William Fernandes file photo by Alena Schwarz/ The Towerlight

Team Rubicon took their first win in The Associate competition March 8.

The teams were to design and promote a sustainable gift card for Target Corp. Their gift card design and marketing needed to be connected to a holiday or event.

Team Rubicon, led this week by Kyle Harrer, chose Mother’s Day, the second largest consumer holiday, to base their marketing ideas around.

The team created an eco-friendly gift card made of wood, a renewable resource with many positive environmental impacts, including low waste, low toxic profiles, and low water use.

With the help of a friend majoring in graphic design, the team was able to produce an image for their ideal gift card: Target’s famous dog, Bullseye, holding a bouquet of flowers in its mouth. The gift card would come with a smaller one for a key chain as well.

Rubicon also proposed a monetary incentive to reload the gift card: a five percent savings on every purchase. This incentive is already in place for credit and debit cards at Target, making it a simple transition to carry on to gift cards.

Team PROFessionals, led this week by Rachael Pashkevich, chose Christmas as their marketing holiday.

Instead of designing a new gift card, they added an element to pre-existing cards.

The team focused on recycling and proposed a paperless method of gift cards: e-gift cards (online), m-gift cards (cell phones), and PVC, or polyvinyl chloride, gift cards in the store that can be recycled.

“Well, I thought your use of the mobile phone was creative, but I think there was a little bit of a missed opportunity of being responsive to what the task was,” president and CEO of Baltimore Gas and Electric Company Ken DeFontes said.

Pashkevich said the requirements of the task were unclear and attributed the team’s misunderstanding to the PROFessional’s loss.

“It was a little confusing,” Pashkevich said, “Did they want us to design a new card or add an element to it? We thought the recycling aspect was our added element.”

Not continuing on in the competition is Team PROFessional’s William Fernandes.

“I think we considered various approaches to meet the requirements,” Fernandes said, “And we thought this would be the lowest in cost and the most sustainable way that we could market to the holiday. We stand behind everything we did.”

Fernandes is not leaving because he was eliminated. He had privately consulted DeFontes to propose that he would not carry on for personal reasons.

“It took a lot of courage to make this choice. If you’re ever on a team and you know you have a commitment to the team, you don’t let them down. And [Fernandes] didn’t let them down. It takes courage to be self aware about the choices you have to make,” DeFontes said.

Next week, teams will work with a case involving America Online. The case comprises three deliverables: a video, a slide deck, and participation in AOL’s Winter Luge competition day.