Five students from Brighton College’s Young Enterprise company Million Dollar Media met with Brighton & Hove Mayor Ann Norman in the Mayor’s Parlour at Brighton Town Hall to present the innovative new media product that the company hopes to roll out across the city. MD-Media is helping local businesses to promote themselves to the YouTube generation, including local people and visiting tourists, by featuring them in a short video that will be aggregated across popular tourism and local websites for a fee that is far more competitive than traditional print media advertising.

The students presented their concept to the Mayor who was enthralled by the potential to help local businesses to better promote themselves using a new digital medium, saying “It really is excellent. Nobody has done this before”. Such was the Mayor’s approval of Million Dollar Media, that the students were provided with a long list of contacts at council-operated facilities who would be interested in advertising using their product.

MD Shane Bhinji said \'I feel the evening was a success as we came away with many good contacts from large businesses in Brighton as well as ideas to do with our marketing that we hadn\'t thought of before. Most people would say that selling advertising space in this economic climate would be hard however the Mayor thought differently. With her extensive knowledge of Brighton and local businesses, she could see the business being a success purely because of the unique product that had never been done before. This feedback was particularly encouraging for us as and the evening played a key role in establishing the businesses identity in Brighton\'.

Mike Macfarlane, volunteer business adviser to Million Dollar Media as part of the Young Enterprise Company Programme, said “Million Dollar Media is a real life business with a real product operating in a real market with all of the associated challenges and opportunities that require the students to show real commercial aptitude and entrepreneurial flair. The skills of presenting commercial ideas and making connections with useful individuals are absolutely essential for the students to find success. Presenting to the Mayor put Million Dollar Media straight into a high-pressure scenario that they handled with considerable finesse and were able to turn to their own commercial advantage.”

 

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