Not only do our students learn about branding, target marketing and the elements of successful Integrated Marketing Communications Plans (IMC), but they get a hand in the creative process themselves.
In the SSM Strategic Marketing course students first learn about the fundamentals of marketing. Topics include strategic planning, consumer decision making and target segmentation. They also looked at the role of branding, advertising and PR. Students then leveraged those learnings to do a brand analysis on a fortune 500 brand.
The second part of the course focuses on a variety of social media tools and metrics. By the end of the course students put together a comprehensive marketing strategy and IMC plan leveraging social media that included the development of a web site, Twitter and a Facebook page to promote the launch of a new restaurant with cuisine from their home country.
“Being able to first understand the concepts behind marketing by analyzing an existing brand, and then to directly apply both the general theories and the social marketing strategies to the creation of my own concept restaurant, has given me the confidence that I can succeed at publicizing any future ventures that I will be a part of,” said Melissa Wege, MBA student from the United States.
Throughout the course, the students also took articles from real world branding magazines and related it to topics in the class. By studying modern marketing strategies and pairing that with the hybrid approach throughout the course, students were able to engage in a creative process which allowed them to gain hands on experience into truly what marketing is all about. A skill set that can be leveraged for a lifetime.
