Students analyze TV advertising at Sixth Annual Marketing Analytics Competition

Announcements | May 30, 2017 | admin

At the end of the spring semester, while many students were looking forward to finishing final exams and making summer plans, a group of graduate and undergraduate students were busy preparing for the Sixth Annual Richard Colombo Marketing Analytics Competition.

After a first round consisting of an online test, the second round of the competition tasked participants with developing a measure for TV advertising effectiveness.

Out of the 60 students who competed, including 34 undergraduate and 26 graduate students, 10 undergraduate and 12 graduate students made it to this concluding round.

Students, acting as marketing analytics specialists, were evaluated on their thought processes, accuracy of approaches, sophistication of proposed methodology, managerial implications, quality of documentation, and clarity of communication.

On the graduate level, first place went to Mu Zhang, MS ’17, second place to Wensi Wei, MS ’18, and third to Stephan Roosen, MS ’17. On the undergraduate side, Lexy McCauley won first place, with second place going to Hugh Lagrotteria, and third place to Kiana Manon, all BS ’17.

“The winners took various creative approaches in developing their own measures,” said Mohammad Nejad, assistant professor of marketing. “They controlled for the program engagement and the media weight behind the ad—how intensively the firm advertised. Thus, ads that are shown during a more engaging TV program and/or have a higher media weight behind them will receive higher recall.”

The annual competition honors Richard Allan Colombo, who was a dedicated professor at Fordham, Columbia, NYU, and Yale, as well as in India and China. He was also program director for the Bert Twaalfhoven Center for Entrepreneurship at Fordham University.