A team of Ohio State MBA students won a $50,000 prize at the 2010 Marketing Summit at Wake Forest University on Feb. 6.

The contest, sponsored by IBM, saw OSU avenge its loss in the 2009 summit. The seven-member group defeated a pool of teams from seven universities.

Consisting of graduate students Vandana Agrawal, Seth Blatter, Michael Hrostoski, Jeremy Jacobs, Ryan Kilpatrick, Eduard Lapteanu and Chad Stutz, the team was one of only eight schools selected from an applicant pool of 83 other universities throughout the world. They were lead by professor Marc Ankerman, a senior lecturer in management and human resources at OSU.

For the contest, the teams were assigned to act as internal consultants for IBM and work with members of the company to develop a marketing plan that would create business for IBM in Dubai. As part of IBM’s “Smarter Planet Campaign,” the teams had to develop a model for their “Smarter Cities Initiative.”

They received the case at 8 p.m. Thursday and had to have the project finalized by 7 a.m. Saturday, giving the team very little time to be deliberate about the project.

“I only slept for 20 minutes on Friday night on the hardwood floor in our breakout room,” Hrostoski said.

The team came up with a comprehensive marketing plan, which included several mock print ads and a 30-second commercial made by team member Chad Stutz. The judges told the team that having solid financial data separated the group from the competition.

“I think they used a lot of the skills they taught each year at Fisher [College of Business],” Ankerman said. “They were an all-star team amongst themselves. They used their strengths and balanced their weaknesses.”

In order to enter the competition, the team had to go through a vigorous application process, which included several detailed essays and a video in December.

The team featured several experienced members after it competed in the Big Ten Conference MBA and CIBER Case competitions, although this was the first event where all of the members worked together.

“All of us had worked on case competitions in the past, but never with a team this large,” Hrostoski said. “Therefore, the biggest problem the team had was excessive idea generation, forcing us to streamline the process, work more efficiently and repeatedly find ways to pare down the presentation.”

Hrostoski said several of the team members would use the $50,000 not only to donate to their college, but to also throw a party for the Fisher Graduate Program. Furthermore, the victory was a testament to the ever-growing prowess of the business program at OSU.

“The competition showed everyone that our business program should be [ranked] a lot higher than top 25,” Ankerman said.