What will I learn?
Think about some of your favorite brands-chances are, there's a high-powered brand manager working behind the scenes to ensure it resonates with you, one of its target consumers. Brand managers oversee the integrity of a brand across all marketing activities in tech, consumer packaged goods (CPG), and service industries. They must think strategically, focus on the customer experience, communicate with multiple stakeholders and cross-functional teams, and have strong analytical skills. Brand managers are creative, organized multitaskers who often serve as the liaison between the marketing group, design team, and engineers to oversee the consistency of the brand image. While every day is different, typical activities include conducting and analyzing research to identify brand opportunities, understanding market trends and the competitive landscape, creating and maintaining budgets, managing cross-platform brand communication strategy, developing the brand story, executing marketing and advertising campaigns, and overseeing the overall health of a brand. When managing a brand's products or services in a tech firm, brand and product managers may also be involved in ideation, prototyping, user experience (UX) testing, and business casing. This concentration offers the opportunity to learn these skills across coursework in marketing, consumer behavior, advertising, new product development, marketing analytics, project management, demand planning and forecasting, and product innovation. The core brand management course paired with a flexible, yet focused list of electives supports students in the aspects of brand management that are most relevant for their future career prospects.
