6th edition of the Mark Up project: students take up the ASICS challenge
On January 9th, ASICS joined the MBS Advisory Board after many years of collaboration. Today, the brand is once again committing to student training by partnering with the 6th edition of the Mark Up project. The objective is to share a concrete business issue with the MBS Grande Ecole M1 students and collect their recommendations.
Launched in 2013, this educational project is a challenge that aims to confront students with a company’s global strategic marketing issue, thus drawing on all the skills taught within MBS. The particular issue of this 6th edition happens to be at the heart of the MBS Group’s values: “What strategy should ASICS adopt to conquer the female sports market?”
During the entire competition, Professors Dr. Cédrine Joly and Dr. Paul Chiambaretto supervise 620 French and international students divided into 63 randomly selected teams. The goal is to challenge students by confronting them with the duties of a “consultant” whose mission is to deliver recommendations, within a team of both alternating and continuous students. The top 10 groups will then compete in a final showroom in front of their ASICS client, and an audience of professors and other students from Montpellier Business School.
A few minutes before the announcement of the ten finalist projects, Samih Khalef (ASICS France Sales & Country leader and 1998 graduate of MBS) and Arnaud Leroux (ASICS South Europe Marketing Director) shared their expectations. “Today, I would like to be surprised. Ideally, at the end of these meetings, I would like to ask myself the question: “Why didn’t we think of this before?”. And above all, we are eager to discover the innovative and unbiased way in which students look at the problems we have proposed to them“, explains Arnaud Leroux.
“We want to highlight the consistency and quality of the recommendations we have received, and we have chosen to reward strong biases and risk-taking by some groups,” states Samih Khalef at the awards ceremony. Thus, the winning group chose to base their marketing recommendation on the following objective: “To be as close as possible to women and their daily lives, non-excluding some of the most complicated subjects to address in marketing“. The recommendation therefore decided to enter the running market, on which Asics is a leader, by committing itself to a responsible approach and creating a range of products that raise awareness, particularly on endometriosis and on violence against women.
“The professionalism, creativity and realism of the proposals made by our M1 students confirm once again the quality of this challenge and the benefits that our Major Partners derive from it”, concludes Dr. Cédrine Joly.
