When studying for my MBA, during one of the classes I took, we were involved in a business simulation. The eight week class matched up with the eight weeks spent in the simulation. We were given market data and asked to develop and brand a product fit for audiences specific to where we decided to open up businesses. I was the leader in my group and managed all of the branding and design decisions. Our group had the most consistent performance out the eight competing groups and had the lowest overhead. This post aims to summarize what I learned from the experience and what we did differently from the other groups.

The first decision that we made during week one was to cater to a very specific demographic. Our company decisions that followed were based off of this one decision. We wanted to market to a demographic that did not necessarily have the top demand in every place, but was consistently in the top four markets across entire regions and actually in demand in every region we could potentially expand to globally. The specific demographic that ended up matching that was the traveling businessperson. The product that we developed and marketed was a personal computer (pc).

With our target demographic selected and the general product we were going to sell, I worked on developing the specifications of our product. The reason that I ended up working on this part of the project was because I understood the market data about the different kinds of motherboards, GPUs, monitors, and various software availabilities. I looked at what the traveling businessperson wanted from their pcs across the various regions, and made some recommendations for what we should research and develop. With that in the pipeline, I advised my team to hold off on putting out any product out until the research was completed. That forced us to enter the market later. And there was some push back from my team about using that approach. I convinced them that we could capitalize on untapped markets after seeing where others were setting up their main business hubs. They accepted that as a potential benefit to waiting.

While waiting for the research and development (R&D) work to wrap up, I worked with the marketing point about which specifications to highlight in a marketing campaign to start before we pushed out our product. We took all of the data from across several regions and determined that we should highlight two characteristics about our product, first that the pc would be lightweight, and second that the pc would be versatile and able to be used in multiple settings for various types of presentations, this was the research piece we were waiting on. As the marketing campaign wrapped up we were able to push out our product, and had the biggest opening week out of all of our peers. I recommended some other R&D to be completed for an upgraded version of our pc that further expanded into some of the lesser demands of the traveling businessperson to push out for a second marketing campaign.

Part of that first marketing push was a branding brainstorming session, during our second team meeting. We did a round table and everyone contributed a few ideas about words that came to mind when they thought of a traveling businessperson. The purpose of that activity was to name our first product. A few good ideas came through, and ultimately we decided on Aves. That decision we felt reflected the ideals that our business was founded on during week one. We had decided that integrity of product was to be a cornerstone of the business and that transparency was essential. A lot of companies with similar values often name things with Latin names, and that’s the reason why the Latin name won out over some of the other ideas. Honestly, this meeting really pulled everyone together and really unified our approach to the various tasks we were managing. That single word became the answer to every question that could be asked about expansion.

We added a secondary business venture later to market to high end science with a product called Titan, now the name of one of NVIDA’s GPUs. While that was a worthy investment, it did take a lot of our earned revenue for not a whole lot of return. Had the market for that been larger, it would have worked out better. The demand was extraordinarily high, but the market pool wasn’t very deep. We still ended up making a significant profit, largely due to the areas that we decided to open in. We were the first to tap into the African market because our product was the only one out of our peers that could actually be used there due to electrical constraints. We were frontrunners there the entire time. We broke out early in Asia but were overtaken. We grew steadily in Europe and the Americas throughout the game and did overtake some of our competitors.

The biggest thing that I learned throughout this experience was that branding has power. It can unify a team within a company, especially if it is born of the people working on a project. And furthermore, branding creates demand for product. By the end of the simulation, the word travel was synonymous with Aves. The name of our product was born of our selected market demographic. This selection was made by evaluating market data and the company decision about what part of the market to hit the hardest. We looked for that second, third, or even fourth demand of consumers across various regions world wide. In short, branding is backed by data and science.