Every November for the past 26 years, Fanshawe has sent its best marketing students to meet with the rest of Ontario's top college marketing students to see who is the best at critical-thinking, creativity, problem-solving and knowledge in business. And his year is no different.

The 2005 Ontario Colleges Marketing Competition is being hosted by Seneca College November 17th and 18th. Fanshawe's individual groups have won gold medals many times over the years but have yet to win the overall gold. The Fanshawe team has placed fourth for the past 11 years, but this hopes to be the year to win gold, or at least crack the top three.

Students have been planning and preparing for their success since early September and even held a mock competition to evaluate their skills so far and see what the competition would be like.

Fanshawe will send 22 students to compete in their own specialized area. The competition consists of eight different case studies, a job interview simulation, a sales presentation and a quiz bowl.

Each case study will be analyzed in pairs within a half hour time limit followed by a presentation to the judges skilled and experienced in field of studies of each topic including sales management, international marketing, primary research, direct marketing, retail and marketing.

The quiz bowl is similar to Reach for The Top for marketing students, but students will be placed on random teams so they can meet and work together with students from other colleges.

Students have been raising funds to help send them to the competition including selling Fanshawe College bracelets throughout the school and selling raffle tickets for prizes that include Toronto Maple Leafs tickets.

The team also organized Friday's New Music Night, featuring Staylefish, Flatlined and Marketing professor Mike Sloan's band, Ruth's Hat.