Last week-end saw the annual residential course for the MA/MSc Marketing Management students. This combines the September and January cohorts, which has a number of benefits. In recent years the Residential has been held at Latimer Place, in the Chilterns. This year we held it at the CIM headquarters, in Cookham, where we had the entire site to ourselves for the week-end.
As in all other years, the course has members from all points of the compass, with students from over 25 countries including Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Russia in the North, via Mexico to Argentina in the South, from the USA in the West via England, France, Germany, Greece and Cyprus to China, Thailand, Singapore and Indonesia in the East. Several Middle Eastern states were represented including Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Palestine, Israel, Iran and the UAE.
Sabrine Al-Thary, a September cohort student from Sana’a, Yemen, writes:
At our induction week back in September, it was introduced to us as ‘one of the highlights of our year’. This is how the MA/MSc Marketing Management course leader Dr Donna Mai described the residential weekend that my classmates and I would be attending in a few months. At the time, the idea did not sound too appealing, and truth be told, many of us were not particularly looking forward to the idea of giving up a sacred 2-day weekend doing an extra load of coursework. Yet February arrived quickly, and my classmates and I soon found ourselves onboard a coach heading to Berkshire, and specifically to the headquarters of the Charted Institute of Marketing (CIM) where the weekend’s activities were to take place. Accompanying us from the WBS members of staff were Dr Jaafar El-Murad, Dr Donna Mai, Dr Anna Zacharewicz, and Dr Frances Ekwulugo.
It was there on the bus that we were each handed a goody bag filled with sweets, UoW merchandise, as well as an information packet briefing us on our upcoming tasks. We found that we were divided into 10 teams of six, the members of which also included students from the January cohort of the Marketing Management course. It was then that our excitement also started to build up, and shortly upon our arrival to CIM’s beautiful 19th century Manor House, it was time to get working.
As part of the Marketplace Live simulation game, each team was now in charge of operating a company in the microcomputer industry and was responsible for developing and executing an appropriate international marketing strategy. Thus, decisions regarding the firm’s production, brand development, sales force, finances, advertising and so on, were to be made over four separate rounds spanning the remainder of Friday, and that entire Saturday. Following each round, a plenary briefing session was held where we reviewed the results of our decisions, our profitability and market share, our competitors’ performance, as well as the feedback of consumers towards our actions. Although it was an intense, pressured and often challenging experience, yet it gave us the valuable opportunity of managing the operations of a full-fledged business, with zero risk in reality.
In order to further enhance our learning experience, each team was also asked to write a news release, answer a 130 item marketing quiz, create a print ad, write a creative brief for it, and prepare a presentation for all the attendees. All this was to be done while working on the simulation, and so most definitely taught us a lesson on the importance of delegating tasks as a means of managing our very limited time.
The closure of the final decision round on Saturday evening was then celebrated with a 3-course formal dinner and ensuing awards ceremony for which everyone arrived glammed up and with a cheerful celebratory attitude. The ceremony was fun, humorous, and buzzing with enthusiasm and positivity, especially as winning team members were acknowledged and handed their prizes. Not only that, but in an exciting spin of events, a number of students were handed prizes for winning votes on such titles as ‘Miss Congeniality’ , ‘The Most Difficult Person to Find’ , and ‘The Most Likely to Succeed’. Celebrations later continued well after the end of the dinner, as students used the opportunity to mingle and socialise with each other before the scheduled departure to London the next day.
Looking back at the weekend now, my classmates and I all agree that it was an enjoyable mixture of work and pleasure, and that it had definitely exceeded our expectations. So to all the future students of the Marketing Management course I say, do not doubt Donna’s words when she tells you on that first week that the residential weekend will be one of the highlights of your year – it will be.
As Sabrine’s blog implies, the residential was a great success. All the educational and developmental objectives were achieved, and everyone had an enjoyable experience. You can see more photos on the Course Facebook page: Please “Like” it! Also some more photos here
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