OL Building and Managing Brands

A company's brand will often be amongst the most valuable of their assets. Even start-up companies and individuals need to be conscious of what their brand stands for. The 'Brand Manager' in a large company is responsible for the maintaining and growing the value of the company's brand. This course prepares student for this role, for 'products' that may be a good or a service, a tangible or an intangible. Industry standard brand metrics are used as an introduction to practical measurement and management and the course advances to the theory of brand equity, points of parity and points of difference. Brand co-creation is explored, with particular reference to social media marketing such as Facebook, Twitter and Blogs. The leveraging of brand equity into brand extensions (as with Virgin) is evaluated as a form of growth strategy.