If Beverly Hills housewives ever demand North African bathroom tile, the Kingdom of Morocco will owe some small debt of gratitude to a group of Bellevue University students.

The five students designed a marketing plan for Morocco that was deemed best in the United States -- better than plans from students at New York University, George Washington University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology -- in a national contest to help publicize the African nation to U.S. businesses and consumers.

The group will travel to Morocco in the spring and present the plan to the kingdom's top trade official, who may use parts of it as the country tries to export more marble tile, wood and leather.

"We've been living Morocco for five months," said Bellevue instructor Heather Nelson. "Now I get to take students to actually see it, which is more fantastic."

The plan began as an assignment in Nelson's marketing management degree program, a combination of 11 classes Bellevue students take in a year's time.

Nelson learned of the contest, called the "Brand Morocco National Case Study Competition," and incorporated it heavily into the program, designing about three-fourths of the summer and fall curriculum around it, she said.

She split the class into teams and had them study Morocco's past, assess its present strengths and weaknesses and design a marketing plan to improve its financial future.

Students were required to carry out all the creative details of the plan, which meant they needed to design a Web site rather than just suggest that Morocco design one itself.

The class identified potential customers for Moroccan goods, brainstormed about new slogans for the country and designed podium banners and press packets that would carry a message: The place that Americans know best for a Humphrey Bogart movie ("Casablanca") is ready to do big business.

"Right now there's no awareness that Morocco is viable for business," Nelson said. "But that's also a positive thing, because there really aren't any negative perceptions to overcome, either.

"We just have to get it on the radar screen for U.S. business leaders."

The team of Nanci Borg, Kelly Carpenter, Cory Kusleika, Aretha Prodjinotho and Jodi Tripp won the in-class competition, which was judged by a panel of Bellevue faculty and outside marketing experts.

But the team, made up mostly of 30-somethings with full-time jobs, already had its sights set on bigger things. The team had decided that it could design one of the five best marketing plans in the country, Carpenter said.

The group met every Saturday morning throughout the fall. Members huddled late into the night with Nelson, trying to perfect the plan in the 10 days before it would be sent to judges who would pick the five finalists.

The darkened offices of BCDM , an Omaha architecture firm that employs Carpenter, became the group's home away from home as the deadline neared.

The Moroccan marketing plan was no longer a class project, Carpenter said, it was a mission.

"Maybe it's our age -- we're all nontraditional students," Carpenter said. "We're all very driven people and we wanted this. We really, really wanted this."

The Bellevue group advanced to the finals in San Diego, joining students from top-rated business schools such as MIT.

They survived a nerve-wracking 25-minute final presentation to win the overall title, winning $3,000 and the weeklong trip to Morocco with the victory.

In May, they will travel to Casablanca to present the plan to leading traders of wood, stone and other design materials.

It may be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

"Wouldn't it be incredible if a year from now we see part of our plan in action?" Carpenter asked. "Even just a little bit of it?"