The Overall Winners of the AIB Build a Bank Challenge 2015 - The Dream Bank

A big congratulations goes to the winners of the AIB Build a Bank Challenge 2014/2015, 'The Dream Bank' from Presentation Secondary School Tralee. The team has won a prize of €5000 for the school with individual prizes for the students.

The team is a very worthy winner of the competition having given an incredible amount of their time and energy to build up a successful school bank throughout the year. The team were supported all year by their teachers Ms. O'Grady and Ms. O'Connor who accompanied the girls to the National Final in Dublin.

The Dream Bank consists of:

• Katie Ahern - Manager

• Lauren Kelly - Assistant Manager

• Sarah Kilgallen and Aishat Lawal - Customer Representatives

• Laura O'Connell - Marketing Advisor

• Ciara Dennehy - Financial Advisor

What set The Dream Bank apart
Opening for business every Thursday, the team encouraged all students to save regularly through running promotions and competitions, and presenting to Junior Certificate Business Studies students in the school on the importance of saving regularly. The team had a commitment to developing a close relationship with their customers in order to empower the girls in their school and locality to shoot for the stars and reach for their dreams.

Unique aspects of The Dream Bank’s campaign included their concept of a spotted map marketing strategy where people from around the world downloaded the Dream Bank logo, take a picture of the logo in front of a monumental building or site in their country. Then this would then be shared on their Social Media encouraging interaction and engagement with their customers.

The Dream Bank supported indigenous industry in their locality and school. They founded a start-up enterprise programme in their school where they advised, supported and fostered enterprise start up in their school through this. Throughout this they facilitated mentorship and coaching to start ups on areas including seed capital funding, income and expenditure, brand development and digital marketing.

Best part of the experience
For The Dream Bank, the best part of the experience was being able to work together as a team, meet new people and make friends. Throughout this, they overcame any conflict that arose by keeping sight of the common goal they were all working towards.

How did The Dream Bank communicate with the wider community?
The team were fortunate enough to be featured in TV, radio and news interviews which helped raise awareness of their brand. Realising the importance of the internet community, the team set up a variety of social media channels which they used to not only communicate with customers but to raise the profile of their brand too.

Support for the local branch
Student Officer Sarah Leahy, Branch Manager Joe Shanahan and AIB Youth Ambassador Colm Cooper provided great support to the team throughout the process. On the day before the final, The Dream Bank presented in their local AIB Branch where the staff provided feedback and asked questions on their presentation.

Advice for students thinking of taking part next year
The advice from The Dream Bank to students who may take part next year is to just have fun with this wonderful competition. It’s a really big learning curve but the team feels there’s so much to take from it including teamwork, friendship, communication, organisation and business skills.

To learn more about the AIB Build a Bank Challenge, visit our website here.