Wondering where we've been the past month? Busy, to say the least, and here's why.
By Anne Mahoney
This summer, students from Medill IMC’s 2010 class are working on group projects and individual residencies for a number of well-regarded client sponsor projects. The entire quarter is spent on real world application of the classroom knowledge gained in quarters one through three. We are tasked with harnessing those qualitative and quantitative skills to demonstrate what IMC whizzes we have become through tackling a real marketing challenge.
Each project is different, depending on client needs, so students doing group projects bid for the team that would best compliment their strengths and career ambitions. Individual residencies go through a typical interviewing process and spend the summer on-site with their clients. At the end of the summer, each team presents its findings, solution, recommendations, model or other specified outcome to the sounds of raucous applause and implementation by the sponsor company.
This summer, we’re grateful to have a fantastic roster of clients to work with: Best Buy, Cricket Communications (Leap Wireless), Discover Card, Draftfcb and Kraft (in Paris and Shanghai), Fannie May Chocolates, FedEx, OnStar, Procter & Gamble, T. Rowe Price, Shiseido, Iris and ReachMD. Each team works directly with the company and is also assigned a faculty member as advisor.
A number of students are also working full-time in individual residencies. Two great examples working in the Chicago area are Josh Friedman and Sara Smith. Josh is in product management at Motorola, where he is creating a rich SWOT analysis for Motorola's social strategy for mobile phones in the development pipeline through 2012. Sara is in account planning at advertising agency Euro RSCG, unearthing consumer insights used to guide integrated ad campaigns.
It’s now “go time” in full swing, and we’re excited to finally be putting our hard work from the classroom into practice.
Best of luck to everyone!
Anne Mahoney is Social Media Director of Vitamin IMC and a student in the Master’s in Integrated Marketing Communications program at Northwestern University’s Medill School. She’s doing her group project on consumer insights with Iris. You can find her tweeting at http://twitter.com/agmahoney.
