October was a busy month for members of the Marketing Lab! As though midterms and starting new client projects wasn’t enough, several lab members also jumped at the opportunity to demonstrate their marketing prowess in a handful of case competitions.

On October 8th, BYU was represented at the 2021 MarketStar Sales and Analytics Champion Competition held at Utah State University. Universities from around Utah gathered on USU’s campus in Logan to strategize ways MarketStar, an outsourced sales provider, could increase revenue for themselves—and their clients.

The competition was divided into two sides: an analytics side, filled by the Lab’s very own Kyle Vorkink, Emma Lahti, and Hunter Allred, and a sales side, with Cali Johnson of the Marketing Lab joined by Dustin Leonard, Erika Hansen, and Kabir Rajput.

The analytics team was able to apply things that they’d learned in business analytics courses and previous lab projects, using R to both analyze and visualize sales data.

The sales team took first place overall, and the analytics team finished second! Go Cougs!

These wins weren’t effortless, however—we were competing against other brilliant teams, and it took several late, long nights to prepare the winning results. Previous Marketing Lab experience helped each team better know how to collaborate with others and manage time effectively, and how to find the right sequence and cadence of delivering consultative work.

We asked Hunter for some of his biggest takeaways from the competition.

1.      Seriously consider having people on your team who challenge you and who aren’t just like you—it’s more valuable to have someone who thinks differently than you.

2.      It all goes back to answering what management wants and needs to know. Think about this through every step of the process. Everything should go back to “is this valuable for management to know?”

Great advice for students and industry professionals!

Closer to home, the Marketing Lab partnered with BYU’s Marketing Association to host another case competition—sponsored by the colorful outdoor apparel company, Cotopaxi.

A challenge was introduced during a kickoff on a Thursday night, and then randomly assorted teams presented their solutions to Cotopaxi’s CEO, Davis Smith, that Monday the 25th.

Lab member Lauren Bushnell, a member of the winning team, remarked that the coolest thing about the competition was being able to work on a project with juniors in the marketing program—helping them apply things they’ve already learned to the competition, and deepening class learning through this experience. Teams were able to apply and enhance what they’d learned about building customer personas, strategic planning, optimizing the P&L, analyzing brands’ strengths, and defining KPIs to a real challenge faced by a growing company. (The kind of challenge the BYU Marketing Lab is well-equipped to address.)

Lauren’s team included Emilie Christensen, Ryan Vawdry, Isaac Pendleton, and Megan Davies. Congratulations all!

From sales and analytics for a large, outsourced-services company to brand strategy for an outdoor apparel’s college outreach program, members of the Marketing Lab were able to recommend data-backed approaches to solve real-world problems. Just another day in the Lab… but with prizes and competition.

We’re thankful to everyone who was involved with these case studies—to MarketStar, Utah State University, and Cotopaxi for sponsoring these events, to teachers and advisors who helped us, and to everyone who participated and inspired us with their efforts and insights. We’re glad to be in such great company—for such great companies.