 Stories from Foster School of Business
In marketing, we call them brand proof points, but they’re really just stories about how members of our team (e.g. students, faculty, staff and alumni) are living the brand. Essentially, these are examples, from your experiences at the Foster School that make our brand assertions believable.
Are we developing leaders who think differently and make a difference? Are we taking actions that exhibit our brand attributes:
- Leadership
- Strategic Thinking
- Collaborative
- Cool (Calmly audacious, bold in a low-key way)
- Influential Scholarship
The answer is yes. Now we need to hear them from you so that we can share them with others.
Whether the story is about you, a colleague or student, we hope you’ll use our online form to share it here.
Need some inspiration? Check out the following story from Kevin Kirn, a current MBA student, which demonstrates how thinking differently looks in the world of prestigious case competitions.
Sample Story
In February, a team of Foster MBA students dazzled judges and company executives with its sophisticated yet practical solution at the invitation-only Wake Forest Marketing Summit. The team, coached by Dan Turner, Mark Forehand and Elizabeth Stearns, drew on their collaborative strengths to create a strategy that married strong business analysis with a sizzling presentation and win the competition.
Here’s an excerpt from Kevin Kirn’s email to Foster students, faculty and staff on February 11, 2008 with a side-bar showing how the team demonstrated the brand:
| Story |
How it demonstrates our brand |
| “During the initial look at the case, we realized a few important things: this was largely a strategy case, and the quantitative analysis was going to be key. We worked in teams of two most of the time. We saw a huge disconnect between their current postpaid brand/promotions and the metropolitan customer they were trying to attract. We also did some analysis on their conversion numbers and realized that simply raising awareness of the Alltel brand in these areas would have an enormous impact. We built a framework for our story with giant sticky notes on the wall, then broke into teams of two to fill in the details. During our research, we found more information on the growth in the prepaid space and started to see an opportunity there that we simply couldn’t ignore. So, just as we’ve done at the other 4 case competitions I’ve been involved in, we took the hit and changed our strategy. |
Collaborative
Strategic thinking |
| We charmed the judges from the first second we set foot in the room. We came in single file and walked the long line of judges introducing ourselves and handing them our business cards. We found out later that we are the only team that introduced ourselves and handed out business cards. This is the first big point of difference I noticed about UW vs. our competitors – despite the fact that many of them had sent teams to this competition in the past, it seemed like there had been very little knowledge transfer. They didn’t have previous students telling them how good it is to introduce yourselves and have business cards. |
Leadership
Breaking down barriers and creating opportunities |
| Our professionalism really stood out. Apparently the judges were joking about how we seemed like faculty instead of students after we left the room and wondered if we were hustlers. Many of the other teams commented on our presentation ability and asked us what kind of special training were getting at the UW that they aren’t getting. We also got several comments about how cohesive we were – it was obvious that we all liked each other and knew how to work together.” |
Cool
Collaborative |
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