Students place high at competitions

CBA students continue to excel at business plan and case competitions throughout the country.

Students take marketing strategy on the road

Four graduate students from the College of Business won first place at the national level of the Cadillac National Case Study Competition May 7. The students earned a chance to pitch their marketing ideas to Cadillac executives after placing in the regional competition.

Jimmie D'Ann Owen, Jennifer Windrum, Cathy Karaguez and Dana Weiss presented their ideas on how to market to Generation X and the Millennial Generation to Cadillac's General Manager, Director of Advertising and Sales Promotion, Marketing Director, and Chemistri's (Cadillac’s ad agency) Account Directors.

The graduate student team submitted a marketing proposal in March to Cadillac as part of the national competition. The top two schools were then selected and invited to present their marketing plans at GM headquarters.

After beating schools including UC Berkeley, UC Irvine and the University of Virginia in the initial round of judging, San Diego State competed for first place in the MBA level competition against Tulane University.

Cadillac challenged students to help make its brand positioning as the "standard of the world in luxury" relevant to Generation Xers and the Millennial Generation. To accomplish this task, the SDSU team conducted personal interviews and an online survey of 200 car buyers to learn what these generations feel are standards of the world in luxury.

After analyzing the survey results, the team then created a marketing plan that details specific advertising, sponsorships, alliances, website, and grassroots programs to reach the target generations.

The two marketing programs for Generation Xers and Millennials have the consistent message, “Cadillac, when you know you’ve made it!”

The Generation X marketing program includes sponsorships of television shows such as "The Apprentice," as well as sporting events, the New Year’s Eve party in Times Square, and NYC/LA marathons. Alliances with prestigious, stylish, and successful brands include offering special edition Cadillacs with interior designs by Gucci, Prada, or Coach.

The students’ millennial marketing program combats Cadillac’s stodgy image with up-and-coming athletes, humor and music, celebrities like Will Smith, and aligns the brand with MTV. The proposed sponsorships include MTV’s “Real World/Road Rules Challenge,” “Choose or Lose, 20 Million Loud,” “American Idol” and “Miss America.”

The team participated in the competition in conjunction with SDSU’s Seminar in Marketing Research course taught by Marketing Professor Don Sciglimpaglia.

Sponsors of the competition were EdVenture Partners and Chemistri.

SIFE students continue success

An undergraduate team of marketing students placed first in the Students In Free Enterprise [SIFE] regional competition in Boston, presenting work done for small businesses in Don Sciglimpaglia’s Internet Marketing course and in SDSU's Small Business Consulting course. Other schools competing included Harvard, Boston University and Northeastern. The SDSU team won $1,500 and qualified for the national competition in Kansas City, for the eighth time in ten years.

In addition, the SDSU program was named as one of 15 national finalists for the Kauffman Entrepreneurial Assistance Award, winning another $500.

Congratulations go to students Sanja Nestorovic, Nina Lacy, Katie Obrien, Sara Silberstang, Anna Lopez, Rocky Glines, Jacqueline Montelongo.

Wine industry plan get honors in Oregon

A business plan developed by a group of SDSU MBA students took first place in the lightning round at the New Venture Championship business plan competition sponsored by the University of Oregon. The team included graduate business students Drew Hendricks, Amy Horne, Paul Kitchin, Erik Forsell and Katie Donnelly. Management Professor Lena Rodriguez served as their advisor.

The plan focuses on Vintellect, a distributor of reasonably priced boutique wines to independent wine retailers and restaurants.

Accounting students earn berth at national competition

Accounting Professor Sharon Lightner sponsored a student team that won first place in an accounting case competition of selected universities in the western region, held in San Francisco. The competition was sponsored by ALPHA and KPMG.

The team will now go to Chicago in August to the national competition. The universities represented in the competition were USC, UC-Berkeley, University of Arizona, University of Washington, University of Santa Clara, University of San Francisco, and UNLV. The students include Susana Gonzalez, Kristine Chavers, Renei Sanchez, and Jannet Hendrix. The KPMG consultants included two SDSU alumni: Kevin Bee and Katherine Hastings.

Moot Corp team recognized

The vAUDIT team won the "Access Venture
Partners" challenge at the Moot Corp Competition, dubbed the “Super Bowl” of world business plan competitions. Moot Corp is sponsored by the University of Texas at Austin.

A primary objective of vAudit (www.vAudit.com) is to provide the largest corporations with an alternative to the costly and burdensome task of sales and use tax reporting in 7,800 state and local taxing jurisdictions. VAudit provides their corporate clients with the highest level of sales and use tax compliance at a fraction of their current compliance cost.

Team members included Robert Schulte, Jennifer Laguna, Rebecca Risty, and Marc Staheli. Harvey Goodfriend was the faculty advisor.

SDSU honors students outpace others at LMU

A group of business honors students took second place in the Cordova Biathlon section of the Business Ethics Competition at Loyola Marymount University. The topic of this year’s competition was Passenger Safety vs. Pilot Privacy, which was about random alcohol testing of pilots.

The competition includes case presentations and a 5K run.

Supervised by Accounting Professor Carol Venable, the students include Jennifer Pina, Tonje Gulbrandsen, Michelle Hartstein, Vince Nicholais, Susan Holtzman and Kevin Haney.