The 3C’s and 4P’s of IMC

As future marketers, the 3C’s and 4P’s are core concepts more than familiar to IMC students: the 3 Cs stand for Company, Consumer and Competitor. And the 4 Ps refer to Product, Place, Promotion and Price. However, I have developed another theoretical system for these acronyms in order to describe the IMC program at Medill.

3Cs: Curriculum, Class & Company

4Ps: Peers, Projects, Professionals & Papers

For now, let me talk more about the curriculum. We have four core courses for the first quarter. They are: Stats, IMC Marketing, Consumer Insight and Communication Skills.

Statistics for Marketing Decisions (Stats)
To be brief, this is a “math” class. Ed, our instructor, teaches us how to deal with numbers, or more precisely, data. So it may be a great challenge for those who come from a non-quantitative background. Three things we should learn in this class:

• Calculate a bunch of statistic concepts by using formulas
• Use professional software such as SPSS, and of course, Excel
• Interpret what a histogram, a box plot, or other graphs tell us.

The course is designed to develop the data analysis skills students will need to become a successful marketer, as managers have unprecedented amounts of data available to assist them in making decisions.

Consumer Insight
A funny class that focuses more on the qualitative aspect of marketing research. An important part of this class is the presentation of four marketing cases by groups, which requires a lot of teamwork. Sometimes international students will find this course difficult because in class, there are a lot of examples and stories on advertising and products in the U.S., which might not be familiar to those from outside the U.S.

IMC Marketing
A great combination of qualitative and quantitative aspects of marketing orientation, but also a tough course. You have to not only learn a series of basic concepts in marketing such as consumer orientation, branding, market segmentation, positioning, globalization and the marketing mix variables of product, price and distribution, but also conduct several case studies.

Communication Skills and Persuasive Messages
This is a class that emphasizes the writing skills of students. We learn how to write, how to edit, and how to use correct grammar as well as correct punctuation. For those international students who are worried about their English, don’t be frustrated even if you have to rewrite every time after you submit your article, ‘cause local students also find it difficult. In class we also deal with new media, such as blogs, YouTube, Second Life, podcasts, etc.

……….Kefu Huang