Program design and contents
Brand Management
In 6 weeks, move from brand as campaign to brand as a strategic capability in your organization.
In this module, you explore brands as ecosystems in which customers, communities, employees, and partners collectively create meaning. You look beyond identity and campaigns to see how brand value emerges through continuous interactions across touchpoints, experiences, and societal context.
You examine brand management as a strategic capability that connects culture, innovation, and customer-centricity. You see how brands remain relevant by continuously reinventing themselves: from fixed positioning to dynamic meaning systems, from isolated campaigns to consistent customer journeys, and from “marketing-only” responsibility to organization-wide ownership.
The learning journey begins with brand meaning: brands as dynamic ecosystems in dialogue with their environment. Next, focus shifts to brand experience in journeys, digital touchpoints, and organizational culture. Finally, attention moves to internal organization, culture, leadership, and employee experience as enablers of the brand promise.
Over six weeks, you complete an online kick-off, three intensive on-campus days, and an in-depth study phase. The module concludes with a graded assignment based on your own brand or organizational case. By combining theory, frameworks, practical examples, and reflection on your context, you develop the insight and skills to manage brands as ecosystems of meaning, experience, and organizational culture.
Online kick-off
During the online kick-off, you meet the instructors and fellow participants and receive an overview of the program and final assignment. You explore your role and organizational context: how is the brand viewed in your organization, which brand promise is central, and where do you experience gaps between story and reality?
Day 1 – Brands as ecosystems of meaning
On the first day, you focus on brands as dynamic ecosystems in which meaning is continuously formed through interactions with customers, communities, employees, and society. You explore how brand meaning emerges in dialogue, the role of cultural trends and societal expectations, and how brands remain relevant by constantly reinventing themselves. This shifts your perspective from the brand as a “fixed identity” to a living system that informs strategy and positioning.
Day 2 – Brand and experience
Day 2 focuses on brand experience: how brand and customer experience converge across customer journeys, digital touchpoints, and organizational culture. You explore how each interaction—from apps to customer service, onboarding to invoicing—contributes to how the brand is experienced. You examine how to use consistency and emotion to strengthen loyalty and brand value, and identify where gaps occur between promise and experience in your organization.
Day 3 – Brand and organization
On Day 3, attention shifts to the internal organization: culture, leadership, and employee experience as the foundation of brand value. You explore how credible a brand can be when internal reality does not align with the external promise, and how brand management develops into a deeply embedded capability. You examine how brand strategy can function as a compass for customer-centricity, collaboration, and decision-making.
In-depth work after the on-campus days
After the on-campus days, you continue independently with literature, assignments, and reflections on your own brand or organizational case. You apply insights on brand ecosystems, brand experience, and internal embedding to your context, refining your analyses and recommendations step by step. You use models and canvases—e.g., for brand meaning, journeys, and organizational culture—to prepare stakeholder discussions and explore scenarios for brand development.
Assessment in your own practice
The module concludes with a graded assignment directly linked to your work environment and learning goals. You demonstrate how to apply brand management as a strategic capability: analyzing how brand, experience, and organization currently interrelate, identifying opportunities and risks in the brand ecosystem, and formulating concrete proposals to more strongly embed brand strategy in journeys, culture, and leadership.
