Kolar Design is committed to providing educational learning opportunities to help develop the incoming workforce amidst our rapidly changing world. It is important to us to assist in giving students real-world experiences with engaging challenges that help shape their future careers.

The Miami University Farmer School of Business firmly believes that students gain valuable insight when they learn hands-on. That is why it is a priority for the school to facilitate unique, experiential learning opportunities for their students throughout their education. Every Miami Farmer School student works on a project with a real business client, with opportunities to practice what they learn. 

During the Spring 2023 semester, the Miami University Farmer School of Business partnered with Kolar Design to offer an engaging and in-depth project for marketing students, diving deep into the business and the sectors it serves. The objective of the semester-long project was for students to work closely with the Kolar team to study the business, identify and quantify tangible market opportunities, formulate a marketing strategy with the goal of positioning Kolar for achieving revenue growth, and ultimately develop a marketing campaign to promote their unique value proposition to a target audience. At the end of the semester, students were tasked with presenting their findings to the Kolar Leadership team. 

At the beginning of the semester, the marketing students were split among four focus sectors of Kolar to study: Healthcare, Corporate Workplace, Civic Community, and Retail. They learned about Kolar, its services, key differentiators, competitors, and unique value proposition. 

Currently, Kolar is facing multiple, rapidly-emerging markets that are driven by evolving consumer, corporate, employee, and community needs for the integration of brand identity with physical space. Looking five years into the future, Kolar seeks to leverage its differential core capability in generating insights and analytics products to position for revenue growth. Each student team was charged with developing a detailed marketing plan that identified specific market opportunities and recommendations for how Kolar should position, target, reach, acquire, and retain new customers, as evidenced through a creative marketing campaign.

The project placed students in a context where they were enabled to solve real-world business challenges and craft meaningful solutions. In this exercise, students were able to directly apply their relevant classroom skills, knowledge, and creative problem-solving in their approach. 

There are a few key factors that Kolar emphasized to help the students have a successful result. First, providing face-to-face opportunities with the Kolar Leadership team. It was important to Kolar to provide an engaging look at the firm to motivate students to truly understand the business. By closely interacting with the students throughout the semester, Kolar was able to provide first-hand guidance on the work. Next was showcasing real investment in the students’ findings. The real-world nature of the project provided genuinely interesting ideas for Kolar to develop, with the potential to make a difference in the firm’s marketing strategy. 

Through the students’ research, the teams presented a number of key findings and takeaways to Kolar Leadership. The students identified ways to improve the Kolar website, social media strategy, email marketing, and other major Kolar channels. They also generated creative ideas for targeting new audiences and markets.  

 “It was such an honor to work with the Farmer School of Business students this semester,” said Brittany O’Bryan, Director of Brand and Employee Experience. “These students are incredibly bright and showcased insights and ideas that were truly valuable to our team. We’re proud to support highly-esteemed schools such as Miami University and work with top faculty to provide a real-world, hands-on experience for members of our future workforce. 

“I am amazed by the Miami University Farmer School of Business marketing students and their ability to dive into a market that is unfamiliar to them, discover new market opportunities, develop compelling insights, support their recommendations with data, develop unique marketing campaign tactics, and deliver a compelling story to communicate their findings in a professional setting. I appreciate that Kolar Design’s team provided an exciting project challenge, were responsive to students’ questions, and helped tap into the students’ motivation to do great work through the semester,” said Dr. Gregory Fisher, Associate Professor of Marketing. 

Kolar looks forward to continuing to invest in students by working with schools and programs such as Miami University to make a difference in providing rich and engaging educational opportunities.

To learn more about the Miami University Farmer School of Business, visit here. 

To learn more about the Kolar team, visit here.