A Competition That Delves Students into Real Corporate Life

In the last three months students of two Brand Management classes have been busy in finding a market positioning for digital lighting and making a brand more appealing to female consumers. They weren't studying a business case, nor they were playing a business game. They were facing a real issue posed by a real company. A big one, indeed: Philips. Their marketing professors and the company executives asked them to act as brand managers in one of the two fields Philips is eager to expand: beauty (i.e. skin care and hair removal) and digital lighting (i.e. app controlled bulbs). It was an exam: half of the grade were determined by the project. It was a competition too: students were judged by teachers and managers.

In late March dozens of Marketing Management students left the Bocconi buildings on a bus. Destination: the Philips Italia headquarters in Monza. They met the company CEO Stefano Folli and became familiar with beauty and lighting products. "They understood the importance of the brand for the company", says Maria Carmela Ostillio, head of the Brand management course. "It was a great experience. They had to sign a confidentiality agreement, just like real managers do, since they were given facts and figures unknown to the public". Quite predictably, males were more willing to work on lighting, but they had no choice: assignments were made randomly. It turned out that they had good insights into hair removal... There were two more check meetings with managers, in order to solve problems and improve projects before yesterday's final presentation.

Winners were declared yesterday. Students worked on changing the perception of Philips as a masculine brand by proposing strategies of sub-branding. They re-thought their concept of lighting, making it consistent with business needs and suggested proper solutions as brand migration. "Working closely with Philips was challenging", Ostillio says on students' behalf. "They worked with unexpected order and discipline. They did an excellent job".

Students put into play their best skills as problem solvers and teamworkers. They had to compete with each other to make their ideas prevail. But once the team chose the best one, they had to put themselves at its service to turn it into a successful idea. "Their biggest enemy was... freedom", says Laura Colm, who mentored the project. "We left them free to choose and combine every methodology they had studied. They never experienced such degree of freedom before. They felt lost for a while, but they finally overcame the obstacle. I saw their projects getting better and better every week. Students made a good use of our advices. They were good listeners".

At yesterday's award ceremony Philips executives told that some of the students ideas were so good that they could be implemented and invited them to submit their CVs for internships.