This is how the team My Chemical Romance became the flag bearers of NMIMS Mumbai and national finalists of J&J QUEST season 8

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The best way to describe the feeling would be a mixture of elation, satisfaction, and excitement. We felt like months of our hard work had finally paid off and we could feel confident about ourselves as solution finders of real-life problems. Here is a brief of the exciting journey and one-in-a-kind experience of J&J QUEST season 8, co-authored by the team.

Every team member related to our submission topic 'the issue of morbid obesity' as we all had family members suffering through this problem. This added another level of personal connect to the competition. This personal connect, combined with our shared passion for marketing, added up to make this a perfect collaboration opportunity. Moreover, for Siddhant, this was the first break in a competition as all through his first year of MBA, he aimed to make it to the campus finals of a corporate competition but after multiple failures, J&J QUEST season 8 clicked. Speaking of Ashish, having secured a summer placement in his dream company Johnson & Johnson, he saw this competition as a wonderful opportunity to work with the company on a live project before his internship started. The team gave it their best shot and My Chemical Romance became the top 5 teams in the J&J QUEST season 8 with their consistent and sincere efforts.

9 months of in-depth research to beat the competition

Our topic was understanding the triggers and eliminating the fear of bariatric surgery. Given the highly technical and challenging nature of this topic, we first set out by understanding the landscape of the surgery itself. We learned about what the surgery is, who is it for, where does J&J as a company come into this process, and identified the various stakeholders. This was followed by in-depth research both qualitative and quantitative, in the form of FGD's, interviews, surveys, etc. Based on our findings we further delved deeper into the minds of our key stakeholders i.e patients and developed a solution keeping their key concerns in mind.

There were a total of 14 teams including ours in the grand finale of J&J QUEST season 8. We knew that since each team had an entirely different problem statement spread across different company verticals, each of them would have worked extremely hard to secure a win. We weren't on the lookout for anyone particular team as we just trusted in our abilities and desire to win.

The competition was extremely tough but fair in terms of overall quality and framing. It allowed teams to have an extensive amount of time to conduct in-depth research and deliver implementable solutions rather than half baked, slivers of creativity. It also had a live project component to it which only added to all the teams' overall experience of working on a problem in real-time.

The one thing that we cherished the most was being able to present our solution in the campus round in a hall packed full of our batchmates and hear their applause. The prevailing conditions made it impossible for us to do the same for our national rounds and it definitely did put a damper on our spirits. However, the engagement of J&J as a company, the support of our family and friends, and our resolve to do justice to our own efforts by delivering the best presentation we could, ultimately helped us push through and overcome the barrier of virtual presentation.

Lessons without limit

The journey has been so long that it is difficult to mention all the learnings. But we think they can be distilled down to learning the true meaning of teamwork. It isn't just about collaboration and co-operation, it is also about building trust and managing egos while keeping the team a priority. Another major learning was understanding the fact that relentless pursuit of the goal is as important as enjoying the journey itself and being open to change. So our biggest learning was the art of learning itself.

J&J QUEST gave us the chance to understand how surgeries are marketed. We did in-depth interviews with bariatric surgeons, bariatric patients, psychiatrists, and J&J Marketing Division to understand the complete value chain and learn this niche universe of bariatric surgery and how it's a life-saving procedure. Moreover, Ashish being from a family of doctors helped him in connecting the team with people from the medical fraternity and getting easy access to a lot of insights. It taught him the importance of networking. 

On the other hand, Siddhant, personally learned about bariatric surgery, that obesity is a rich man's disease, and is the main cause of a lot of diseases that people suffer from. There is a stigma against this surgery and it is wrongly considered under the same umbrella of cosmetic surgery. Fear of surgery is natural and psychological. Hence, the team developed a motivation map to understand psychological consumer segments and found that segmenting patients on basis of demographics was not going to help design solutions to aid patients in overcoming that fear.

An interesting angle of the competition was the virtual mode. Zoom and Google meet became a part of the group. We had long calls every day and managing classes, assignments, and term-end examinations with this project helped us learn about work management. Another great application we have used extensively is the Google calendar. As we progressed into our second year of MBA, all four of us had different electives and we used to block our calendars as we did not want to work in silos and wanted all four perspectives to come together.

Developing deeper agreements and generating new solutions

It is almost impossible to have a winning team that does not have conflicts. Our team was no different, we frequently had creative differences about the flow of our presentation and the aesthetics of our slides. Add to that the pressure of not being able to see each other and hash it out gave to face. Coordinating for ppts, finalizing template, ideas, etc. became much more tedious with the virtual mode. To overcome these challenges, we kept reminding ourselves why we started this in the first place. We extensively used every technology available to us and sat down in front of the screens until our eyes buttoned out.

However, one thing that we all agreed upon, was delivering the best solution possible without compromising on quality. Due to this, our differences actually helped in refining our ideas to the most granular level possible, ultimately leading to a finished product we were all proud of.

All in all, all four of us had different expertise to bring to the table which helped us combat challenges. This was a perfect mix for a project that was centered around changing consumer behavior and overcoming the existing stigma around surgery.

And then we were on top of the world...

J&J QUEST season 8 had 14 teams in the national finale and we really enjoyed IIM Kozhikode's presentation. Without a doubt, it was very creative and the storytelling was great. However, we as a team are proud of the sincere efforts we put in this 9-month long journey. 

The most special moment for our team has to be our campus finale. We presented our project in front of senior leaders of the company as well as our beloved collegemates. It would not be a brag to admit that it was a landslide victory for us as our presentation was unanimously declared as the best. It was when the results were finally announced, that one of the senior leaders praised our work, and called us the "flag bearers of our institute." Another moment of joy was with the initial few people whom we talked to. We simply pinged them on Instagram thinking what's the harm in trying but we never expected them to reply back. 

There was a surge of pride and gratification at this moment as we thanked the judges of J&J QUEST season 8 for their kind words, savored the adulation we received from the audience, and looked at each other and smiled knowing we have contributed to the great legacy of our institute.

Reflecting the core characteristic of our team's nature with a cool name

Inspired by our love for music, we named the team as My Chemical Romance - a team of passionate marketers who came together because of friendship and excelled because of hard-work, luck, and support from the classmates, teachers and mentors. The team comprised of,

• Ashish Maheshwari: An engineer having worked with Johnson & Johnson during the summer internship. His interests include playing basketball and karate and watching movies.
• Ankit Dubey: An engineer having work experience in Philips and a summer internship with Microsoft. His interests include playing tabla and gardening.
• Siddhant Ahuja: An engineer having work experience in TCS and a summer internship with Diageo. His interests include listening to classic rock music and watching movies.
• Kopal Jain: A fashion designer having work experience in Sanjay Enterprises and a summer internship with Mars Wrigley. Her interests include blogging, writing, and dancing.

The very personalities within our team were our team's biggest forte. Ashish and Siddhant have been close colleagues since the start of the MBA journey. Siddhant’s strengths were mainly in creative thinking as well as seeing through the clutter while keeping the main objective in mind. We have Kopal, who had already won a national competition and had a penchant for designing and aesthetics. We had Ankit who was highly detail-oriented and technically savvy. He also played the crucial role of devil's advocate in our team. And lastly, Ashish's strengths lied in giving direction to the group's general ideation process and researching the most relevant content and information. A combination of these characters is what drove this group to success and becoming the national finalists of J&J QUEST season 8.