An MBA for someone in brand management seems like a natural choice, but what do students really get out of their business degree once they’re on the other side of graduation? Facilitating a brand image within the Consumer Product Goods industry is a challenging role to take on; when you’re balancing data analytics, visual merchandising, public perception, and product quality assurance, there’s a lot to learn and prepare for.
We interviewed Booth students about their experiences within the Consumer Product Goods sphere to get an understanding of what the MBA journey is like for Boothies pursuing this path.
Speaker 1: In brand management, you have to analyze a lot of data and a lot of consumer insights.
Speaker 2: Booth has a data-driven marketing focus and that's something that I think is really unique and it's something that companies love to see and that they associate with Booth students.
Speaker 3: The most helpful class I took at Booth was the New Products and Services Lab. I was actually able to work with Molson-Coors on an innovation project with the team.
Speaker 4: But my all-time favorite and I think the one that's mostly applicable to CPG is digital marketing. So it helps when you're interacting with media agencies or when you're building a marketing campaign.
Speaker 5: Pricing Strategies is one that's really popular at Booth as well as Managerial Decision Modeling. I think those are really great in terms of teaching me how to deal with large data sets and how to pull insights from that.
Speaker 6: So the Kilts Center for Marketing was really helpful for me to get into brand management.
Speaker 7: And they provide a lot of hands-on workshops as well as connections to alumni and industries.
Speaker 8: So the Kilts Center Case Competition is a week-long project where students will get a specific business problem from the sponsor. The year I did it, it was Tyson, last year it was Whirlpool, and you tackle a very specific business challenge within a week. I think it's a really great opportunity in that you do get that hands-on data experience as well as exposure to what these marketing business problems look like.
Speaker 9: Just being a part of the marketing group helped build my confidence in terms of like my interviewing skills and my networking skills.
Speaker 10: If a student came to me and said they wanted to go into CPG brand management, I would tell them to choose Booth for three main reasons. That being data-driven marketing approach, the Kilts Center and its resources as well as just the people at Booth.
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