lkaboss wrote:
aerien wrote:
You have multiple paths here, so I'll chime in on entertainment/luxury strategy and marketing ... And leave the consulting part to the hard core consultants out there.
Marketing in general, Kellogg is king. But their sweet spot is consumer goods and Chicago, though you could go anywhere obviously.
Luxury goods: New York City. Columbia or NYU. Imo, NYU is stronger in recent years for luxury marketing; Columbia is more known for luxury finance (or at least that's the direction the people I know have gone in). Duke, Sloan, and Yale have pretty good recruiting in this area as well but it depends if you want to do general marketing, analytics, or something else.
Entertainment: NYU (again, NYC) though entertainment is broad -- do you want tv, movies, theater, hotels, cruise lines...? Those can all lead different directions. I still say NYU, UCLA, USC depending on the area.
Thank you for the thoughts, you're on the money about NY being a big hub for entertainment/luxury goods. One note, however, is that just for myself, I kind of want to stay within the top 5-7 MBA programs to manage my own brand since my undergrad/grad degrees were from State schools. I listed the schools I did just because I think they may have the best brand name recognition in Europe, but I could be wrong...
I think that the luxury goods strategy/marketing path will be for me if I can get a job with an industry player (think Versace, Ferrari, Chanel, etc.), while the entertainment sector (including all those industries that you mentioned) will be a fallback plan to consult in with Bain/BCG. I think I would like my position to focus on more of the high level company direction than doing analytics necessarily.
And I say this with the nicest of intentions, but a 5-7 school based on someone's ranking may not be the best school for you and your career aspirations.
Most every school has a marketing club/recruiting, but luxury recruiting is a niche area -- especially if you leave luxury retail and go into luxury auto. Luxury retail is so strong in NYC for obvious reasons and to go by US News rankings since that seems to be your benchmark, HBS, MIT, and Booth are strong there too. I'd say HBS is more strategy inclined and MIT/Booth are more analytics inclined, but you can do either at any school.
Luxury auto (you mentioned Ferrari) is more difficult to break into IMO. And from an American applicant perspective, it's almost easier to gain auto experience at a Ford/GM first and then move to a Ferrari, Maserati, etc. And I don't think anyone can beat the Ross network for the US auto industry. Sure, Detroit isn't what it used to be but those ties are still there and are quite strong. To go directly to an Italian/German/British auto maker, it might be easier to go to INSEAD, EDHEC, even Cambridge/Oxford. I say that because there aren't that many US applicants nowadays looking in auto (outside of supply chain/engineering) and if they are, they're in solar/energy/sustainability. In Europe things might be different.