Lunds and Byerly’s was in the news this week with their re-branding of the store banners. But a few weeks prior to this announcement, Phil Lombardo, the company’s CMO, and many from his merchandising team met with students from Steve Vuolo’s Marketing 300 undergraduate course. The purpose of the meeting was to hear about a new product idea and coinciding marketing plan that the students had developed as part of the course project.
The students were Chantal Caro, Christine Yun, Bryan Donohue and Megan Duggan. Phil Lombardo and the Lunds and Byerly’s group asked hard hitting questions about the idea and the students were up for the task. Lombardo commented, “I wish that our vendors did as good a job with their presentations. This was very well thought out”.
In a reflection paper on the activity of presenting to the Lunds and Byerly’s team, Caro commented, “The whole experience not only served as a great lesson in marketing, but it was an entrepreneurship experience, a teamwork experience, a public speaking experience, and a huge networking experience…it was honestly one of the best experiences we’ve had in college so far.”
While the specifics of the new idea cannot be shared, the presentation included a concept board, positioning statements, merchandising, promotion and pricing recommendations, and a commercial produced by the students.
