Two teams of Terry College marketing students took home top prizes in a national marketing competition sponsored by market research firm Quirk’s Media.
The competition attracted more than 50 teams of collegiate marketers and challenged students to develop a plan for Johnsonville sausage products. Students presented their plans, based on independent market research and data provided by Johnsonville, in the final round of competition on May 3.
The undergraduate winners were part of Terry College marketing senior lecturer Kristy McManus’s Honors Marketing Research class and included marketing majors Ivy Watters, Leah Suarez, Madeline Bradshaw and Cecile Davila. The graduate team in Terry’s Master of Marketing Research program was led by Terry marketing professor Marcus Cunha Jr. and included Precious Enahoro, Victoria Gospodinov, Kweku Hudson and Hayden Morris.
Both teams won $2,000.
“I had a great experience participating in the Marketing Research Competition,” Davila said after learning her team won. “It allowed me to apply in-class learning to a real-life situation. Through participating, I was able to explore consumer opinion and how it can inform recommendations that can be extremely helpful to a company. I never thought I would take this class — or that we would spend the entire semester talking about sausages — but I this opportunity allowed me to see how much a career in marketing has to offer.”
Quirk’s Media is a trade media ecosystem serving marketing research firms and practitioners. They are the founding sponsor of the annual competition. Brooke Reavey, an associate professor of marketing at Dominican University and frequent contributor to Quirk’s Media, organized this year’s competition.
The judges who decided the top 10 teams were Bill Trovinger, customer insights director for pharmacy and health at Albertsons; Karen Kraft, associate director of consumer insights and analytics at Johnsonville; Julie Kurd, advisor at Intuify; Dan Quirk, vice president of marketing at Quirk’s Media and Kathy Alexander, founder at Beagle Insight. The judges deciding the finalists’ order were Johnsonville’s marketing and insights team and brand managers for each subcategory.