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On December 3, a team from Chicago GSB took second place in the world’s largest business school case competition focusing on product strategy. The contest, the second annual, was sponsored by the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University with corporate partners Brunswick Corporation and the John Deere Company.
The competition is designed to showcase business school education in both strategy and marketing. It also offered students a chance to gain practical experience as they provide advice to the sponsoring companies on real issues facing their organizations. GSB team members Rags Vadali, Andrew Mitchell, Joanna Ortynska, and Tatiana Golubeva advanced from the first round where the task was to develop a strategy for positioning one of Brunswick's new products in the marketplace. Judges from Brunswick reviewed the 50 entries from 15 business schools including Dartmouth, Columbia, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and UCLA. Two teams each from Michigan and Notre Dame also made it to the final round.
The finals, focusing on a new John Deere industrial product, were grueling. According to Golubeva, the GSB team spent 14 hours in a study room at Duke preparing the test case. They rehearsed their presentation until 3 a.m.
The team credited their marketing professor, Sanjay Dhar, with preparing them well for the competition. They made extensive use of class notes and cases they studied. What really made a difference, said the team, was their presentation. They followed Dhar’s advice and discussed how they could make it more exciting. The team wore John Deere hats and brought a model of the Gator vehicle, saying they had bought a Gator while spending a day with dealers.
Case Strategy
The twist to the case was whether Deere should partner with a competitor. Since the team had read about John Deere’s culture and values, they decided that the company did not need to partner to gain short-term benefits and put its brand at risk.
Students focused on marketing communications recommendations. A course by assistant marketing professor Aparna Labroo came in handy with this task. They prepared brand pyramids, discussed positioning statements, reviewed points of parity and points of difference, came up with creative promotion—creating Deere playgrounds in the warehouses for kids (similar to play rooms at IKEA)—and designed a fun program for adults, which involved test drives of vehicles "in woods.” The slogan they came up with, "Get back to the Land,” was consistent with both company values and the psychographic profile of the consumer, judges said.
Ready to Compete Next Year
The team thanked Professor Dhar for making them feel so prepared and confident when it comes to marketing strategy. They promised to compete again next year and win first place for the GSB.