An idea to recycle and sell old toys for charity won the gold award at the International Marketing Competition last Saturday.

The Raffles Campus team proposed the idea of collecting unused toys from students in Singapore, having them re-manufactured in Malaysia and sold at Oxfam stores in the United Kingdom.

"We have noticed that some children go to McDonald's solely to obtain the free toys that come with Happy Meals. The toys are sometimes discarded or left behind after they have finished their meals," explained Ms. Dang Truc Vy.

Oxfam was selected as it is renowned for its humanitarian efforts around the world from Afghanistan to Zambia.

Singaporean teams from Ngee Ann Polytechnic, the joint team of Nanjing Audit University and Chartered Institute of Technology, and Temasek Polytechnic, also stood out.

Silver award winner Ngee Ann Polytechnic teamed up with world-renowned beauty products' retailer, The Body Shop, to introduce its new youth-friendly fragrance, Love Etc, on its campus grounds.

"We will be creating a special dance and crash as many lectures as we can on October 28 to present the dance all around our school," explained team leader Low Ai Ping.

The team plans to and post videos of their dance on youth-oriented websites such as Youtube.com and Facebook.com to raise awareness for The Body Shop's Love Etc fragrance.

The team from Temasek Polytechnic won a merit award for their idea of a mobile café in a double-decker bus.

The team created Lovebite which travels from school-to-school offering low fat food and snacks and free Wi-Fi.

The idea was deemed "bold" by the judges.

"Lovebite's concept just came to us - we thought it would be interesting to have a mobile café and we did a lot of research to make the idea feasible," explained team member Ms. Audrey Katherine Lange.

The team from Binus International University, Jakarta, won the gold award for the international category and the IMC Challenge Trophy.

They proposed ways of enhancing the customer experience for Indonesia's leading frozen yoghurt chain, Sour Sally.

Twelve teams from Singapore and the region competed in the IMC last Saturday. It shortlisted institutions from China, Myanmar, Indonesia and Thailand as finalists for the International Category.

Held at the Re! Union ballroom at Hotel Re!, the competition was organised by the Chartered Institute of Marketing Singapore (CIMS).

"For this year's IMC, both the local and overseas teams' concepts were judged based on innovation, commercial value, eco-friendliness, financial viability and the team's oral presentation skills," said the competition's Chief Judge, Dr Tan Kok Heng, Chairman of the Regional Board of CIMS.