COURSE NUMBER: EWMBA 262-11

COURSE TITLE: Strategic Brand Management
 
UNITS OF CREDIT: 3 Units
 
INSTRUCTOR: Lynn Upshaw

EMAIL: upshaw@haas.berkeley.edu 
 
PREREQUISITE(S): EWMBA206 Marketing

REQUIRED READING:  No textbook; reading assignments will include cases, articles, and online sites.

CAREER FIELD: See below.

ABSTRACT OF COURSE'S CONTENT AND OBJECTIVES:

Strategically based, tactically compelling brands are the most powerful asset in most companies' portfolios.  Not surprisingly, smart brand marketing is the underpinning of an extraordinary number of business successes throughout the world. 

Our primary goal for this course is to arm students with an array of powerful tools and the knowledge to use them on a wide range of brand marketing and general business challenges, starting immediately in their current or next professional position.  More specifically, the course will provide students with the ability to critically analyze brands, plan brand marketing programs, and learn the skills of managing brands, all within the larger framework of company-wide strategic planning. 

Specifically, the course will include:

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:

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
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 13 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, the Hong Kong City University Global Leadership Program, the Berkeley-Nanyang Advanced Management Program and the Shanghai University Executive Development Program at the UC-Berkeley Center for Executive Education.  He was also one of the charter members of the Berkeley-Haas Professional Faculty Committee on Teaching (P-Fact).

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 USA 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 (alpha/abridged):  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, PayPal/eBay, Plantronics, R.H. Donnelley, SBC Communications (now AT&T), Sony Corp., SunPower Corp., 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 AgeBrandweek, The Peking University Business Review (PRC), brandchannel.comThe 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 and a new marketing case: 

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.comThe 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.