Professor Nader Tavassoli of London Business School contrasts traditional approaches to branding - where brands are a visual identity and a promise to customers - to brands as a customer experience delivered by the entire organisation. The course offers a brand workout for your own brands, as well as guest videos from leading branding professionals.
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The aim of the course is to change the conception of brands as being an organisation's visual identity (e.g., logo) and image (customers' brand associations) to an experience along "moments-that-matter" along the customer journey and, therefore, delivered by people across the entire organisation. Brands are thus not only an external promise to customers, but a means of executing business strategy via internal brand-led behaviour and culture change.
You will learn and practice the following skills:
- How to build brands from a broad organisational perspective
- How to lead brand-led culture change with human resource practices at the core (i.e., brand as a lever and not just an outcome)
- How to build brands in multi-brand companies, across cultures and geographies
- How to measure brand health in new ways, that is, internally in addition to externally
- How to value and capture returns to brands across the organisation - introducing the new concept of employee-based brand equity - and how this is different from the valuation of brands as intangible assets.
This course allows you to develop the following aspects of yourself:
- Head. Gain a deeper understanding of the evolving practice of brand management, one that goes further than practiced in most organisations today
- Heart. Be motivated to engage in delivering your own brands – regardless of where you are in your organisation – thereby creating superior value for customers and for your organisation
- Hands. Translate learnings into action. As Confucius is supposed to have said: “I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.”
Syllabus
WEEK 1
Brand Purpose & Experience
Welcome to Module 1! In this module, we'll cover the following topics: Traditional notions of branding; Changing market conditions for brands; A new approach to branding. As well as the lecture videos, you will also be learning through interviews with brand practitioners such as Bethany Koby, Director of Technology Will Save us and David Kershaw, CEO of M&C Saatchi. There are optional readings to supplement your understanding, a quiz with 7 questions to test your learning and a peer review assignment based on a task connected to this module.
WEEK 2
Brand Design & Delivery
Welcome to Module 2! In this module, we'll cover the following topics:Brand experiences as the basis for differentiation; How to design brand experiences, as different from products and services; Pricing as a differentiating brand experience. As well as the lecture videos, you will also be learning through interviews with brand practitioner Hub van Bockel, an independent consultant and author and with Professor Bernd H. Schmitt of Columbia Business School. There are optional readings to supplement your understanding, a quiz with 6 questions to test your learning and a peer review assignment based on a task connected to this module.
WEEK 3
Brand Leadership and Alignment
Welcome to Module 3! In this module, we'll cover the following topics: Aligning the strategies for business, brand and behaviour; Strategic brand portfolio alignment; Delivering global brand alignment. As well as the lecture videos, you will also be learning through interviews with practitioners, Ije Nwokorie, CEO of Wolff Olins, Helen Casey and Henk Viljoen, both of Old Mutual and Keith Weed, CMO of Unilever. There are optional readings to supplement your understanding, a quiz with 7 questions to test your learning and a peer review assignment based on a task connected to this module.
WEEK 4
Brand Practices & Engagement
Welcome to Module 4! In this module, we'll cover the following topics: How to design human resource brand best-practices; A model for engaging employees with the brand; The ABCs of behavioural change. As well as the lecture videos, you will also be learning through interviews with practitioners Helen Edwards of Passionbrand, Richard Hytner of Saatchi & Saatchi, Tanya Truman and Nik Allebon of Lush. There are optional readings to supplement your understanding, a quiz with 5 questions to test your learning and a peer review assignment based on a task connected to this module.
WEEK 5
Brand Metrics & Returns
Welcome to Module 5! In this module, we'll cover the following topics: How brands create value; Why brand valuation is not the same as the value brands create; How to design a strategic and cross-functional brand dashboard. As well as the lecture videos, you will also be learning through interviews with David Haigh, CEO of Brand Finance. There are optional readings to supplement your understanding, a quiz with 6 questions to test your learning and a peer review assignment which asks you to reflect on your learning throughout the course.
