Career Focus:

This course is designed for students who plan to create, unlock, or invest in value created through brands in the consumer and retail space. It is appropriate for:

• Marketing professionals charged with creating, nurturing, and managing brand value;
• Entrepreneurs looking to create their own brands in the consumer/retail space;
• Consumer/retail general managers and consultants engaged in stewarding brand strategy; and
• Venture capital or private equity investors seeking to identify brand asset potential.

Educational Objectives:

In the consumer/retail space, brands are often companies’ most valuable assets and sources of their sustainable competitive advantage. But, managing brands to achieve their full value potential has never been more difficult. Consumers are increasingly diverse, skeptical of marketing, and empowered by digital technologies that easily connect them to others who share their tastes. They co-create the meaning of the brands that shape their lives and play a participatory role in brand management that can make them allies or adversaries. The contemporary brandscape is crowded with new competitors vying to stake claims to rich, meaning-laden value propositions that reflect and leverage the zeitgeist. Iconic brands are toppled everyday by young upstarts telling new types of stories in authentic ways. Firms are aggressively buying consumers’ brand loyalty at the same time they are firing their customers. Customer relationship management (CRM) investments have failed to deliver on their promise and are often hurting rather than helping the development of strong consumer-brand relationships. Brand managers are losing control as consumers hijack brand meaning and engage in open-source branding. And, the next brand crisis is just around the corner in a 24/7 news cycle driven by social media.

This course takes a contemporary view of branding as a collective and collaborative meaning-making process among firms, consumers, and other cultural producers, and of brands as meaning-based, relational assets that must be carefully designed, curated, and negotiated to unlock their considerable value. As branding becomes more participatory, experiential, social, and experimental, the role of the brand manager requires cultural and relational prowess. Today’s managers must be able to author resonant stories that spark conversations that capture attention, generate engagement, and provide culturally-relevant meaning to consumers. Learnings will focus on how brands and the stories that define them can be crafted, communicated, and managed in ways that nurture relationships that create value for both consumers and firms.

Course Content and Organization:

The course is organized into four modules:

Module 1: The Value of Brands

Key questions will include:

• What, exactly, is a brand? What “jobs” do brands do for consumers?
• How do brands create value for consumers and for firms?
• How can brand be used as a competitive advantage?
• What is competitive brand positioning and how can firms big and small use it to their advantage?
• How relevant are brands in today’s marketplace and what are the forces that are making brands more or less relevant to consumers?
• Is AI-based automation diluting brand value?

Module 2: Brand Storytelling

Key questions will include:

• What is consumer-based brand equity (CBBE) and how is it built and maintained? How may it be measured?
• How can brand managers use consumer research to inform their brand strategy?
• How is brand meaning created and who are the multiple authors that narrate it? How can brand managers best manage brand meaning co-creation alongside consumers?
• What makes a good brand story?
• How can managers use cultural branding techniques to craft culturally resonant brand narratives?

Module 3: Brand Management

Key questions will include:

• How should brands be best managed over time for continued growth?
• How flexible are brands and how can this flexibility be leveraged for growth?
• What is the optimal way to manage investments behind brands for the short- and long-term?
• What are the opportunities and challenges associated with geographic, target market, product line, and brand extensions?
• How can brand portfolio strategy and brand architecture increase the value of a firm’s brands?
• What's the best way for brands to go global? How are global brands best managed?
• Under which conditions should a firm pursue a global branding strategy versus a portfolio of local brands?
• How can AI be leveraged to bring out the ‘art’ and ‘science’ in brand management?

Module 4: The Social Value of Brands

Key questions will include:

• What roles do brands play as relational partners? How do different relational roles contribute to differential costs and benefits to firms?
• How does a consumer-brand relationship form and evolve over time? Why do some relationships decline and dissolve while others intensify and endure?
• What is brand loyalty and how does it manifest itself? How is it best nurtured and negotiated?
• What is customer relationship management (CRM) and how do brands and their consumers enact their relationships?
• Who is responsible for an unprofitable relationship? Should firms “fire” their customers? Under which conditions?
• Why do consumers join brand communities? What types of value do they provide?
• How can brand communities be crowdsourced to help build brands?
• How are brand communities valuable to and dangerous for brands? How are they best managed?
• What is the role of influencer marketing in building brands?
• What happens when consumers hijack brand meaning? How can brand managers work with online and offline influencers and brand communities to create rather than destroy value?
• How do brand experiences deliver brand myths and bring customers closer to each other and to the brand?
• How can AI influence customer-brand relationships?

Grading:

Grades will be earned through the following activities:

• 50% Class Participation and in-class Exercises
• 50% Final Exam

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