COURSE NUMBER: MBA 262.1
COURSE TITLE: Strategic Brand Management
UNITS OF CREDIT: 3 units
INSTRUCTOR: Lynn Upshaw
EMAIL: upshaw@haas.berkeley.edu
MEETINGS DAY(S)/TIME: Monday and Wednesday 11:00AM – 12:30PM
PREREQUISITE(S): MBA206
Course
Description
There has never been a
more exciting time to be managing brands or working with those who do. At its core, this course will continue to be
a hands-on, practical exploration of product, service, and enterprise-wide
brand building and management. However, in response to the changing needs
of contemporary brand marketing and based on suggestions from previous
students, the course has been enhanced and restaged to include the following
components:
§ 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 business building prospects of the “new GM”
portfolio of brands; the impact of “fast forward” fashion houses on
traditional brands like The Gap, the transformation and broadening of Cisco to
include more of a consumer brand, and Apple’s battle to become the preeminent
electronics brand. These discussions
will include special sessions called, “If I ran the brand”, an opportunity for
students to explain how they would approach the thorny issues brands are facing.
§ Greater Emphasis on CEM – The brand management field is rapidly becoming an
industry that focuses on customer experiences. A new addition to 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.
§ Participation via blogging: A class blog will be established for students
to share their views on topical branding issues, which counts toward the
student’s participation grade.
§ 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 – For the first time, the Brand Management course
will 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.
In summary, 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.
Class Policies and Requirements:
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
§ a 4-person team
exercise
§ a 2-person team brand
marketing plan
§ Individual
preparation and participation in discussions and case analyses
Instructor
Lynn Upshaw is a recognized authority on strategic brand marketing, the
principal of the Upshaw Marketing consultancy, and a member of the professional
marketing faculty at the Haas School of Business, University of California,
Berkeley. He 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 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 corporate consulting and workshop clients have included (abridged
list): BEA Systems, Coverity, Inc., Wind River Systems, TriNet HR Corp., 3Com
Corp., DTS Digital Cinema, Visa International, SBC Communications (now
AT&T), Intel Corp., Bio-Rad Laboratories, WellPoint Health Networks, Health
Net, Inc., China Telecom, R.H. Donnelley, Bayer Corporation, NEC Corporation,
and esurance.com, among many 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.
Workshops and Teaching
Lynn has 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.
In his teaching, Lynn has guided
hundreds of MBA candidates at the Haas School of Business through the
intricacies of corporate and product/service brand building, and he is a
recipient of the Earl F. Cheit award for teaching excellence. He is also the former Faculty and Program
Director for the Berkeley Executive Leadership Program at the Berkeley Center
for Executive Education.
Additional Credentials
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, 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.
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