Off We Go To Shanghai

While most of our classmates are all over the country working hard at their individual residences, a group of us have been hanging out in Evanston for the past two weeks. What have we been up to? Here’s a short update from those of us going on the Global Residency!

This summer, 19 IMC students are heading to Shanghai for two weeks as part of the first-ever Global Residency program. Accompanied and advised by two professors, Tom Hayden and Frank Mulhern, students formed teams to work on four projects for three multinational companies: Yum! Brands (KFC), Yum! Brands (Pizza Hut), Draftfcb (client: Kraft), and McCann-Erickson (client: Puma). We had three days of mini-courses and meetings before leaving for Shanghai and will be on-site from July 7 to 18. But that’s not all. All the teams will keep working on their project after they return to the U.S. The final presentation and proposals to our respective clients will keep us busy until the end of August. Our first class was on Wednesday, and we were so inspired by Don Schultz’s lectures and the guest speakers’ presentations. In a very short time, we learned a lot about marketing in China from both Don and Ron Jacobs, president of Jacobs & Clevenger. Both of them also made some observations about global marketing, especially the Indian and Japanese markets, to help immerse us in “a whole new world” outside the U.S.

Prof Martin Block joined us on Thursday afternoon to introduce newly updated research that was conducted in China for 10 quarters up till the first 2 quarters of this year (it’s REALLY FRESH!). Besides the lectures, students had to deliver a presentation that afternoon on eight areas in the Chinese market using a new tool called MindManager (mind-mapping software). We had another assignment due the next day: each team was to present their discoveries so far on their specific projects (KFC, Pizza Hut, Puma and Kraft). You know what made that difficult? The four teams either got a) very limited information about the project, b) too much information about the project, or c) some information about the project in Mandarin Chinese! The challenge continued when Don Schultz gave us 1.5 hours (originally the lunch break) to shift our product-focused presentations to customer-centric ones. Who are our consumers? What do we know about them? What more do we aspire to know about them?

Currently all four groups are raring to go. We will meet as a full team again on Tuesday, July 1 and then fly to Shanghai for our exciting on-site exploration. We will definitely work as hard as everyone else doing individual residencies!

……….Wendy Chen

Tweet Tweet

Inside IMC is now on Twitter! We are, predictably, “insideimc” – so follow us here. There isn’t that much going on now as we’re all on our one-week break before residencies start, but once people begin working there’ll be more interesting stuff going on. We’re still not sure if we will use Twitter for more general stuff, or if we will post updates from random classmates – let’s see how this will take on a life of its own. More importantly, if you have a Twitter account, let’s get connected!

……….Rachelle Goh

Medill InNUvation

I remember Kellogg Professor Wolcott, while teaching Corporate Innovations and New Ventures, saying, “Innovation now is like marketing in the ‘80s. It [innovation] will be prevalent sooner [rather] than later.” I couldn’t agree with him more. Having spent seven years in marketing-related jobs, I have constantly witnessed the magical power of innovation. The brands I managed always achieved significant growth through meaningful innovation including product inventions and new marketing ideas. I firmly believe that as time goes on, innovation will become more and more important not only for technology companies but also for the traditional consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry.

Many guest speakers for IMC classes have mentioned the importance of innovation. Karen Zahorsky, working for Omnicom’s strategic group, is an example. In Professor John Greening’s Branding and Advertising Decisions class, Ms Zahorsky said, “The first thing clients are demanding now is: ‘Give me something I haven’t already got.’”

Without an innovative mindset, I don’t think it is possible to deliver exceptional results. This is the reason why I joined InNUvation and became the president of Medill InNUvation. My appreciation for the challenges of innovation have really grown since I joined the club.

To promote the spirit of innovation, InNUvation was designed as Northwestern University’s only interdisciplinary student club to provide a platform for cross-school idea exchange. Its different school chapters include Medill, Kellogg, McCormick and Weinberg. The annual InNUvation grand event is Venture Challenge, which offers a top prize of $12,000 for a new business idea.

On May 12, 2008, the final competition of this year’s Venture Challenge took place at the Medill School. Medill Dean John Lavine, in his remarks at the opening of the final competition, stressed the importance and the commitment of Medill to media innovation. I was truly inspired by his ambition in this area. Even though this year’s winner was a breakthrough cancer invention from medical and Kellogg students, media innovation has been on top of the list for the past couple of years. This year two teams from Medill IMC participated in the semi-final round (careerNancy.com: Sunny Yang, Paul Sturm and Min Young Cho; and ProLingual: Fion Huang, Evanne Lee, Gary Liao (Masters of Product Development) and Annabel Yang). After the event, these semi-finalists said it was a phenomenal experience and they would definitely encourage other students to join the competition even if it was just to go through the whole process.

Medill InNUvation has set up an official Web site (thanks to Wendy Chen and Aping Wang) to serve as the first step towards increasing awareness of InNUvation at Medill. We also have a team, led by Kefu Huang and Fion Huang and comprising Jessica Chang, Sindy Wan and Noah Yeh, dedicated to the innovation hub development, which aims to drive mobile marketing and the study of new media. The first test market of the innovation hub intends to bridge the gap between marketing, packaged goods and media companies via mobile applications.

We see great progress in new media development with social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Young generations have grown up in an atmosphere of fast media changes. However, many traditional companies are struggling to keep up with the pace of innovation and find new media difficult to apply for marketing purposes. Some have come to Medill IMC for answers and solutions. We believe this media innovation hub is a great opportunity for companies to acquire ideas as well as for students to demonstrate their talent in new media management.

Come and join us at Medill InNUvation. You will learn something that you didn’t even know you could learn.

……….Fion (Chenying) Huang