Winners of the Coca-Cola 'Make Every Word Count' Essay Competition Announced

Winners of the Coca-Cola essay competition

On May 23 in Van Dyck Auditorium, in the presence of students and faculty, AUB and Coca-Cola jointly announced the winners of the 'Make Every Word Count' Essay Competition. Chirine Chehab and Maya Itani, who both submitted excellent ideas responding to the essay topic, tied for the first prize. Each was awarded a check for $750, along with certificates. All the other competition contenders also received participation certificates.

The essays submitted were written in response to the question: "In what way can Coca-Cola, through the use of cause-related marketing and/or community partnerships, utilize the power of its brand to demonstrate its commitment to the Lebanese society?" The two winning essays were remarkably insightful and well-researched.

The essays were graded and selected based on pre-determined criteria set by the competition panel, which was composed of professors from AUB and representatives from Coca-Cola. The criteria included relevance, rigor, and coverage; innovativeness and feasibility of the ideas presented; clarity and support (theoretical/empirical/rational) of the ideas presented; and last but not least, writing style, organization, and flow.

Imad Baalbaki, professor of Marketing at the Olayan School of Business, praised students for the high-quality of the essays submitted, as did the other committee members, who included Professors Nabil Dajani, Dima Jamali, and Nadia Shuayto. They remarked that all the essays qualified to win and showed how much the students cared about their country.

Lubna Forzley, public affairs and communications manager of Coca-Cola Middle East, thanked each of the students for taking the time to write such outstanding essays, which provided a very good understanding of the field of corporate social responsibility and its applicability to Coca-Cola and the Lebanese community.

The essay competition was initially launched in March by Coca-Cola during a seminar on corporate social responsibility held at AUB, when it was also announced that the Coca-Cola Foundation had made a grant of $2 million to the Suliman S. Olayan School of Business to establish the Coca-Cola Chair in Marketing.