Competition, which was sponsored by The Globe and Mail.
“[Cannes Lions] is the biggest event in advertising and marketing in the world so just having the chance to be a part of the event is an honour,” said Sapojnikova. “It is a big boost to my career and it was the skills I acquired at Schulich that helped me stand out.”
Sapojnikova has studied marketing and digital media with Schulich professors Markus Giesler and Leora Kornfeld, respectively.
About Schulich
Known as Canada’s Global Business School™, the Schulich School of Business in Toronto is ranked among the world’s leading business schools by a number of global surveys. Schulich’s MBA program is ranked #1 in the world by Corporate Knights, the world’s largest circulation magazine with an explicit focus on Corporate Social Responsibility, in a global survey that identifies which schools are doing the best job of preparing future business leaders for the environmental, social and ethical complexities of modern-day business. Schulich’s MBA program is also ranked #1 in Canada and among the world’s leading schools by The Economist, Forbes and CNN Expansión. Schulich is also ranked among the world’s top 35 business schools for a career in investment banking in a global survey by eFinancialCareers.com. The Kellogg-Schulich EMBA program is ranked #5 in the world by The Economist and #1 in Canada by the Financial Times of London. For complete ranking details, please visit www.schulich.yorku.ca.
Global, innovative and diverse, Schulich offers business programs year-round at its state-of-the-art complex at York University; at its Miles S. Nadal Management Centre located in the heart of the Toronto’s financial district; and at its new campus in Hyderabad, India. Schulich also operates a number of satellite centres in Beijing and Shanghai, China; Mumbai, India; Seoul, South Korea; Mexico City, Mexico; and Sao Paulo, Brazil. Schulich offers undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate business degrees that lead to rewarding careers in the private, public and nonprofit sectors, and has 27,000 alumni working in over 90 countries. The School pioneered Canada’s first International MBA (IMBA) and International BBA (iBBA) degrees, as well as North America’s first ever cross-border Executive MBA degree, the Kellogg-Schulich Executive MBA. In addition to Schulich’s Master of Finance and Master of Accounting degrees, the School launched one of the world’s first Master of Business Analytics and Master of Real Estate and Infrastructure degrees. Schulich’s Executive Education Centre provides executive development programs annually to more than 10,000 executives in Canada and abroad.
For more information, please contact:
Beth Marlin, Media Relations and Public Relations
Schulich School of Business
Email: bmarlin@schulich.yorku.ca
Phone: 905-717-6278