First-year MBA students at the Schulich School of Business will work in groups of 5, spending 40 – 50 hours per team to provide strategic marketing recommendations for your organization. In addition to a marketing challenge you provide your group (or each of your groups, if you are assigned more than one) in the area of marketing communications, target audience segmentation, customer centricity, or overall business strategy, each group will be encouraged to identify a new market opportunity for your company.

The project will start with a briefing from you on what you believe to be the biggest changes, challenges and opportunities in your industry and market. At this initial session, you will also provide the team with an overview of your company, its history, your products and services – and how this has changed over time and why, your current marketing strategies (with campaign examples ), concerns you have for the future, ideas you have for growth and the marketing problem you would like the group to tackle.

There is no requirement to share your financial information, though the team will ask you to identify which of your products is doing well and which ones are not. If, however, you have customer research, please provide that to the group(s) to help them provide you with more insightful recommendations.

After being briefed on your firm, the team will conduct its own research on changes within your competitive landscape and identify key trends affecting your industry. To assist them in this work, the team has access to many industry reports not in the public domain. The student-consultants will analyze the data in the context of what they have learned about your business, assess the implications for your

organization, and provide you with strategic marketing recommendations.

Project examples include, but are not limited to:

• Identifying additional audiences you could target.
• Identifying products or services that could be added to your current offering.
• Determining how to enhance brand perception among key customer groups.
• Determining how to create signature customer experiences to enhance engagement.

Please note that students will not be providing a valuation of your business, addressing operations or other financial-related matters or putting together a list of specific sales targets for you to contact.