A team of MBA students from the Anderson School of Management at the University of New Mexico competed in the 2007 Cadillac National Case Study Competition recently. Judged by a panel of Cadillac executives and members of Cadillac’s marketing agency, Modernista, the UNM team placed second behind Virginia Commonwealth University. It was the third consecutive year a UNM team has participated in the competition held each year in Detroit, Mich. UNM won the competition the past two years.
The Anderson School MBA team includes students Heba Almasri, Kristina Knight, Dimitri Pavlakos, and Grant Price, and is mentored by Anderson Lecturer John Benavidez. Other students from Benavidez’s class also attended the event. The project was conducted as part of Benavidez’s Marketing Communications Management class.
This year, the task was to create a consumer –focused marketing plan for the 2008 Cadillac CTS that supports the launch of the new vehicle, showcases its new features and attributes, focusing on how they are relevant to the target audience, and all the while, reinforces the new “Life. Liberty. And the Pursuit” campaign positioning in a way that appeals to the target customer. The UNM team chose to conduct its case study around the target audience of ‘Move-Ups,” younger men and women looking into the luxury car segment for the first time.
The 2007 Cadillac National Case Study Competition is hosted by EdVenture Partners (EVP) and challenges students to answer analytical questions and forces them to tackle difficult situations of interest regarding Cadillac’s brand positioning, communication strategy, and current strategic situation.
EdVenture Partners (EVP) develops industry-education partnerships utilizing unique curriculum-based, peer-to-peer models. Those programs provide students with full-time personnel support and resources to implement student designed marketing techniques. Founded in 1990, Orinda, California based EVP has already exposed 40,000 students to their unique programs.
EVP is the only marketing consultancy in the United States that brings together educators, students, clients and their channel partners for mutual collaboration, partnership and benefit. All EVP designed programs provide the opportunity for students to apply academic theory to real-world situations, thereby leveraging student minds in addressing client goals and objectives. For more information of EdVenture Partners, please visit www.edventurepartners.
Media Contact: Steve Carr, (505) 277-1821; e-mail: scarr@unm.edu or Erin Gardner, (505) 505-306-9575; e-mail: news@mgt.unm.edu