“Screw Your Brand:” Marketing with Higher Purpose for the Conscious Human

Lead Practitioner: Eugene Kim, Bates ’08

Course Overview: Brands and products are a dime a dozen. In today’s world of overabundance, overstimulation, and endless access to information, the brands and companies with staying power are doing more than just marketing. In this course, students learn what it means to be a purpose-driven marketer and how brands and companies build relationships with their audience through community-building and analog connection. We discuss how companies with higher purpose market differently than product-driven companies, and how that can activate at the local level. Students learn the fundamentals of building a brand and marketing campaign, but this course challenges them to think outside the box of traditional marketing strategies to leverage brand building and marketing to create and leave lasting change in the community around them.

Meeting Times: T/Th/Fr 9-12 & 1-2

Learning Goals:

Build brands and brand initiatives that are rooted in a core purpose, mission, and values that are designed to help the greater good

Work in a goal-driven team setting in order to launch successful brand campaigns.

Think critically about business problems and how to leverage purpose-driven marketing and branding to better connect with conscious consumers on a deeper level

Learn the fundamentals of marketing – identify a target consumer, build customer personas, marketing channel strategy and planning, execute a marketing plan

Pitch a cohesive marketing strategy

 

Instructor Bio: Eugene is a strategy and account management executive with over a decade of experience in every medium, working across almost every industry vertical with multiple global and Fortune 500 brands. Eugene has worked at global advertising agencies, local startups, and B Corporations, but he is currently the founder of an independent business and marketing consultancy, helping build and expand brands, companies, and nonprofits who exhibit higher-purposes that are geared towards social good.