Course Preview: Strategies That Build Winning Brands at Northwestern Kellogg

31 October 2022

[Video Transcript] Strategies That Build Winning Brands at Northwestern Kellogg

Program Introduction

Welcome to our program! We're excited to lead you through a really interesting course about the power of brands in today's world, and how great marketers use their brands to build profitable businesses. This program has six modules, which we will teach over a busy six weeks. We're going to cover a lot of material, but I think you'll find it both fascinating and useful.

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I'm Professor Tim Calkins, Clinical Professor of Marketing at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, and I'll be teaching this course with my colleague, Professor Julie Hennessy. Between the two of us, we have a wealth of experience in this area, and we've got a lot of examples and frameworks to share with you.

In the first week, we'll focus on what exactly we mean by brands, and why brands are important, how they add value, what makes for a good one. Branding is not just about logos and advertising. It's a lot more than that. In week two, we turn to the foundations of branding. We'll talk about market segmentation, picking targets, and positioning to win.

These are core concepts in the world of marketing, and Julie will focus on what's new and what's changing, and how we work with these tools, and how we apply these concepts. She'll also touch on the very important concept of Net Promoter Scores and how they are used, and also, she'll talk about brand purpose as a way to differentiate a brand in the market.

In week three, we shift our focus to bringing our brand to life, which is all about understanding our customers and figuring out the brand experience, and how we make sure that the experience they're getting is the experience we want them to have. Julie will take the lead again, in this module, she'll talk about customer journeys, she'll talk about personas, she'll also talk about different styles of consumer purchase behavior, and how we understand those.

Also, in this module, we'll bring in two of our colleagues, Kevin McTigue and Gina Fong, to talk about their specialties and their insights. In week four, I'll take the lead again. Week four is all about brand portfolio strategy. This gets into the very interesting challenge of managing brands, not just one brand, but managing multiple brands.

How do we decide when we need a new brand? How do we decide how far we can stretch a brand? These are important and yet really difficult questions. We'll talk in week four about how we think about managing the portfolio. In weeks five and six, Julie and I will be teaching together. In week five, we talk about how to measure brand health, both some of the classic methods as well as some newer techniques.

We'll also give you guidance on tools to create a powerful marketing plan. Marketing plans are so important, and writing a good one is really critical, if you want to have an impact on a business, we'll talk to you about how to do that, and we'll give you some frameworks that you can work with. In week six, we talk about two challenges.

We're going to talk about growth and how we think about growth, and Julie will spend time going through strategies for brand growth, and opportunities for finding ways to expand. She'll also talk about why growth is so essential. I'll take the other side of it, and I'll talk about defending the brand, and how we think about responding to competitive attacks.

I'll spend some time on why defense is so important, how to figure out when you need to defend and when you don't, and then what can you actually do when it comes time to fight back against a competitive attack. There is a lot of material to cover over six weeks. However, we think it will give you a terrific foundation for successful brand creation, brand understanding, and healthy brand growth. The two of us are really looking forward to it, and I hope, you are too.

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