Brands Enterprise

When people ask me why I chose to come to Carlson, there are lots of reasons, but one of the strongest is the Enterprise Program. If you aren’t familiar with the Carlson Enterprise program, allow me to tell you about it. Every fulltime MBA student will apply to one of Carlson’s four enterprise programs (Marketing, Consulting, Entrepreneurship and Finance). This is a big choice. Your enterprise is where you will gain significant hands on experience, with the opportunity to work three projects during your time at Carlson. Carlson is also lucky to be in Minneapolis, where we have an abundance of companies who are eager to have bright MBAs think through their business challenges. I chose to be part of the Brands Enterprise, where we work with companies who are faced with marketing and strategy based challenges. To give you a better taste of what your enterprise experience looks like, below are some highlights I have had the pleasure of working on:

In my first year, I worked with a large, local casino who was worried about the fact Millennials were not gambling (or so they thought). We helped them understand who the different millennials segments were, while pinpointing key drivers that could increase awareness and engagement. In order to do this, we created a survey that we sent out to as many target consumers as possible. From there, we were able to perform sophisticated analytics such as factor analysis and cluster analysis to get to the results. 

For my second project, my team and I worked with a local company that produced eggs for many national fast food chains (i.e. the key ingredient for those delicious breakfast sandwiches we all know and love). While this company has a large US presence, they have minimal presence abroad, and wanted help creating a go-to-marketing strategy for entering the Asia Pacific market. We met with industry experts who helped us to provide a recommendation that laid out the risk and opportunities of going abroad, as well as a plan for getting started. 

For my final Brand Enterprise project, my team and I are working with a large Agricultural company to help them think about the impact Millennials will have on their core business. We are also exploring totally incremental target segments, and are in the process of defining who these groups are, the value they represent, and how the firm can reach these consumers. Here is a picture of my team working hard on our presentation – a real bunch of jokers if you ask me.

It’s also worth noting that I (and many of my classmates) had never done projects like this before, or performed this level of sophisticated analytics – but it turns out that’s ok! The Enterprise directors arm you with resource to figure out how to get the job done. Whether it’s bringing in marketing research faculty to help you craft the optimal survey, or sharing different business frameworks, there is always support to learn something new. In my opinion, that’s the beauty of hands on learning. I hope you have enjoyed this glimpse into the Carlson Brand Enterprise!