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‘Smarter Planet’ marketing plan for IBM nets Ohio State team $50,000

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WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – A team of MBA students at Ohio State University defeated competitors from UNC-Chapel Hill, Wake Forest and several other institutions to win the $50,000 first-place prize Saturday in the Marketing Summit competition at Wake Forest University.

The Buckeye team was judged as having coming up with the best marketing plan in a 36-hour marathon. The goal: Develop a program to promote IBM’s “Smarter Cities” initiative.

(For much more about the event, including videos of team presentations, blogs and much more. Click here.)

“Ohio State University had promoted itself as a mix of two “all star” teams with case competition wins under its belt, but team chemistry was the big question mark heading into the 36-hour Marketing Summit,” a blog about the competition noted.

“The team had never participated in such a lengthy nonstop case preparation in a small room, leaving some wondering how individuals would react. “ ‘We were worried, no doubt,”’ said one team member.

“ ‘Seven people in a room can get pretty smelly,” acknowledged another. “But there was no MTV-style high tension.”’

“The biggest problem the team had was excessive idea generation, forcing them to streamline the process, work more efficiently, and repeatedly find ways to pare down the presentation. Overall, they were pleased with the final product.”

Obviously, too, were the judges.

One possible problem for the UNC-CH team from its Kenan-Flagler Business School – According to the competition’s blog the UNC presentation went 30 seconds past the allotted time.

The teams had done their homework, another blog at the event site noted.

“The Wake Forest team focused on learning about IBM’s strengths and weaknesses. They also wrote practice cases to be well prepared for the event.

“Emory had a similar approach, devoting much of their time to time to background research.

“UNC was very organized and prepared by holding weekly team meetings and dividing up tasks among team members. They also studied concepts such as IBM’s customers and business to business marketing.”

IBM sponsored the event at Wake’s School of Business.

In an undergraduate competition, a team of women from the University of Pennsylvania won the $10,000 first-place prize.

"There were jewels in every single presentation that we will be mining for a while," said Robin Young, general manager at IBM Global Technology Services. "Such talent easily aligns with IBM, which is always looking for the most-innovative ideas and is hungry for fresh approaches from academia."

The teams presented their plans to a panel of global executives for judging. Among the MBA judges were executives from advertising firm McKinney and Cheerwine.

Ohio State team members were: Vandana Agrawal, Seth Blatter, Michael Hrostoski, Jeremy Jacobs, Ryan Kilpatrick, Eduard Lapteanu, and Chad Stutz.

University of Pennsylvania team members: Daphne Calderon-Sitiriche, Amber Jin, Ashley Yuki, and Sally Zhao.

MBA Teams:

• University of Notre Dame
• The Ohio State University
• Wake Forest University
• London Business School
• IESE Business School (Barcelona, Spain)
• Dartmouth College (Tuck)
• University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
• Brigham Young University

Undergraduate Teams:

• University of Maryland
• U.S. Military Academy (West Point)
• Wake Forest University
• University of Toronto
• University of Pennsylvania
• Emory University

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