“What’s in it for you, if you take this course”?
Over the past few years, I’ve inquired of students how they select the courses in which they’ll be investing so much time and energy. It seemed like a process in need of improvement – so I asked Second-Year MBA’s what information would be helpful.
Their simple reply: WIIFM -- “Tell me what’s in it for me if I take this course!”
So here goes…
Throughout your business career you will come into contact with situations involving brands, brand management, brand equity.
Although brands are often the most valuable things a firm manages, they’re often not very well understood. Brands tend to be undervalued, abused and in fact poorly managed. In working with firms through the Institute for the Study of Business Markets (ISBM), we find business teams using language and terms such as “brand”, “brand equity”, “awareness”, but they don’t really understand what they mean, or how to effectively manage these things.
And yet Brands are at work all the time, and have a real – and often powerful – economic impact in virtually every marketing and selling situation.
Students who choose this course will emerge as strongly qualified “brand coaches”.
Simply put, you’ll be able to, in any business situation, better enable your team to understand, create, launch, manage, and utilize brands as part of your firms business and marketing process.
You’ll bring to your team clearer frameworks for understanding Customer-Based Brand Equity, what it is, how to grow it, and how to deploy it. You will be able to steer your team toward optimizing and growing brand equity, and teach your team to understand that brands, when correctly used, have an impact in every single business situation. And… they get stronger each time they are (correctly) used.
This course is designed to enable you, as a Smeal MBA, to have a powerful impact on any element of branding strategy inside your firm. You’ll be able to add “brand coach” to your resume, and understand powerful frameworks for explaining how brands work at the deepest level, and how to grow the impact of your brands.
Should you be considering a career as a brand manager, either Consumer or Business-to-Business markets, or are pursuing a career where brands will be in your stewardship, you’ll find this course “must addition” to your Smeal MBA program.
Note: This course was developed in 2005 – and is being revised and updated continually as new research and insights on brands in today’s markets emerge. It incorporates the fundamental elements of the “bible” of brand strategy: “Strategic Brand Management, Second Edition,” by Kevin Lane Keller. It also incorporates direct insights from leading researchers in the field who are connected with the Institute for the Study of Business Markets, as well as your instructor’s experience with over two decades as a working brand manager – managing both consumer and B-to-B brands.
The course will involve two team presentations ( A Case and a “BrandScape”, and four single-page “case insight” assignments.
You can be ensured that everything taught in class has worked in practice, that you’ll have some fun (and do some significant work as well!)
For more information on the course kindly connect with:
Dr. Ralph Oliva at (814) 863-2782, or e-mail me at roliva@psu.edu.
This site is for educational purposes and for the advancement of Business to Business Practices. © Ralph Oliva, 2003