The Kilts Center for Marketing serves as a hub for the marketing and tech communities at Chicago Booth. The center partners closely with the Booth Technology Group (FT and E/W), Marketing Group, and Marketing Club, as well as the Booth Product Management Club, Analytics Club, Corporate Management Group, and more. By partnering with these student groups, the center helps the co-chairs’ identify goals for the next year and helps support their annual efforts, including connecting them to alumni for events and companies to visit during treks, as well as expanding programming so students get the most out of their experience at Booth.
Recently, the Kilts Center hosted its first Training Series, where students could speak with experts and do hands-on work around writing a product requirements document, learning how to use SQL, and diving into how product managers use UX. In 2022, the team also launched an event called “From Brief to Campaign,” where brand managers and their creative agency reps came together to talk about how an idea turns into an ad. These events all came from deep conversations with student group co-chairs.
Experiential learning is integral to the marketing curriculum at Booth. The Kilts Center facilitates project-based courses called Marketing Labs, during which student teams tackle real-world business problems with major companies such as Google, PepsiCo, McDonald’s, Uber, and Walmart.
Outside the classroom, the center hosts an annual marketing case competition in partnership with a business looking for fresh perspectives on real challenges they are facing. Past partners include Molson Coors, Pernod Ricard, Whirlpool, and Ferrara Candy. Students rely on various data sources and use these to support their solutions, which they pitch to a panel of judges from the sponsoring company.
Marketing isn’t just a job function or an industry—it’s a skill set relevant for all business leaders.
Many post-MBA jobs across industries rely on marketing skills. These include product management, product marketing management, brand management, general management, entrepreneurship, management consulting, and analytics.
Chicago Booth was a pioneer in driving a data-driven approach to marketing, and that legacy continues today. Marketing faculty—both quantitative and behavioral— rely on data to fuel their insights, including using data from NielsenIQ, TransUnion and more that the Kilts Center houses.
To stay up to date on alumni successes, events and programs, the latest research using data housed at the Kilts Center, and more, follow the Kilts Center on LinkedIn and subscribe to their monthly newsletter.
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Yiğit Akdemir is a first-year Full-Time MBA student pursuing an MBA/MPCS joint degree at Chicago Booth. Read on to discover his journey to Booth as a deferred enrollment student.
Yiğit Akdemir
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