The Wake Forest Marketing Summit, a marketing case competition in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, will prove to be one group of UCLA Anderson School of Management MBAs alumni’s memories. The Anderson team came home with a first-place win and a $75,000 huge novelty check.
The Anderson team consisted of five people with diverse backgrounds and skill sets. From a former operations manager in agribusiness to an event marketing manager at a film studio, each team member brought a unique skill set to the table. UCLA Anderson prides itself in a strong, diverse student body, and this team was emblematic of that.
The case required the team to create a go-to-market strategy for a new product at Reynolds American— from identifying the target consumer through developing the social media strategy— all within a $10M budget.
Despite the difficult challenge and loft expectations, the students had the know how to get the job done thanks to Anderson classes in Market Entry, Finance, Channel Strategy. The Anderson MBA curriculum gave the team the knowledge necessary to nututre a marketing plan from a simple idea to a 20-slide PowerPoint deck with more than 30 appendix slides in 36 hours. Phew!
Reynolds executives commented on the Anderson team’s polished presentation and in-depth recommendations, and the executives even noted how each member seemed to “really like each other” and that that kind of camaraderie seemed to have made the team a success.