UoB's 'Pitch Perfected' crowned Postgraduate champions
University of Birmingham students Audrey Berling and Janhavi Tamhankar, or otherwise known as ‘Pitch Perfected’, have been crowned postgraduate winners of The Pitch 2026.
Now in its fifteenth year, The Pitch brought together 13 undergraduate and 13 postgraduate teams from leading UK and international universities, all competing to be named the ‘Marketers of the Future’. Each team was challenged to respond to a real-world marketing brief.
Postgraduate teams were challenged to create a strategic plan to establish IBM as the global leader in ‘Green AI’ — the future of sustainable artificial intelligence.
Developing the idea
We spoke to the winners Janhavi and Audrey to find out more about what how they developed their final idea:
“Honestly, the brief pulled us in immediately. CIM and IBM are two names that carry real weight and we didn't want to just observe from the sidelines. We wanted to test ourselves against it. We're both naturally ambitious and we knew early on we wanted to go big.
The idea of Accountable Intelligence came from asking one simple question. What does IBM have that nobody else can claim? The answer was 55 years of proof. So we built everything around that”.
Working together
On the team dynamic and working together, Janhavi explained:
“Audrey and I have been friends since the course started so there was already a natural ease between us. But working together on something this intense showed us something more.
We've each got our own strengths. And we slot into each other's gaps really naturally. It sounds simple but it's actually quite rare to find that in a working partnership”.
The biggest challenge
Speaking about the biggest challenge they faced while working on their pitch, the duo explained how they went “to the drawing board more than once” to ensure the idea was as bold as possible.
They noted that getting feedback is “never comfortable” but “that's where the best version of anything comes from”.
Looking ahead
On what it means to win the Postgraduate category, Janhavi and Audrey said:
“More than anything it's given us a new motivation. Not the kind that comes from external validation. The kind that comes from proving something to yourself.
We backed a bold idea, defended it in front of an industry panel and it held up. That does something to your confidence that's hard to explain.
Personally and professionally, this feels like the beginning of the beginning. There's a lot more we want to build. And now we know we can”.
Massive congratulations to Audrey and Janhavi for their exceptional performance in this year’s competition!