Responsible Marketing: Distance learning Egham Plenary 2012 Business Consultancy Week

For a third consecutive time in as many years the Miller Brands, the UK operating arm of brewing giant SAB Miller offered a real business question for a management consultancy assessment designed for student groups from Royal Holloway to address.

Thirty six students drawn from all over the world worked in six groups during an intense week to make recommendations to Jonathan Bennett, Head of Corporate Affairs, Miller Brands UK, on the challenging question he posed on responsible marketing.  

Students, who worked together in virtual teams for four weeks ahead of coming together in the newly extended School of Management building in Egham, found the question stimulating and challenging.

 Dr Sigrun Wagner, who lead the student interaction, highlighted the high standard of work achieved by the multi-cultural groups, who had to work intensively from Monday to Friday to produce a coherent recommendation in the form of a 14 minute presentation.

"Students are at the end of a particularly demanding journey when they take on the capstone business consultancy project." stated Justin O'Brien, MBA Director, "combining family life with work is often challenging enough, but I take my hat off to these guys, who over a period of two to five years have devoted significant time to research, write course work and sit exams.  The consultancy and dissertation are the final steps on this journey and this years cohort did extremely well, delivering highly polished pitches, worthy of a masters degree."

Students are studying for either an MBA or MSc in International Management at Royal Holloway, University of London.