Loyola’s chapter of the American Marketing Association placed among the top eight college competitors in this year’s AMA case competition.

This was their eighth year in the final eight. During the competition, university students prepare a marketing plan for a specific company. The team submitted the plan Dec. 17, 2007.

“About 80 to100 teams from across the country enter the competition,” assistant marketing professor Tom Hickman wrote in an e-mail to The Maroon. “To be selected as one of the eight finalists shows that the team put in a lot of hard work and that the dedication paid off.”

“I think it was quite honestly a surprise that we were able to do as well as we did,” marketing senior Greg Rodrigue said. “I thought we were doing a good job but I kind of felt we could have been doing better. And then once we got to the end, it all came really well.”

According to Hickman, being in the top eight shows that Loyola can compete with any business school across the country.

“I think that it also shows that we have very dedicated students that have a very high motivation to succeed,” he said.

The marketing team spent the fall semester preparing a 25-page marketing plan for McGraw Hill Higher Education, this year’s sponsoring company. The team completed its project by doing primary and secondary research, and analysis of external trends and data.

“McGraw-Hill is in the process of developing an e-commerce portal that is designed to sell products and provide services to students,” Hickman said. The company gave the team a fictional budget of $450,000 to promote this portal.

Mass communication senior Katherine Hebert likened the competition to “that big 10-page paper. When you’re done you just feel so great, you’re like, ‘Look what I

did, look at the work I put in, and look what I got as a result.’

“To me this competition gives me a tangible product to present to people and to say this is what I’ve learned at Loyola,” she said.

Loyola won the AMA case competition in 1996 and 2001. It also has placed second and third three times each.

The marketing team will have about 40 minutes to present their project in the AMA International Collegiate Conference April 3 – 5. The conference will be in New Orleans.

Andrea Castillo can be reached at [email protected].