The DMA Talent Marketing Challenge

Why enter?

This is your chance to win an industry recognised award that’ll set you apart from your peers.

It pushes you to think outside the box and apply your academic knowledge to a real brief, and gain real-world experience outside of university or college.

Each member of the winning team can select a DMA Award of their choice to enrol in, accredited by the Institute of Data and Marketing (IDM). Our professional qualificationa are recognised across the marketing industry. 

The 2025 brief

Costa Cofee are the subject of 2025’s Marketing Challenge.

Your mission is to create a 3-month campaign that drives 50,000 consumers to use one of their self-ordering kiosks in their next three visits to Costa, using their loyalty card, and maintain or increase the average order value of £5.50. You can download the brief and challenge details here (the application form will be available soon).

What happens once you enter?

Once you submit your entry, a preliminary round of judging will take place by the DMA Talent Team, and a shortlist will be selected of around ten teams.

This shortlist will then be judged by a panel of industry experts, with between three and five teams being invited to pitch their entries to the client, where a winner will be selected.

Past brands who have provided the challenge brief include Instagram, KFC, BMW, Nestle, Toyota, Royal Mail, The Economist, T-Mobile, Whyte & Mackay, ScotRail and Guinness.

Resources to help you smash your entry

Segmentation. It is an essential step in responding to a brief. Watch Scott Logie explain how to ace your segmentation here.

How do you start and grow your creative idea? Watch Cordell Burke, explain how here.

Universities can use the Marketing Challenge as their Assesment

At Northumbria we have utilised the DMA Marketing Challenge for over twenty years. We currently integrate the case at both undergraduate (final year) and postgraduate levels as an assessment on digital and data driven marketing modules. As the case each year requires students to act as an agency and develop a detailed communications plan. It serves as an ideal capstone assessment which brings together much of their prior learning on everything from segmentation and targeting to creative strategy and budgeting.

We find that the case stretches students’ ability to work as a team and combine some of the more glamorous aspects of marketing with the critical operational aspects such as objective setting, metrics and testing. Each year the submissions students make impress us and the competition judges have often commented how the submissions are on a par with what they have seen from actual agencies.

Many of our graduates use their experience on this case study as a key pillar in your job hunt and I have seen first hand how it has helps them get their first marketing job and hit the ground running. Combining this with undertaking the DMA Professional Certificate is a package that gives marketing graduates a real edge in a competitive employment space.

- David Hart, Associate Professor in Marketing, Northumbria University