GMN Challenge Winners--Brand Domination

And the winners are...(they are above, but names are below, have to keep the suspense)

I know this is old news for most, but a group actually won the GMN Challenge. Yes, the event was held in January and I should have written about this six weeks ago, but alas, I did not. The GMN Challenge is a great event for first year students to get back into the swing of things the first week of school.

8 teams of four were given a marketing case on Thursday afternoon to analyze and were challenged to come up with a solution by Friday morning. This year the case was based on Kingsford Charcoal and the teams had to come up with a way to turn Kingsford around after five consecutive years of declining revenue.

Most of the teams worked through the night and into the wee hours of the morning to put together powerpoint presentations. Teams then made presentations to senior executives from Sears, Lands End, and SC Johnson. Two teams were chosen to make a final presentation in front of all the judges and participants.

Team 1
Amy Maier (Brand)
Jessie Miller (Brand)
Courtney Carlovsky (Finance)
Sunaina Velagaleti (Research)


Team 2
Mark Digman (Brand)
Shannon Robinson (Brand)
Greg Arseneau (Brand)
Justin Hajny (Entrepreneurship)


After great presentations by both teams, Team 2 came away victorious. Team 2's strategy was to develop self-igniting individualized bags of charcoal to drive velocity and profitability, while identifying the key insight that women don't want to get their hands dirty. I participated as well, but did not win as you can tell. It was fun and I enjoyed working with Jon Jones (Brand), Claudia Klug (Research), and Amber Schleitcher (Supply Chain), however we didn't provide enough tactics. Either way, Jon Jones is incredible on PowerPoint, that is what I learned.


On the plus, I am working with Greg, Mark, Amy, and Sunaina on teams this semester and Jessie and I were on the same team first semester so I am surrounded by great people. They might not think the same about me, but that sucks for them. I would highly recommend the GMN Challenge to anybody because when else do you get to pull an all-nighter the first week of schoool, the week before interviews start while you are still jet-lagged from Turkey.


Dinner at the Local--$9.48
65 bags of Welch's fruit snacks--$7.99
18 Diet Cokes--$5.99
Some non-descript giant bag of pretzels that Claudia brought--$.99
Getting two hours of sleep and losing in the first round--Priceless

Awesome.