SIMErs stick together

Posted on by Lee Francis

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SIMErs stick together

Surveying Success: How SIME Collaboration Enhanced a Student Consultancy Project

Each year in LUMS Undergraduate Marketing, we run our flagship capstone consultancy module. These are real client facing projects that our final year students undertake for 20 weeks, starting from pitch right through to researching, analysing and presenting back to the client. The recurring challenge for supervisors and their student groups each year is getting the right audience to fill in the custom surveys, as these are critical in informing the bespoke advice for our clients. Some clients are SMEs, some are household names, but all are treated with the same amount of rigour and care.

One client this year required auditing the marketing communications of a writer’s retreat. The audience was not the immediate Gen Z demographic on campus, but I knew the topic would be of interest to university colleagues, and especially SIME members. Once I had signed off on the student’s surveys, I put the survey link in the SIME teams group in January 2026, with the top prize of winning a day’s retreat free.

We received an excellent number of 135 responses. Emma Watton, Senior Teaching Fellow in Entrepreneurship and Strategy, and member of SIME, commented in teams: “I'm happy to complete the survey of course. I am a habitual writing retreat attendee, and I also run internal and external writing retreats - I say this in case a longer interview with the students is useful for you.”

Indeed, after survey analysis was completed, I felt that the project needed a bit of qualitative depth, as one of the retreat’s target markets to develop was university academics. I remembered Emma’s positive comment and reached out to see if she would be happy to be interviewed. She was and my students interviewed her for over an hour on her retreat experiences. Ultimately, the client was delighted with the whole project, the survey and in-depth insights gained.

When it came to distributing the retreat prize, the students and I only thought of one person: Emma, as a reward for her time and effort as an interviewee. And so, Emma was “thrilled” to be the winner of a free place at the writing retreat - Writing Retreats | A Place To Write | Writing Retreats Wales run by Nic Brownlie, full board accommodation and activities. As a final cherry on the cake, the retreat itself will help Emma finish her PhD write up.

This experience highlights the power of collaboration, creativity, and community in delivering meaningful learning experiences for our students and real value for our clients. By leveraging internal networks like SIME, we not only overcome practical challenges such as data collection, but also enrich projects with deeper insights and engagement.

Lee Francis

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