Brand Management: Running and Growing Brands Over Time

This course teaches you how to run a brand that already exists and keep it growing year after year. It's written for new and aspiring brand managers, marketers who look after one or more brands, founders whose business now has several products, and anyone who wants to understand how companies keep their brands healthy over time. You don't need to have managed a brand before.

You'll start with what a brand manager does and how the job connects to finance, sales, supply and the rest of the company. Then you'll learn brand equity through Keller's brand pyramid and Aaker's model, explained in plain words, and measure brand health with awareness, consideration, preference, Net Promoter Score and brand tracking, using worked examples.

Later modules cover brand architecture and portfolio management, brand extensions and how far a brand can stretch, repositioning and refreshing, packaging changes and managing a brand across countries and cultures. You'll work with brand guidelines and governance, brief and judge agency work, write an annual brand plan and budget, and look at pricing, retail and distribution as part of the brand. The final modules cover counterfeits, trademarks and misuse, co-branding and licensing, reputation and responsibility, reviving ageing brands and the basics of brand valuation. The course ends with a capstone annual brand plan and a toolkit of templates and checklists.

A running case follows Thaba Foods, a Johannesburg food and drinks company with a portfolio of four brands.