Pattani's winning plan to help local community

Give young people a chance, and they'll demonstrate they have a lot of power for change. A group from a southernmost province of Thailand has proven this by designing a prize-winning plan to help their local community.

A team of students from Prince of Songkla University's Pattani campus are working to promote one of the province's local products- peanut cookies - to prove that their learning doesn't only come from textbooks. A business plan has been formulated, and it has been used for a student business plan competition.

Last week it won a competition called the One-2-Call! BrandAge Award - judges considering it the most practical plan for promoting local products.

The competition has ended, but not their mission. Indeed, it has just begun. After spending two months working after class until late at night to create and adjust the plan, they must continue to work hard implementing their business strategies to reach their goal of helping local producers develop and promote the cookies.

Apisit Naknawa, 22, one of the four-member team, said: "Our business plan has been made to develop and market traditional fired peanut cookie products. We have marketing knowledge - and now a group of locals in Pattani's Muang district who produce the cookies want to improve and promote their products. We want to use our knowledge to help them, so the plan will be implemented with the products."

Other members include Anis Jehwear, 19, Suraida Dorloh, 21 and Ismail Jehsu, 21. University lecturer Laila Boonpis is their adviser.

In the plan, they will start by making the traditional cookies more attractive to youngsters - new targets. They will let the producers reduce the size of the cookies so they are easier to eat and add herbs to make them more colourful and healthy. University research that helps prevent the cookies from going rancid will be passed on to the producers. Then, they will help them repackage the products under the brand Kudjung to attract new consumers.

Apisit said social media would be used in this modern marketing environment to reach young consumers. A Kudjung Facebook fanpage has been created to promote the cookies. Then, photos and information of Kudjung cookies would be posted on webboards like Pantip.com while e-commerce websites will be used as an online sales channel.

"[At present] only some locals eat the fired peanut cookies with their tea. We want more people to eat them," Suraida said.

One of the judges, Sanchai Thiewprasertkul, managing director of Teleinfo Media, said the plan of this group was the most practical among 445 teams' plans created |by university students from 53 |educational institutions across the country.

"The judges agreed the plan could really be used to develop and promote the products. We recommended they repackage the products again to make them more suitable for containing the fired peanut cookies and more attractive," he said.

Ismail, who is responsible for designing the new packages, said the judges' comments would be used to design better packages.

Titipong Khiewpaisal, senior vice president for consumer business at Advanced Info Service, also a judge, said it was the first time social media was set as a criterion. Organisers had wanted young competitors who used social media in daily life to learn how they can make use of it for projects like this.

In the final round, six teams who were the winners from each region in the country presented their business plans.

The team from Sakon Nakhon Rajabhat University, representing the Northeast, scored second highest. They had a plan to promote animal food products made of hamata beans produced by villagers and government agencies in the province. They will also use the plan to promote other local products.

Pamaiporn Makmoondee, 22, a team member, said: "One of our purposes in joining the competition was to get more people to know our high quality local products, as we want private companies and the government to support them. Although we are not the national winner, we succeeded in getting more people outside the region to know about hamata beans and the products."

Another member, Gornganok Kamlao, 21, said joining the competition was a valuable experience, as she had learned from real practices and problems outside the classroom. "I learned our plan's weak points from the judges' comments so I will fix them when we implement the plan."

The winning team from Prince of Songkla University was presented with a trophy and a Bt200,000 cash prize, while the five other regional finalists also got a trophy and Bt20,000 in cash each. Seven other teams that came second in each region earned a Bt10,000 cash prize.

Watch a video of the winning team on http://www.nationmultimedia.com/specials/nationvdo/showvdo.php?id=5014&cateid=13