A September to Remember

My summer residency was in Portland, Oregon, working for a health insurance company (The Regence Group).  It was an incredibly rewarding experience, and I could tell that my insights and contributions were valued by my sponsors.  I’m thankful for the opportunity. 

But I must say that I underestimated the difficulty of moving 2,000 miles away, even for a brief three months.  Evanston is just a short drive from my old stomping grounds in Wisconsin.  I can only imagine what this is like for some of our international students!  Living in a new city can be quite a challenge, especially when you don’t have cable TV.  Don’t get me wrong – Portland is a fun city and I was lucky enough to work with a recent IMC grad who helped me learn the area.  But I missed seeing my IMC friends that I had gotten to know so well during the first stage of the program.  As we exchanged emails and Facebook messages this summer, one theme emerged … when we get back for the start of fifth quarter, let’s make it a “September to remember”!

Here’s a recap of my September thus far:

-  I drove all the way from Oregon to Illinois, all by my lonesome self.  Along the way, I almost ran out of gas in North Dakota, and well….have you ever driven through North Dakota and western Minnesota?  Boring and frightening in a “Children of the Corn”-type way.

-  On Sept. 1, my favorite sports team (Milwaukee Brewers) had a 5.5 game lead in the Wild Card race and looked like a lock for the postseason.  Less than three weeks later, they’re on the outside looking in (1.5 games back).  Today they blew a 4-run lead with 2 outs in the 9th inning, losing to the rival Cubs.  For my international friends, the soccer equivalent would be giving up two goals in the last minute of extra time for the tie, then losing the game on penalty kicks.  Did I mention that the last time the Brewers were in the playoffs, I was wearing diapers?  It’s a good thing I have low blood pressure.

-  I moved into my new Evanston apartment.  Great location, but due to a stroke of bad luck I ended up shuttling my furniture into the place through a cold, driving rain that didn’t let up all day.  Less than a week later, Chicago endured a flood-inducing megastorm that exposed a leak in my living room ceiling.  A nice, relaxing Sunday evening of football-watching turned into me catching streams of water with pots and pans.  Fun times.

Luckily I’ve been blessed with the ability to persevere through these types of obstacles without losing my cool – a skill that comes in handy as an Medill IMC student.

So yeah, I could definitely use a few drinks at the Keg of Evanston and the start of classes on Tuesday to take my mind off things.  It should be a great quarter, all things considered … even with the ordeal of finding a job.  I look forward to seeing everyone again and meeting the incoming class of 2009!

……….Paul Krause

My Summer in Shanghai

My summer in Shanghai was full of new experiences, all kinds of yummy food and nonstop sweat dripping in sizzling hot weather. Two weeks were never going to be enough to experience the milieu of such a gigantic country, but I tried my best to get immersed into Chinese culture. A good example of this was sampling the early morning diet of the common Chinese both as part of my responsibilities as an adventurous global marketer as well as a curious tourist from a neighboring country across the sea. Let me share some of my thoughts on three points that caught my eye while I was in Shanghai.  

A conspicuous thing about the burgeoning city is its chaotic traffic. No one seems to care about traffic signals. Cars, bikes and pedestrians go, pass and cross whenever and wherever they want. I freaked out several times because taxi drivers threaded their way through traffic by dodging cars and sometimes cars almost crashed into a bikes. But everyone seemed used to it and strangely enough there appeared to be order in such utter disorder. Instead of the artificial arrangement or interference of ‘walk’ and ‘don’t walk’ signs we are used to in the U.S., everyone was just going with the flow. I think this natural stream of traffic is indicative of what drives the Chinese. A simple idea that they’d rather let long-lasting customs and old habits take their progressive course and serve as a strong wind that moves society forward.

Shanghai is a city on the go. From the outside, Shanghai’s cityscape of skyscrapers is serenely breathtaking. With all the beautiful buildings including the most popular Pearl Tower, the metropolitan paints a picture of a fabulous city. An insider’s view, however, reveals people striving to catch up with rapid changes. There’s a lot of construction going on one block after another. On every corner of the tall office and apartment buildings, streets are lined up with breakfast stalls from 5am every morning. Early birds in the city buy youtiaos (deep fried bread stick), dumplings and soy milks to grab a bite on their way to work. I saw a lot of commuters in the bus holding a small plastic bag of baos which they’d bought on-the-go. Rarely do these folks have the time to enjoy breakfast with their family. Many people skip breakfast altogether while others fill up their empty stomachs with unsubstantial portions. Observing their lifestyle, I have great sympathy with them who are struggling to keep up such a face-paced society. It’s really tough. Philosophilizing again, I think the rapid growth of China is thanks to these busy, hardworking people. 

 

 

 

Food is one topic I can never forget to talk about after the trip to China. The Chinese have so many different kinds of gourmet food as well as delicious cuisines at reasonable prices all over the city. I want to talk more about one I mentioned earlier – the bao. It is a steamed, filled bun in various Chinese cuisines and usually eaten for breakfast. Xiaolongbao is a kind of bao which is a small, meat-filled bun from Shanghai. What makes is so special is the juicy broth coming out of the meat after steaming. One of the best Xiaolongbao I had was at the Yuyuan Garden. It is one of the must-go places for tourists in Shanghai and there’s always a long line of people waiting to try one. After a 40-minute wait drenched in sweat, I finally got a chance to bite one. It was worth waiting. I just loved it! I have to think that passion and eagerness is to Chinese society what hot steam is to baos. It’s not just 100-degree weather that makes the nation keep boiling… I think it is the great ardor that Chinese people have in their minds that makes it one of the fastest developing countries in the world.

 

……….Joan Kim

Identifying the Need and Making Assumptions

One day at my summer residency an interesting story transpired. A fluorescent tube light had started flickering, seemingly having run its course. An intern at the company obtained permission from the management to change the tube, which shone directly over his head. Once he had finished, the intern noticed that about 15 other lights in the large room had apparently gone bad as well. So he proceeded to change those as well. After about an hour or so and having changed 12 or so of the bad tubes, a member of the management came up to the intern and informed him that the other lights which he had changed, were actually not faulty but had been intentionally left disconnected as the room was deemed to be too bright with them on. Ouch!

One of the first steps in the integrated marketing communications (IMC) process (and one that separates the philosophy from marketing of an MBA program) is identifying the consumer’s need. Just because a company is able to manufacture a product or offer a service, it doesn’t mean there will be a good market for it. So without establishing a need, an organization can spend a lot of time, money and resources into a project that has no takers. Just like the intern.

Another important moral from the story of the intern is to be very careful when assuming. This again is firmly stressed in IMC and which is why market research is a critical component of the process.

………Ateeq Abdul Rauf

Summer Reading

I can’t believe I’ve been a Medill IMC student for almost a year now. Time has flown by. I’ll be sad to see this experience come to an end. I have learned so much.

Anyway, I did my residency this summer at Element 79, an advertising agency in Chicago. One of the great people I had the opportunity to work with was Chris Miller, the Chief Digital Officer of the agency. He really gets the concept of  digital marketing and how it must be fully integrated into every aspect of marketing and customer relationships to be truly successful. Chris gave me a stack of Forrester Research papers to read this summer that were all outstanding.

 

In addition, he recommended three great books that really get to the heart of marketing in a digital world. Not only did his “assigned readings” keep me busy during my two hour commute to the city from Evanston, but I’ve been soaking up as much great info as I can over the break. In the spirit of “community” I thought I’d pass along a few of his recommendations.

1. Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies by Li and Bernoff
2. Here Comes Everybody:The Power of Organizing Without Orgnizations by Clay Shirky
3. Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds

Groundswell by Li and Bernoff

So if you head to the beach one last time this summer, make sure to pack one of these fascinating books along with your towel and sunscreen.

……….Whitney Wilkinson

A Summer to Remember

This summer I did my residency at HSBC North America Headquarters. Their location is a brand new building located in Mettawa, which is about 30 miles north from downtown Chicago. Because of this long distance, I needed to wake up every morning before 5:30 AM in order to catch the train. I never thought I would be able to get up so early, but I did and it feels good. As a result, I also made several new friends on the train route.

At HSBC I performed analysis on its loyalty card and retail loyalty marketing by using internal and external research. My deliverables included 12 case studies and a presentation to the senior vice president of marketing. I learned a lot about loyalty marketing in America and also a great amount of insight about financial services. It was a lot of fun.

Summer time in Chicago is fantastic … BBQ on 4th of July, art festivals every weekend in different parts of town and wonderful drinks at Mexican restaurants. A few of my friends visited Chicago this summer and all of them loved the city as well. They said Chicago is the clean version of New York and I couldn’t agree more. I am currently in London and I really miss the space and cleanliness of Chicago.

I missed my school life this summer though and can’t wait to go back to class in the fall. Professor Greening’s case writing helped me a lot when I was at the internship. Structuring my thinking and choosing the right words to best express myself are all great learning for a non-native speaker like me. I didn’t think I would be able to write any cases that could interest American senior managers, but I did. HSBC told me that they would like to hire me as a part-time in the fall. There is no better recognition of their willingness to continue this relationship. I am really happy about my progress because of Medill IMC.

I am really looking forward to the last quarter’s capstone project. I will be working on the HP Snapfish project and couldn’t be more excited. I worked for HP Asia Pacific several years ago and it was great. I believe the course will be wonderful.

……….Fion (Chenying) Huang