COURSE NUMBER: EWMBA 262.1

COURSE TITLE: Strategic Brand Management

UNITS OF CREDIT: 3 units

INSTRUCTOR: Lynn Upshaw

EMAIL: upshaw@haas.berkeley.edu

MEETINGS DAY(S)/TIME: Thursdays, 6 – 9:30pm

PREREQUISITE(S): EWMBA206

Course Description
There has never been a more exciting time to be managing brands or working with those who do.  This course is a hands-on, practical exploration of product, service, and enterprise-wide brand building and management.  The course will include:

§ Assessing Real Time Brand Challenges - A significant portion of class time during the semester will involve assessing the wisdom of actions taken by brands in real time.  For example, the class will discuss topical issues such as (examples only):  the battle between Apple and Samsung and other electronics brands for the hearts and minds of mobile users; the impact of “fast forward” fashion houses on traditional brands like The Gap, the pullback of Cisco from a broadening consumer focus back to their core business meaning, and how B2B companies are increasingly finding the need to redesign their brand architectures.  These discussions and many others will be an opportunity for students to explain how they would approach the increasingly critical issues brands are facing.

§ Emphasis on CEM – The brand management field is increasingly focusing on customer experiences. Thus, this course will be an assignment to complete a Customer Experience Audit of a brand of the students’ choosing. This will provide students with an opportunity to learn about the many ways that the brand’s presence is projected to customers and prospects.

§ Day in the Life: We will repeatedly discuss what a brand or marketing manager does in various industries, and how to enter that field. All guest speakers (see below) will be asked to describe the “day in the life” of their company’s marketing/brand managers, and to suggest how to enter the field in the future.

§ Career-focused Speakers: The course will include at least five marketing executives with experience particularly relevant to the needs of Haas students. These speakers will be drawn from the ranks of such industries as (examples only):  retail apparel, consumer packaged goods, B2B services, healthcare, technology, and other brand-sensitive industries. 

§ Contemporary Cases and Topical Articles – The Brand Management course does not require the reading of a textbook.  Instead, reading assignments will only include cases, articles, and online sites that bring to bear topical issues that students are likely to encounter in the workplace. 

Strategic Brand Management is an elective that will deal with exciting business issues that continuously evolve in every way but one:  the way in which brands impact the business performance of virtually every B2C and B2B business.

Course Components:

Course components will include class participation in case analysis, team exercises, a team brand audit paper, and a team brand marketing plan, which will serve as a hand-in final.   The course will include the following components:

§ a 4-person team  customer experience audit

§ 4-person case analysis team exercises

§ a 2-person team brand marketing plan

§ an individual concepts exam, and

§ Highly interactive participation in case discussions and debates

Instructor
Lynn Upshaw is a recognized authority on strategic brand marketing, the principal of the Upshaw Marketing consultancy, and a member of the marketing professional faculty at Haas for the past ten years.  Lynn has guided hundreds of MBA candidates through the intricacies of corporate and product/service brand building, and has been a recipient of the Earl F. Cheit award for teaching excellence. He is also the former Faculty Director for the Berkeley Executive Leadership Program, Berkeley-Nanyang Advanced Management Program and the Shanghai University Executive Development Program at the UC-Berkeley Center for Executive Education.

Lynn has served in the past as a Senior Consultant to Interbrand and to Bridge Strategy Group management consultants.  Prior to that, he was Executive Vice President for Client Brand Marketing at Ketchum Advertising Worldwide and EVP/COO of that organization’s largest office.

Consulting and Workshop Experience

In his consulting, Lynn Upshaw helps corporate clients build marketing plans and strategic brand platforms, assesses and manages brand equity research, counsels managers and senior executives on building comprehensive marketing programs, leads marketing training, and conducts strategic planning workshops.  His consulting and workshop clients have included (abridged list in alphabetical order): Bank of America, Bayer Corporation, Bio-Rad Laboratories, BEA Systems, BlackRock/iShares, Coverity Inc., DTS Digital Cinema, Health Net Inc., Intel Corp., Kaiser Permanente, NEC Corporation, R.H. Donnelley, SBC Communications (now AT&T), TriNet HR Corp., Wind River Systems, Visa International, WellPoint Health Networks, and 3Com Corp., among others.

Thought Leadership

Lynn has written numerous articles for such publications as Advertising Age, Brandweek, The Peking University Business Review (PRC), brandchannel.com, The Journal of Brand Management (UK), marketingprofs.com, Advertising Express (India), and The Journal of Integrated Marketing Communications.  He has also authored or co-authored three highly regarded books on marketing strategy: 

§ Building Brand Identity: A Strategy for Success in a Hostile Marketplace (John Wiley & Sons, 1995), which has been listed by Amazon.com as one of the ten most popular books on brand building;

§ The Masterbrand Mandate: The Management Strategy That Unifies Companies and Multiplies Value (also from Wiley, 2000), co-authored with Earl Taylor, which was awarded the 2001 WPP Worldwide Atticus Grand Prix Award; and

§ Truth: The New Rules for Marketing in a Skeptical World, (Amacom, 2007), described by marketing scholar Philip Kotler as a “blueprint for winning marketing performance in an age of transparency.

Additional

Lynn has also been the keynote or featured speaker at industry and client conferences throughout North America, and in Europe, Asia, South America, and India. He has created and facilitated dozens of brand building and strategic planning workshops covering a wide variety of marketing subjects.

Lynn serves, or has served, on the advisory boards of brandchannel.com, The CMO Council “Brand Protection” Program, Thunder Factory Marketing, Inc., MindPath Interactive Media, Benchmark Metrics, Inc., UC-Berkeley Extension/Marketing Group, Gliding Eagle Wine, and the Presidio School of Management.

Lynn received his BSA and MSA degrees from Northwestern University.  He lives with his wife, Susan, in Kentfield, California.