By Nathaniel Luce
Vanderbilt’s Accelerator®—Summer Business Institute is a four-week certificate program for college students and recent graduates that combines classroom learning with real consulting projects. Last week, students created go-to-market strategies for MaxxContent, a digital content and ebook distributor looking to enter the college textbook space.
The Client: MaxxContent was launched in 2015, with the mission of providing easy access to a full line of digital content with all the tools to support it. The company offers over 100,000 e-book and textbook titles from top tier publishers as well as Learning Management Software. Up to this point, MaxxContent’s primary source of revenue has come from delivering educational titles and solutions to U.S. prisons and jails. The company also resells its own inmate-specific content, which educates and provides tools that inmates need to successfully re-integrate to society, lowering their chances of recidivism.
The Project: MaxxContent would like to leverage its large library of Higher Education Content to position itself to enter the college book market. With large firms like Amazon, Chegg, eCampus, and VitalSource already competing in the space, MaxxContent tasked Accelerator teams with finding sources of differentiation and a solution to improve the book-buying experience for college students, who find the current process time-consuming and expensive.
The Presentations: Teams offered digital-based solutions to improve textbook purchasing, facilitate interactive learning, and offer supplemental resources. They suggested a variety of rental models (with terms as long as a semester and short as 24 hours) and digital book loans to combat the high price of buying textbooks that often aren’t opened until exam periods. In a similar vein, a few teams recommended selling content by chapter, as many courses don’t require reading a full textbook.
Virtual classrooms, chat applications, note-sharing tools, and message boards were designed to help connect users with questions on the material. Many teams suggested incorporating tablets into their content offering, creating a one-stop shop for textbooks, interactive applications, and supplemental resources like flashcards, videos, and study guides.
Gamification was a popular recommendation: Students can earn points through referrals, user-generated content, and book purchases/rentals for redemption at coffee shops, eateries, and MaxxContent, building engagement.
Marketing strategies were broad in scope. Social media advertising campaigns on Instagram and Facebook were prevalent across several teams, while others suggested using student/brand ambassadors to spread the word at orientation. A few teams recommended creating mutually beneficial partnerships with schools; one even suggested partnering with Bed Bath & Beyond, a popular destination for incoming students and their parents in the weeks and days leading up to the start of school.
The Feedback: The MaxxContent team had high praise for each team’s creativity and insight into the student book-buying experience. “Kudos to all of you for your help and inspiration,” said Peter Marcum, President of MaxxContent. “You truly thought outside of the box and packaged great ideas together.”
“The more gray hair we get, the farther we get away from what the next generation wants,” added Dr. Turner Nashe, Jr., “so thank you for your help.”
“This is something that nobody is tackling right now,” added David Brown, Business Development Director. “People are scrambling right now, and the ideas that have been presented are excellent. You guys have been here a week and have come up with better ideas than we’ve come up with in eight months.”
Team Revolve celebrates their 1st place finish with MaxxContent
Want to learn more about Accelerator®—Summer Business Institute? Visit the program page or request more information.
