Dr. Markus Rach, a new associate professor at the SZTU Business School, who transitioned from Switzerland to China in the month of September, opened the door for ambitious SZTU students to consult to a major Swiss consumer brand. Wang Jiaxin (王嘉欣), a 2nd year student in the School of Foreign Languages, was amongst the first students to reply to the job offer. Having attended an international PEC on the “Future of Marketing”, given by Dr. Rach in 2021, Wang Jiaxin was well equipped to utilize her in-class learnings and English language skills to excel at the task provided. The job included to run a marketing communication based competitive analysis of dairy brands in China. In particular, the communication style, messaging tone and overall brand positioning of these brands had to be analyzed across a range of media. These included commercial platforms like JD, Taobao and T-Mall, but also traditional social media platforms like Douyin (TikTok), WeChat, Little Red Book amongst others.
Important to note is the very short notice of the job and thus the immense time pressure in which Wang Jiaxin had to complete the assignment. The time between job announcement, kick-off with the client and job-completion were less than 4 days. Within the given time, Wang Jiaxin, supported by Dr. Markus Rach, not only thoroughly analyzed the Chinese dairy brand space, but visualized her findings in a competitive map. The latter has been used to compellingly present her findings to the CEO and co-CEO of the client. During the presentation, which was followed by an in-depth discussion, Wang Jiaxin answered many questions and engaged in the work of a full-fledged management consultant. Both participating top managers where not only highly impressed by the deeply grounded analysis presented; but voiced how the work conducted provided the necessary managerial input to assist their respective organization’s further international expansion plans.
Since the completion of the consulting project, which got financially rewarded, much of what Wang Jiaxin presented, was put to practice. Dr. Markus Rach has praised the work of Wang Jiaxin as an outstanding example of academic rigor, ambition and perseverance. As an active marketing and brand consultant in Europe, particularly in the digital marketing and new media space, Dr. Rach aims to provide more students the opportunity to complete real-life consulting projects for European brands. Interested students, with a high-level of English language proficiency, are invited to reach out to Dr. Rach on WeChat (markus_rach) to stay in the loop of upcoming projects.
This serves to show how important real-life education is in today’s hyper-competitive marketplace and how well equipped SZTU students are to start thriving careers in the field of international business.
Picture 1: Student Wang Jiaxin (王嘉欣) communicates with clients online
Picture 2: Student Wang Jiaxin and Dr. Markus Rach
Text/Picture: Markus Rach
