E&M Club Heads for LA Forum
Andrew Zrike
Issue date: 1/22/08 Section: Features
On January 3rd and 4th members of the Ross Entertainment and Media club made the trip to the west coast for the club's annual LA Forum. While most Ross students would consider this trip an excuse to get away from the painfully long Ann Arbor winter and spend some time in the sun, for the Ross students that are interested in careers in Entertainment and Media it is (along with the NY Forum in the fall) one of the few opportunities to interact with potential employers. This year, the E&M LA Forum group was made up of 3 BBAs and 13 MBAs. The trip was organized, led, and babysat by the hardworking LA Forum Co-Chairs, Erica Graham (MBA1) and Valerie Wang (BBA Junior). It was their planning that allowed the club to visit a wide variety of E&M companies, including NBC/Universal, HBO Films, Activision, Sony Pictures, The Disney Corporation, Warner Brothers Studios, and Twentieth Century Fox.
The forum started out on Thursday morning with a trip out to Universal City to NBC/Universal. This visit, along with the majority of other companies visited, started with an HR representative giving a quick introduction followed by a viewing of the company's reel (which usually was made up of company history and recent content set to the tune of popular music). The reel was followed by a quick introduction of potential MBA careers at NBC/Universal, which was then followed by a panel presentation and Q&A period made up of MBAs who currently work at the company. NBC/Universal distinguished itself with a few strong full time rotational and leadership programs for 2nd year MBAs, but it was a little difficult to figure out how competitive these programs were and if the company also offered summer internships that were geared specifically to MBAs.
One company that stood out was Activision. While not usually considered part of the traditional Hollywood Entertainment industry, Activision and other video game publishers and developers have been able to compete directly with more established media companies for entertainment dollars and time. Their presentation highlighted both the company's recent historical success with Guitar Hero 3 and Call Of Duty 4 and the need to bring in talented MBAs to manage this tremendous growth and opportunity. Although the company has a reputation as being a cutting edge media company, it was interesting to find out that all of the employees that presented had previous marketing and consulting experience at companies like P&G, Colgate, and Accenture. In addition to providing a tremendous lunch, Activision left a positive impression with the enthusiasm with which they encouraged the group to consider applying to their summer product management internship program, which is available to all Michigan students to drop resumes for through Impact.
The forum started out on Thursday morning with a trip out to Universal City to NBC/Universal. This visit, along with the majority of other companies visited, started with an HR representative giving a quick introduction followed by a viewing of the company's reel (which usually was made up of company history and recent content set to the tune of popular music). The reel was followed by a quick introduction of potential MBA careers at NBC/Universal, which was then followed by a panel presentation and Q&A period made up of MBAs who currently work at the company. NBC/Universal distinguished itself with a few strong full time rotational and leadership programs for 2nd year MBAs, but it was a little difficult to figure out how competitive these programs were and if the company also offered summer internships that were geared specifically to MBAs.
One company that stood out was Activision. While not usually considered part of the traditional Hollywood Entertainment industry, Activision and other video game publishers and developers have been able to compete directly with more established media companies for entertainment dollars and time. Their presentation highlighted both the company's recent historical success with Guitar Hero 3 and Call Of Duty 4 and the need to bring in talented MBAs to manage this tremendous growth and opportunity. Although the company has a reputation as being a cutting edge media company, it was interesting to find out that all of the employees that presented had previous marketing and consulting experience at companies like P&G, Colgate, and Accenture. In addition to providing a tremendous lunch, Activision left a positive impression with the enthusiasm with which they encouraged the group to consider applying to their summer product management internship program, which is available to all Michigan students to drop resumes for through Impact.
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