Brand Immersion Journal
Satyam Viswanathan
Issue date: 2/13/01 Section: Features
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For some strange reason, I’d spent all of last semester operating under the illusion that the core represented the most difficult stretch of the MBA marathon. Maybe I was mislead by all those MBA autobiographies and survival guides – that wax eloquently about how the core pushes you to your physical and mental limits, but everything after it seems like a cakewalk. Then again, no one from the Johnson School’s Brand Immersion has ever written an MBA autobiography or survival guide.
I landed in frosty Ithaca on Saturday (January 13th) night - after having spent a warm and idyllic winter break - with the rigors of the core only a distant memory in the deep recesses of my mind. I unpacked my suitcases and turned on my answering machine to the wonderful news that a recommendation memo was due on Monday (January 15th), for the first case in the Brand Immersion coursepack. The holiday had obviously erased from my memory, a TA session that had been squeezed in between the Statistics and Marketing Core Finals with the specific objective of preparing us for this homework assignment (In hindsight a TA, session crammed in between two finals should’ve been a sign of the workload headed our way). Before I new what had hit me I found myself in the unwelcome yet familiar position of taking printouts in the PeopleSoft Lab late Sunday night! Opportunities to re-live the pressures of the core have been plentiful. The first week saw nine brand immersion sessions spread over four days with deliverables due on 15th, 16th, 18th and 19th January. In between all these assignments, brand students also sharpened their written communication skills by analyzing alternate versions of President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address! In the midst of this fiery reorientation it was easy to forget that we had three new classes starting in the week ahead! Monday 22nd January looked like a suspiciously calm day, with only one Brand Immersion class to attend followed by an introduction to the Strategy Core. Of course, it was a mirage. After analyzing the cereal and coffee categories with Professor Rao in class, Brand students spent all day trying to decipher the incredibly cryptic Pepsi Cola UK case. Tuesday morning saw the hapless Brand students being shepherded into Managerial Cost Accounting and Market Research classes while trying to make sense of the telecom and magazine industries in the Strategy Core.
The highlight of the Immersion so far was a class on January 19th, where each team presented hilarious interpretations of Stephen Covey’s ‘Seven habits of highly effective people.’ Room B-10 has probably never heard as much laughter as it did that morning, with skits demonstrating ‘Pro-activity through the ages’, costumes and wigs that would put Broadway to shame and characters such as Brand Manager Stressedoutski, who was transformed by the seven habits, into a corporate Superman!
Looking back it’s clear that while we are learning by ‘drinking from a fire-hose’, the learning-curve has been very steep and very effective. Each team is working on a marketing plan to ‘launch’ a product of its choice by May, and we have some exciting road trips coming up. It promises to be a phenomenal learning experience and a very memorable semester.
I landed in frosty Ithaca on Saturday (January 13th) night - after having spent a warm and idyllic winter break - with the rigors of the core only a distant memory in the deep recesses of my mind. I unpacked my suitcases and turned on my answering machine to the wonderful news that a recommendation memo was due on Monday (January 15th), for the first case in the Brand Immersion coursepack. The holiday had obviously erased from my memory, a TA session that had been squeezed in between the Statistics and Marketing Core Finals with the specific objective of preparing us for this homework assignment (In hindsight a TA, session crammed in between two finals should’ve been a sign of the workload headed our way). Before I new what had hit me I found myself in the unwelcome yet familiar position of taking printouts in the PeopleSoft Lab late Sunday night! Opportunities to re-live the pressures of the core have been plentiful. The first week saw nine brand immersion sessions spread over four days with deliverables due on 15th, 16th, 18th and 19th January. In between all these assignments, brand students also sharpened their written communication skills by analyzing alternate versions of President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address! In the midst of this fiery reorientation it was easy to forget that we had three new classes starting in the week ahead! Monday 22nd January looked like a suspiciously calm day, with only one Brand Immersion class to attend followed by an introduction to the Strategy Core. Of course, it was a mirage. After analyzing the cereal and coffee categories with Professor Rao in class, Brand students spent all day trying to decipher the incredibly cryptic Pepsi Cola UK case. Tuesday morning saw the hapless Brand students being shepherded into Managerial Cost Accounting and Market Research classes while trying to make sense of the telecom and magazine industries in the Strategy Core.
The highlight of the Immersion so far was a class on January 19th, where each team presented hilarious interpretations of Stephen Covey’s ‘Seven habits of highly effective people.’ Room B-10 has probably never heard as much laughter as it did that morning, with skits demonstrating ‘Pro-activity through the ages’, costumes and wigs that would put Broadway to shame and characters such as Brand Manager Stressedoutski, who was transformed by the seven habits, into a corporate Superman!
Looking back it’s clear that while we are learning by ‘drinking from a fire-hose’, the learning-curve has been very steep and very effective. Each team is working on a marketing plan to ‘launch’ a product of its choice by May, and we have some exciting road trips coming up. It promises to be a phenomenal learning experience and a very memorable semester.