COURSE NUMBER: MBA 262.1
This is a first-year gateway course and is not
available for second-year bidding.
Second-years must wait until the add/drop process begins in January to
add this class.
COURSE TITLE: Strategic Brand Management
UNITS OF CREDIT: 3 units
INSTRUCTOR: Lynn Upshaw
EMAIL: upshaw@haas.berkeley.edu
MEETINGS DAY(S)/TIME: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 11:00am –12:30pm
PREREQUISITE(S): MBA206
CLASS FORMAT: Interactive discussions, cases,
and guest speakers
REQUIRED READINGS: Cases and topical articles. There will be no text required for this
course.
ABSTRACT OF COURSE’S CONTENT AND OBJECTIVES:
Strategic Brand Management is the designated Marketing Gateway course, meaning that Haas faculty believe it is an optimum course for First Years to continue their marketing work after Core, but is also available for Second Years to top off their marketing curriculum before leaving Haas. In fact, 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.