Wharton Marketing Team Wins Big
Wharton MBA team collects the "Cheerwine Cup" at the 21st annual Wake Forest Marketing Summit
Published: Sunday, February 13, 2011
Updated: Monday, February 14, 2011 07:02
I want to let you in on a little known fact. The Wharton School's Marketing department is the best marketing department in the world. See for yourself. Go to http://som.utdallas.edu/top100Ranking/ for data on total research contributions (number of publications) and you will see that the Wharton Marketing Department tops the list (publications in the most prestigious marketing journals from 2000-2011). Talk to hard core academicians and you'll be singing to the choir. The rest of the world? They don't know this well-kept secret. That other school in Evanston is often associated with "Marketing." In fact, many of our own students have in their minds the perception of Wharton = Finance.
But that is starting to change, with events like the one that occurred this past weekend. I was faculty advisor for an all-star MBA team of Wharton Marketing students (Iris Chin,Jonathan Harmon, Rebecca Ricalde, Carolyn Schogol and Sodany Sor; all second year Wharton MBAs) who competed in the 21st annual Wake Forest Marketing Summit (http://www.marketingsummitlive.com/). This event is one of the most prestigious Marketing Case competitions in the world. One hundred and twenty six teams applied, and only eight MBA teams were selected to compete.
My team rocked it, and took a giant step toward letting this little secret out of the bag. In a grueling 36 hour time frame consisting of blood sweat and tears (as well as nonstop Red Bull and Donuts), my Wharton Marketing MBA team constructed a case solution for the brand "North Face" (owned by VF). The judges did not know which schools each team represented. Our Wharton Marketing MBA students were #1 in the event, collecting the "Cheerwine Cup" trophy, and pocketing a cool $75 grand. You read that right. These students won the seventy-five thousand dollar cash prize for first place.
I, of course, was very proud of their hard work—combining creativity with rigorous market analytics. I was also excited to see how the efforts of our research conducted in this department (which informs these tools and approaches), can be translated by our Wharton Marketing MBA students into strategy formulation and implementation tactics that can impress a real world company.
This is a step in the right direction, especially given recent discussions around the new curriculum and issues of aligning the school's research incentives with teaching incentives (see previous Wharton Journal articles on this point). Either way, it was a great day for the Wharton School's Marketing Department(http://marketing.wharton.upenn.edu/) and the Wharton MBA Student's Marketing Club(http://www.whartonmarketing.com/).
Credit goes to the kids. They worked their tails off. Professor Keith Niedermeier (who leads the undergraduate marketing efforts) was also instrumental in terms of preparation and support. We worked closely with his team to prepare ahead of time (incidentally Keith's undergraduates won this event last year, and came in second this year).
So, for those who think that the best place to get your MBA if you are interested in marketing is somewhere in the Midwest, we've got your wake up call. The Wharton Marketing department is the best department in the world, with the best marketing faculty and the best marketing students, end of story!
Americus Reed II is Whitney M. Young Jr. Associate Professor of Marketing of the Marketing Department at The Wharton School.
