Marketing is a vital function in any organization, and needless to say, every b-school out there offers a specialization or an array of electives in Marketing.
Many career paths open up for MBA students who have specialized in marketing. Every industry has a marketing function, be it a consumer goods or services company, advertising, non-profit, high-tech, media, e-commerce, consulting, healthcare or retail to name some. Functions may vary from brand or product management to market research, sales, account management, distribution, B2B marketing or strategic marketing planning.
In this blog, we have made an attempt to give you a comparison between some of the top marketing programs in the US. We have roughly followed the US News ranking to select the best marketing programs.
1. Kellogg School of Management
Kellogg has constantly been ranked as the top rated school for Marketing. In addition to courses in the core curriculum, Kellogg has two majors in marketing: Marketing and Marketing Management.
The marketing major is designed for those students who may not specifically seek a marketing related role, but are interested in gaining in-depth knowledge about this function. Students complete four courses – two are compulsory and the other two are electives, which students can select based on their learning/career needs.
Marketing Management is aimed towards students who want to build careers in Marketing. There are seven required courses (including three electives), offering more depth and breadth of marketing concepts as compared to the Marketing major.
Kellogg’s marketing curriculum derives its strength from the Marketing department, which is among the “foremost marketing departments’ in the world”. The department conducts several events such as the Speaker series, marketing conferences and niche events such as Sports Business Conference and Retail & Luxury Goods conference.
The Kellogg Marketing Club is Kellogg’s largest student run club and provides opportunities to network with the industry and recruiting support. The Club provides assists like day-long Shadow Days with executives of leading consumer goods companies; mock interviews where companies prep first year students for interviews and provide them feedback. For Resume Reviews, second year MBAs are paired with first years for resume feedback. For Interview Prep Groups, second year students mentor first years for the internship interview. Collaboration is indeed taken seriously at Kellogg.
Career support is also provided in ways including, Marketing Industry East Coast & West Coast Treks, Workshops/ Lunch & Learns.
Kellogg Marketing Conference, one among the Marketing Club’s largest events, brings some of the top names in marketing companies to Kellogg for a two day event, to share their perspectives of the challenges and opportunities that marketers face today.
Corporate Case Competitions are held throughout the year and executives from consumer companies judge marketing campaigns put together by students. They also get to interact with and compete against MBAs from other b-schools through the MBA Case Competitions. The famous Kellogg Marketing Competition is an annual contest between student teams competing to market real products to the rest of the student body. The 3 staged competition culminates in the fun-filled ‘Friday night at the TG Mega- market’ where competing groups put up sales booths for a last effort to drive sales through point-of-purchase materials and promotions. We wish we were handed over some of that specially printed AKMC currency to decide the fate of some of the top brands in that competition!
Kellogg has placed about 17% of the class of 2013 in marketing related functions. Of these, about 11% of students have gone into brand management. Prominent recruiters include PepsiCo, Target Corporation, Unilever, Coco-Cola, Nike and Johnson & Johnson among others.
2. The Wharton School
Wharton has one of the largest faculty and electives in Marketing. This is expected of a program that has over 200 electives and 250+ professors. The marketing faculty at Wharton is also known to be the most published marketing faculty in the world.
There are two majors:
1. Marketing Management: is popular among students interested in careers in general management, media and entertainment and management consulting. Career choices could be in advertising, sales, strategic marketing planning or product management in the corporate, or non-profit sector.
2. Marketing and Operations Management: is the only joint major at Wharton. It is suitable for students who want to work in the marketing functions of manufacturing or services companies or do B2B marketing. Typical post MBA roles include marketing management, product development and supply chain management.
Wharton offers opportunity of experiential learning through various channels like:
The Global Consulting Practicum: Gives students the opportunity to take up marketing and strategy engagements in an international setup. Teams comprise five Wharton students and five students from other international b-schools. They consult firms who are either keen to enter US or want to strengthen their position within this market. Students travel to the country of the client firm for a week and work alongside senior managers. An interesting information: In India, Wharton has a tie up with ISB for this practicum.
Field Application Projects (FAPs): provides students the opportunity to apply classroom learning to real issues faced by organizations. This course is for first year students – teams of 4-5 students are guided by a second year teaching assistant and a faculty member to provide actionable solutions to the participating companies. As most business problems transcend a single function, the integrative approach of FAP is specifically useful in getting students to view a business problem holistically.
The Wharton Marketing Club is the second most-popular MBA professional club at Wharton, with 350+ members. The Club facilitates The Wharton Marketing Conference, a forum to discuss the latest trends and research in marketing, and to network.
3. Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business
In Duke’s Fuqua School of Business, the marketing concentration has two options:
1. Product Management : As stated on Fuqua’s website, this concentration is designed for students pursuing careers in product management in packaged goods, consumer durables, business-to-business settings, high tech markets, pharmaceuticals, and services.
2. Market Analysis and Strategy : This concentration is designed for students pursuing careers in marketing strategy, consulting, corporate strategy, general management, and sales.
The Marketing Club hosts a range of events; some of them are:
The Duke MBA Marketing Symposium: Alumni and veterans are invited to talk about their experiences in the marketing world.
Beyond CPG Night: The name says it all! Think outside the bun, oops, consumer packaged goods. ‘Beyond CPG Night’ kick-starts a series of events held through out the year to expose students to non-traditional marketing roles that exist within varying industries.
Speed Networking Night: This is co-hosted by the Marketing Club, General Management Club, Hight Tech Club, and Entertainment and Sports Club. This allows Year one students to network with Second Years to learn about their summer internships experiences at various companies.
MILE (Marketing Integrated Learning Experience): A six week intensive course that prepares first year students for the marketing internship interview. Second year students are the mentors.
There is a similar program- the Second year Buddy program, where the Club pairs second year marketing club members with first year members to assist them on the internship recruiting process.
Duke MBA Brand Challenge: Branded goods are pitted against their lesser known, generic versions. This judged event is a fun filled evening affair and is a good test of student’s knowledge of various brands and their functional attributes.
Week-in-Cities Trips: These are industry specific mini trips that first year students undertake to company offices to explore internship and recruiting opportunities.
Other events include the Corporate Education Series where the Club cabinet ties up with corporates for a series of educational sessions, or the Corporate case competitions like the 3-day Elite 8 Case Competition for brand management students, faculty and professionals from across the country, to discuss challenges in brand management.
4. Ross School of Business
With ~14% of the class getting into brand/product management roles after MBA, Ross is considered as a strong brand management school.
Ross has a general management curriculum and offers no concentrations or specializations. The core has the Marketing management course and there is a wide range of electives to select from, including Entrepreneurial Marketing, Strategic marketing planning, International Marketing Management and many electives on sales and brand management.
The seven-week Multi-Disciplinary Action Project or MAP forms the experiential learning component of the Ross MBA program and is the cornerstone of the Ross MBA. The MAP team consists of 4-5 students, who provide solutions to real business problems for companies around the world. Although most projects are multi-disciplinary in nature, involving various functions, yet marketing based projects abound and offer students a chance to deal with real problems in the field of marketing.
The Ross Marketing Club has 300+ students as members. Activities of the club include recruiting support and events, case competitions, field trips to company headquarters through the year and interaction with eminent industry speakers through the Education Series as well as the annual Marketing Symposium, which brings together professional, faculty and students on one platform to discuss the latest news and views on marketing.
5. NYU Stern School of Business
NYU Stern’s Marketing department is ranked at no. 5 in the world for their cutting edge research. There are 50+ faculty members in the department and they bring with them varied knowledge and experiences in fields related to marketing.
In addition, Stern’s downtown location in the heart of NYC provides access to a number of marketing companies with a strong network of Stern alumni. These companies represent a variety of industries, such as traditional packaged goods, beauty, fashion, pharmaceuticals, media & entertainment and financial services.
Stern offers four Marketing specializations: General Marketing, Product Management, Entertainment, Media, & Technology, and Luxury Marketing. Although many b-schools have resources for the luxury sector, such as Clubs and electives, yet Stern is the only top-ranked MBA in America to offer a specialization in luxury marketing. Considering New York’s status as the fashion capital of US, this is a natural inclusion in the curriculum. We will reserve further attention to Luxury marketing in b-schools for another blog, and shift back our focus to marketing over here.
The Graduate Marketing Association (GMA) has a bounty of resources for its 500 strong membership. Events include the annual GMA conference, Knowledge Management sessions, case competitions, and corporate-connect events like “Day-in-the-life- of” visits.
The GMA case competition involves students in solving marketing issues of the sponsoring companies.
The ITP Start-up consulting project is geared towards students with interest in technology and start-up companies. NY has a sizeable start up scene, and this 3-week project gives them opportunity to work with budding entrepreneurs and apply their classroom marketing concepts in real situations.
About 14% of the graduating class of 2013 made it into marketing related jobs last year. Industry-wise, 8% students went to consumer products and 5% into luxury goods companies. Some of the top recruiters were J&J, Dannon, Colgate Palmolive, P&G, Pepsico, Revlon and Estee’ Lauder.