What Makes Great Brands Great? Staying on Top in a Competitive World
Julie Hennessy is a Clinical Professor of Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Professor Hennessy’s MBA and Executive teaching focuses on the development of Marketing Strategies to enhance long-term competitive advantage and profitability. She works frequently with research and technology-driven firms that desire to become more customer-centric, in both new product/services and mature product/services categories. In 2007, she received the Lawrence G. Lavengood Outstanding Professor of the Year Award, Kellogg’s top award for teaching quality and impact. Professor Hennessy has also been recognized by her academic department, winning the Marketing Department’s Core Course Teaching award. She has also received special student impact awards in 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2013.
Overview
Encore Presentation
Professor Julie Hennessy will discuss the new definition of the brand in today’s environment, and how this changes the nature of the challenges faced by brand managers and builders. Today’s brands are not logos, trademarks or jingles, but complex associations carried in the minds of customers and non-customers, competitors and commentators. Brand perceptions are complicated and often conflicted, but also important and interesting. Professor Hennessy will talk about new methods for tracking “Brand Meaning,” and learnings from tracking of some of the most prominent brands with consumers in different parts of the world.
The principles of brand tracking can be applied to the tracking of traditional brands, like Apple and Starbucks, and also to non-traditional brands, like places, and people. This is particularly interesting in times of change or trauma, when brands are in the news or under scrutiny. In this session, Professor Hennessy demonstrate the new principles of branding — with interesting learnings from the tracking of the Toyota during their problems with unintended acceleration, Volkswagen with their diesel emissions scandal, and even key US Candidates campaigning for the 2106 Presidential Election.
As someone that has no background in business or marketing, I found this 1.5 hour lecture to be a rapid lesson in what branding means to today’s companies and consumers and the basics in re-branding or re-positioning your company when you lose market share or consumer awareness. Very enlightening for me but I’m sure if I had attended a business degree university or read a book on branding there would be nothing new to be heard here. Professor Henessey was very engaging and used several relevant and poignant examples to get her message across to the audience. Worth a watch for the uneducated masses but not worth your time if this is something you have a background/education in.