Last year’s BT Young Pioneers from eWaterpay and WeKonnect were treated to an ‘app marketing’ masterclass with experts at mobile giant EE. This incredible opportunity came about during a chat at our winner’s event last year.

Jack Hygate, Connor Humphreys and Laurence Bu-Rashid from the winning eWaterpay project told our sponsors BT that they were confident with the tech side of the project. What they were struggling with was the creative and marketing side of their app, which could help take their project to the next level.

BT spotted an opportunity to help. Having merged with the mobile phone company EE in 2016, they approached them to help the young pioneers.

Marketing workshop, know your target audience

During the school holidays eWaterpay and WeKonnect, last year’s finalists, went to the EE head office. Working with marketing execs, they had a one-day marketing workshop to look at their marketing challenges. Everyone agreed, the first step to successful marketing is to know your target audience.

The young pioneers spent the day with marketing graduates and proposition marketeers and brainstormed ideas and creative marketing solutions for their projects.

A really learning point of the day was getting the inside track on some of the challenges facing big companies like EE, who also develop new apps. The young pioneers found out that planning marketing campaigns and designing apps can be tricky, especially when big tech companies like Apple are secretive about new technology releases.

Meeting the boss, EE CEO Mark Allera

Like us, the team at EE were impressed with the young people and what they had achieved so far. Their CEO Mark Allera couldn’t help dropping by to find out what had motivated these young teams to get involved in developing their tech for good projects. The word has it that he was looking for tips on how to inspire his own kids (don’t we all want to do that)!

Become a BT Young Pioneer this year

BT and EE plan to make the one-day marketing workshop a regular event for finalists in the AbilityNet Tech4Good BT Young Pioneer Award category. Another great reason to get your applications in.

Nominations are currently open and close on 8 May at 5pm.