During the last decade, many Chicago-area graduate schools have made sweeping changes in their master’s-level marketing programs. Some have added courses, others have revamped the content of their basic courses. A couple have created entirely new degrees.
“Much has stayed the same, and yet much has changed,” said Martha Gershun, marketing curriculum director for Keller Graduate School of Management.
At Keller, which offers a master’s degree in business administration with a concentration in marketing, the curriculum now adds to the fundamentals emphasis on technology, international marketing and ethical considerations.
“The basic idea that marketing revolves around the four P’s-product, price, place and promotion-has not changed in 30 years,” she said. “These are still the fundamentals that are critical for the student to master. What has changed is how we look at each of these things.”
For example, technological advances have created new avenues for the promotion of a product or service, Gershun said. “Even a year ago, you wouldn’t have thought of buying a home page on the Internet. Now many businesses see it as mandatory.
“Also, we have database availability for direct marketing that wasn’t possible five years ago,” he added.
Keller’s textbooks are written with the assumption that customers and competitors are across the ocean as well as across the street.
They also frequently raise ethical issues, such as how to market alcohol and other legal products that could be dangerous to the consumer’s health or whether a company has a social responsibility to include disabled models in its advertisements.
Keller, which has six campuses in the Chicago area and 17 nationwide, offers evening and weekend courses only. Its administrative offices are in Oakbrook Terrace.
Mick Ruffini finds his coursework at Keller relevant to his work as a district sales manager for a large chemicals and machinery manufacturer.
One assignment required student teams to design a plan for introducing a product.
Ruffini, who recently had been given a similar task at work, supplied his team with the product he was working on: a nutritional supplement for dairy animals that his company wanted to launch. The team created a plan as well as a set of criteria for success. (His company implemented the plan, but the supplement didn’t fare well on the market and was discontinued.)
“Had we not gone through that level of formalization, (the company) would probably have spent more money before reaching the same conclusion,” Ruffini said. “It is every bit as important to know when to abandon a product.”
He added, “The beauty of going to school part-time and working is, you don’t need to wait until you’re done to put your education to use.”
In 1991, the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, Evanston, replaced its graduate degree in advertising with a master’s in integrated marketing communications.
The 15-month, full-time program takes five quarters to complete. It includes studies in business, finance, advertising, sales promotion, direct marketing and public relations. The fourth quarter is spent in a residency course that gives students on-the-job experience in problem-solving.
“We feel we can train managers who can belly up to the table with MBAs but bring the added insight of communications,” said Clarke Caywood, chairman of the department of integrated marketing communications and a professor of public relations and marketing courses.
Several trends sparked the new program, he said. Among them are greater efficiencies in database technology, new communications media and more sophisticated ways of tracking consumer behavior.
“What has changed is a movement away from a mass-market approach to a custom-market approach,” he said.
The program “is just what I needed,” said Tina Ingall, now in her fifth quarter. She decided to return to school to broaden her business education after a decade of marketing tennis and basketball tournaments.
“I came in with a highly tactical background,” she said. “I had done a lot of planning of projects. This has helped me look at the big picture: If you want to get to point X at however much time down the road, these are the things you have to do.”
Ingall spent her residency in Washington, working on a team that designed a program to help the U.S. Postal Service improve customer communications.
After graduation she is considering working for a non-profit agency or doing strategic-market-plan consulting.
Jane Koopman also is in her fifth quarter. Her residency project was to research trends and issues that affect a large consumer-products manufacturer and write corporate position papers on them. The company since has hired her on a free-lance basis to do other writing projects.
She will graduate in December but is undecided about her career plans.
“I hope people will look at my degree and want to know more,” she said. “In some ways it is similar to an MBA, but it’s a little different. I’ll have the opportunity to articulate why I think communication is important to someone in business.”
Roosevelt University also offers a master’s degree in integrated marketing communications. It was established about 20 years ago and in 1990 was moved to the journalism department to give the program a greater emphasis on the communications aspect, said Robert Cannell, an associate professor who teaches visual communications, message strategy and business marketing in the program.
“Marketing used to be salesmanship and advertising,” he said. “Now it’s a much bigger picture.
“The marketing aspects of public relations, sales promotion and events marketing have all taken on greater importance. The integration of various communications techniques present a challenge to the marketer to understand all of them and to blend them effectively for results.”
The degree is offered at the downtown Chicago and Arlington Heights campuses; courses are offered evenings and Saturdays.
Stacey McClenathan, who works in the marketing department of a cellular service provider, enrolled because she ran out of excuses not to.
The location was on her way home from work, she had time to get some coffee before class started two nights a week-and her employer footed the bill.
“I was not looking for an MBA with financial background,” said McClenathan, whose undergraduate degree is in fine arts. “I’m not using that every day. I needed in-depth knowledge about marketing. At Roosevelt, every class was about marketing. Every single project was beneficial to me at work.”
McClenathan, who graduated in the summer, already has received a raise.
She plans to keep her job, she said, and probably will return to Roosevelt to earn a second master’s degree, this one in telecommunications.
The Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago offers a master’s of business administration with a concentration in marketing.
“Marketing is going through a fundamental change as a field because of changes in technology,” said Peter Rossi, curriculum and faculty coordinator for marketing and a professor of marketing and statistics. “Clearly, if our curriculum doesn’t reflect that, we’re out of touch.
“I think we’re even better than that. I believe we equip students for changes in the next 5 to 10 years, not just what has already happened.”
One of the newest courses covers ways to use data collected by scanning devices at checkout counters.
Two more are the strategic marketing and international marketing laboratory courses in which teams of students work with corporations to analyze and solve actual marketing challenges. For example, students helped a former defense contractor find new uses for its factories and created an intervention program to reduce teenage pregnancy for a charitable foundation in Kansas City.
Full- and part-time programs are available, although not all courses are available evenings and Saturdays. The full-time program takes two years.
Debbie Gartner enrolled after earning an undergraduate degree in psychology and working two years for a law firm supervising legal assistants. She hopes to go into brand management. She is in the second year of the full-time program.
Gartner took an independent study course in which she and several other students were assigned to create a marketing plan to improve the visibility of the graduate school.
“I had the impression before I came to Chicago (that the program) would be straight classroom theory,” she said. “But there are so many opportunities for laboratory courses and real hands-on experiences.”
