MBA Student Chairs announced that PepsicCo will Sponsor 19th Annual Wake Forest Marketing Summit

Wake Forest MBA Marketing Summit Chairs, Chris Jensen, Dana Lee, and Josh McCutchen announded yesterday that PepsiCo will sponsor the 19th annual Wake Forest Marketing Summit held Feb. 5-7, 2009.

PepsiCo's marketing challenge will be revealed during the dramatic kickoff event on Thursday, Feb. 5, 2009.

The 2009 Marketing Summit is full of firsts. In addition to announcing the sponsor prior to the competition for the first time, the first place prize has been raised to $50,000, making the Wake Forest marketing competition the premier marketing case competition in the nation. And for the first time, the sponsor CEO will attend the event. Indra Nooyi, chairman and chief executive officer of Pepsico, will speak on Feb. 6 as part of the Marketing Summit.

In the MBA Case Competition, eight teams teams consisting of four to seven MBA students will be selected to particpate in the competition. Each team will have 36 hours to prepare a creative, strategic solution to solve a real-world challenge faced by the sponsor, PepsiCo and then present to a panel of expert judges and representatives of the sponsoring company. The competition exposes students to realistic career challenges and provides employers with an opportunity to gauge the students' marketing skills under pressure.

"We are really excited to be able to offer such a dramatic top prize thanks to our sponsor and we are thrilled that Indra Nooyi has agreed to come and speak as part of the Marketing Summit," said Marketing Summit Faculty Adviser Roger Beahm.

The best undergraduate marketing students in the country are also invited to compete in the Undergraduate Case Challenge, now in its fifth year. A total of four undergraduate teams will have the opportunity to participate.

All competing teams will participate in a two-phase challenge over the course of two months in which they will submit recommendations addressing pressing issues facing the event's corporate sponsor, PepsiCo, a world-class company in a dynamic industry. The highest-scoring teams from the online preliminary round are invited to attend the Marketing Summit the weekend of Feb. 5-7, 2009, where they will be given 36 hours to analyze the second part of the case and develop a solution.

Teams will present their finalized solutions to a judging panel of MBA faculty, CEOs, CMOs and representatives from the sponsor on Saturday, Feb. 7, 2009. The winning teams will be announced at the Awards Gala on Saturday evening.

For more information about the 2009 Undergraduate Case Challenge contact marketingsummit@mba.wfu.edu .

PepsiCo has interests in manufacturing, marketing and selling a wide variety of carbonated and non-carbonated beverages, as well as salty, sweet and grain-based snacks, among other foods. Besides the Pepsi-Cola brands, including Mountain Dew, the company owns the brands Quaker Oats, Gatorade, Frito-Lay, SoBe, Naked and Tropicana. To find out more about PepsiCo, please visit PepsiCo.com.