Bord Bia Marketing Fellowship Programme

This module is devoted to topics in building and honing marketing strategies that are built on market insights that exploit existing or emerging opportunities with a differentiating advantage. More specifically, through a combination of international case studies, presentations and exercises we explore marketing strategies, their structure and components; view methods to gain actionable insights into customer needs and priorities; examine the qualities of strong brands; and practice making strategic marketing decisions.

Sales strategy deals with the issues related to successful market entry, market penetration and customer retention in competitive environments. It addresses the individual components required for organisations to relate their sales team activities to their sales objectives. In particular it deals with the aspect of sales team alignment including: sales strategy, sales team culture, sales operations, sales performance measures and sales proposition innovation. 

A prominent challenge facing many food and drinks firms is finding routes to market that will enable them to grow. There is a need to work through a process of establishing relevance to customers, building credibility and then scaling the business. This module will use a series of case studies to examine how firms in the food and drinks industry have dealt with these challenges.

The module will also consider two other themes:

1. The nature of the agricultural supply chain and its influence on the ability of supply chain partners to participate in initiatives and activities which develop sales
2. The appropriate role that branding should play in the development of customer value propositions in the food and drinks industry.

The module is designed to provide fellows with an in-depth understanding of emerging and potential strategic shifts in the global food industry. With a strong emphasis on dynamic strategy, fellows will benefit by developing insights into the details of the challenges they face and how innovative organisations have been responding, thus increasing their effectiveness as organisational path-finders. The medium of learning employed is contemporary case studies on firms that are thought to be at the cutting edge of major issues. Each of the cases used in the programme has been published within the previous year. Many of the cases used are written by the instructor and bring additional insight and benefits to the classroom experience.

• It is critically important for suppliers to the retail and foodservice sector, in light of Brexit and other global challenges, to build successful customer relationships. This module will provide students with the necessary tools to implement an organisational structure for strategic customer management in these areas, placing particular emphasis on how sales and marketing can be integrated to maximum effect. It will also allow students to position their own skills and expertise in relation to a strategic customer management initiative. During this module, attention will be paid to both the context of small to medium- sized enterprises and to that of larger firms in the retail and foodservice sectors in an international environment.

  At the end of the module students should be able to demonstrate their understanding of how the supply chain functions from an account management perspective, differentiate between sales and account management, and linking account management to the organisational structure.

The course is an intensive dive into modern, digitally-charged marketing with a focus on the fast moving consumer goods sector. We’ll focus on six themes: (1) separating fact from fiction in how marketing works, (2) building compelling, iconic brands, (3) winning attention and trust, (4) integrating digital and traditional strategies, (5) using social media strategically, and (6) going viral.

This module focuses on both sides of marketing/innovation projects. It will begin by considering the strategy development process in organisations and the particular role that value proposition development plays within that. It next considers the impact that innovation has on the wider organisation.
The course will consist of a range of learning media including case studies, lecture/ discussions, workshops and guest visitors by executives from the food industry.

The Professional & Career Development module focuses on developing leadership and management potential, through a process of practice, reflection and continuous performance improvement. With ongoing support, participants examine their career ambitions and work to develop a set of leadership and management relevant competencies.

The Bord Bia Marketing Fellowship assignments, conducted on behalf of Irish food, drink and horticulture client companies, provide real-time problem-solving challenges for participants. The assignments include market research and business development objectives with a view to improving exports and the export potential of the clients. An assignment brief document is allocated to the fellow during induction which frames in-market activities. The assignment process has three major components - market analysis, business development and client and stakeholder management.

The allocation of placements for successful applicants will be decided by Bord Bia in consultation with UCD. Details of placements will usually not be finalised or communicated to successful candidates until at some stage during programme induction. Successful candidates will need to be prepared and willing to re-locate to their allocated market for the period relevant to the programme as set out in the UCD Bord Bia programme website and/or as otherwise communicated by UCD/Bord Bia.

Damien McLoughlin is Anthony C. Cunningham Professor of Marketing at UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School in Ireland. Damien has been a visiting professor at some of the world’s preeminent business schools including the S.C. Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University, the Indian School of Business, ESMT (Berlin) and IMD.

Damien has also contributed to senior executive programs in Agribusiness at both Harvard Business School and Purdue University. Since 2014 he has been a visiting professor at the Stern School of Business at New York University and in 2021 will be a visiting professor at the Tuck School at Dartmouth College. Damien has published more than seventy papers and two books on strategy and marketing issues as well as twenty-five case studies relating to leadership and strategy issues in global food and agribusiness, covering all geographies and major sectors. Recent cases have included Tyson Foods, Bayer Crop Science, Ocado and Kerry Group.

Damien is a member of the external advisory network of Bain & Co Consulting. As a director Damien has served several public sector organisations including the Medical Council of Ireland (2008-2013), where he chaired the Audit Committee for five years, HIQA (2010-2012), Bord Iascaigh Mhara (2015-2020) and Kepak (2021-2024). Damien holds a Bachelor of Business Studies degree from Dublin City University, a Master of Business Studies degree from University College Dublin and PhD in Marketing from Lancaster University (UK).

Mary holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Chemical Engineering with High Distinction from the University of Kentucky and an MBA with Distinction from Harvard Business School, where she was awarded a Dean’s Doctoral OGA for research in economics and marketing.

Professor Shelman was Director of Harvard Business School’s Agribusiness Programme. She leads the annual Agribusiness Seminar in Boston which is attended by more than 200 CEO’s and senior managers from the world’s leading agribusiness firms. She has led similar programmes in Europe, Latin American and Asia. Mary is past President of the International Food and Agribusiness Management Association (IFAMA).

Mary is known as a strategic pathfinder in the global agribusiness sector. She offers a particular competency in identifying and diagnosing the forces of change shaping global agribusiness. Actively engaging with these themes she has served as Chairman of the Board of RiceTec, Inc., a fully integrated agribusiness and packaged food company headquartered in Alvin, Texas, and on the boards of RiceTec AG, Stiftung Fürst Liechtenstein, and the USA Rice Millers’ Association.

She has also authored more than 50 case studies highlighting situations of strategic change in leading global agribusiness firms. She is a member of the editorial board of the International Food and Agribusiness Management Review.

Goutam Challagalla is Professor of Strategy and Marketing at IMD. Prior to IMD, he spent 20 years as a professor at Georgia Tech in Atlanta. Professor Challagalla also worked as Principal at The Monitor Group, a strategy consulting company founded by Michael Porter. His teaching, consulting, and research focuses on strategy with a focus on digital transformation, business-to-business commercial management, value-based pricing, sales management, distribution channels, and customer and service excellence.

Professor Challagalla's undergraduate degree is from Osmania University in Hyderabad, India. His MBA is from Arizona State University and his Ph.D. is from the University of Texas in Austin. His research has been published in top marketing and management journals such as Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Management Science, Strategic Management Journal, and the Journal of Applied Psychology. He is a recipient of the Outstanding Dissertation Award at UT-Austin, the Decision Sciences Institute's best paper award, American Marketing Association's best Services Paper award, and the Maynard Award, which is given to the best paper in the Journal of Marketing (2015). He has won the E. Roe Stamps Excellence in Teaching Award and the Core MBA Professor Teaching Award at Georgia Tech. He serves on the editorial review board of the Journal of Marketing and Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management.

Conor has over 20 years of management experience; 14 of which saw him responsible for the design and delivery of executive talent development and business development support programmes. These industry career programmes focus on attracting and nurturing Ireland’s best prospective industry leaders.

Conor has been accountable for over 1,300 industry-based action learning assignments, delivered as a core component of executive action learning programmes. Over 600 of these assignments were on behalf of Irish food industry clients, across key international markets.

In addition to executive talent development, Conor has operated within the following industry sectors: market research, FMCG-food (at Boyne Valley Foods Group), construction and property development.

His key areas of expertise include: strategic development for the food industry; action learning and professional talent development; executive programme development, career coaching; client management; marketing and export business development.

Dr. Julie Schiro is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at the Smurfit School of Business, University College Dublin. Her work explores how to motivate good behaviours (e.g., recycling, charity) through humour, awe, and other positive emotions rather than fear. Her other work explores a second interest, visual processing, specifically how visualizing information helps and hinders people's understanding. Dr. Schiro graduated summa cum laude from the University of Southern California with a bachelor's degree in business. She went on to complete her Ph.D. in marketing from the University of Colorado, Boulder. She has industry experience in market research and statistical consulting

Dr. Andrew Keating is an Associate Professor in marketing at the UCD Smurfit School of Business. Andrew earned his PhD in 2008 from UCD and also holds an MBS in Marketing, a DBS in Business, and a BA. His research interests at present are in the areas of the intersection between entrepreneurship (venture creation and development) and marketing, the internationalisation of new ventures, as well as exploring consumers and austerity. His research has appeared in leading academic journals such as Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice (FT 50 Journal), Industrial Marketing Management, Consumption Markets and Culture, and the Journal of Consumer Behaviour. He is the academic director for the UCD CEMS MSc in International Management and lectures in the area of consumer marketing and marketing and innovation. Andrew has also been involved in delivering executive education across many of the school’s executive education programmes including for the likes of Alltech, Enterprise Ireland, Google, InterTrade Ireland, and Bord Bia.

Mark Vandenbosch earned his BA, Honors Business Administration from Western University and his PhD from the University of British Columbia. He has held visiting professorships at IMD in Switzerland and INSEAD in France.

Vandenbosch's research interests centre around competitive strategy, product management and marketing research. His work has appeared in Marketing Science, Organization Science, Information Systems Research, International Journal of Research in Marketing, Journal of Retailing, Marketing Letters, Journal of Business Research and MIT Sloan Management Review. He has also written numerous cases on issues concerned with competitive analysis, strategy market planning, advanced technology marketing and business-to-business marketing.

Vandenbosch has acted as a consultant in marketing research and marketing strategy to a number of leading companies including Tetra Pak, National Semiconductor, Hewlett Packard, Allied Signal, Bank of Montreal, Medtronic and Nestlé. He has taught on in-company programs for, among others, Tetra Pak, Loyalty One, Cisco Systems, Pirelli, Sony, Canon, ABB, IBM, Allianz, Aegon, SEB Swedbank, Nestlé, TetraPak, 3M, and National Semiconductor.

Fiona Fitzpatrick BBS (French) MSc Marketing HDip Public Relations. Exec Coaching II HEC Paris. Fiona has a blue-chip FMCG Brand Marketing, Category & Sales background, spanning both Retail and Foodservice, which began in 1999 as a Nestlé UK Graduate.

These days, Fiona strives to help food & beverage businesses to identify and drive Transformational Growth in their chosen markets. She does this in various ways: as a Food Business Strategy Consultant; through her podcast Brand Growth Heroes; as a Mentor/Business Advisor on various food business accelerator programmes; and as an Executive Coach to senior management teams. She also works closely with Bord Bia, both with the Global Business Development team and the Capability team, and has spent five years as a Part-Time Lecturer at UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School on the MSc Food Business Strategy programme.

Companies and brands Fiona has worked with over the past 20 years include: Sun-Pat Peanut Butter, Branston Pickle, Munch Bunch Yogurts, Nesquik, Cadbury’s Hot Chocolate, Gu Chocolate Puds, Rustler’s (Kepak), Warburton’s bread, Chobani (US Greek Yogurt), Donegal Catch, Strong Roots and many more through food business accelerators.