If you’re a student in a Canadian university, you have likely heard of NESTEA – The Recruit, a competition among students attending universities across Canada typically consisting of teams of three, and three different challenges to win. According to Helen Gushue, Senior Marketing Manager at NESTEA, this opportunity provides students with “the chance to see first-hand what it’s like working in a real business environment and perhaps start them on a career path”. The winning team will win paid internships with Coca-Cola and a year’s worth of tuition (up to $7500) each. Sounds pretty sweet, huh?
However, in these past weeks, my Facebook home feed, notifications, and inbox have been spammed with requests from friends and acquaintances asking me to vote for their video submissions. You know it’s NESTEA – The Recruit season when you check Facebook and all of your notifications have to do with voting for The Recruit. While it is a clever marketing strategy on Nestea’s part to get their name out there, the sheer amount of spam just turns me off from Nestea’s brand as a whole, and I know I am not the only person who feels this way. What Nestea may not realize is that the competition can cause students who are not participating (and are merely subject to unwanted spam) to associate Nestea’s brand with negative connotations.
Before this, I was indifferent towards Nestea’s brand, but now I just don’t want to consume their products at all, or see the name anywhere for a long time as I am quite tired of it. Also, similar things happen during election season at UBC and Sauder, but that’s a different story.