Vega students named finalists in the 2018 Capitec Challenge

A team of four second-year students at Vega (a brand of The Independent Institute of Education – The IIE) made it to the final round of the Capitec Challenge, placing second overall and beating a host of strong senior competition from other schools across the Western Cape.

By maintaining a strict focus upon its business model as a retail bank, Capitec has been able to keep costs low for its consumers and rapidly earn itself the status of South Africa’s most beloved bank. They have also invested in funeral cover where it will offer a product that is unique, innovative, cost-effective and adds value to its clients.

Capitec wanted to launch their funeral cover in typically unconventional fashion, they bypassed their traditional agencies and took the challenge to Cape Town’s leading schools of creativity. “Capitec wanted to launch a new funeral cover product during the 2018 FIFA World Cup in a manner that would get South Africans talking” says Alexander Sudheim, Senior Copywriting lecturer at Vega. “Despite the tough competition, the Vega team performed exceptionally well and came a close second overall. This challenge provided students with the opportunity to showcase their acumen, creativity and ingenuity on an engaging real-world brief.”The team, made up of Henko Brand, Jir-Xin Lai, Lauren Ewertse and Nikola du Toit, conceptualised a clever campaign titled #YouCantFakeDeath. South Africans were encouraged to immediately tweet the name of the player and the soccer game using the hashtag #CapitecChallenge  every time a player ‘faked’ an injury during a World Cup match. All tweets would be entered into a competition and participants would stance the chance to win a trip to Russia to watch the FIFA World Cup.

Along with the wealth of experience gained, students were given a cash prize of R10,000, and a R50 000 donation for the Vega Bursary Fund on behalf of Capitec.