IB 370 - Brand Management

As a powerful tool for creating lasting value for a company and its customers, the brand is one of a firm’s most important assets. Brand plays a central role not only in defining a company’s market positioning but also in communicating its identity and differentiating it from competitors. To manage and leverage a brand’s force, companies thus must pursue, develop, and implement branding strategies that allow them to successfully highlight and mobilize their values, core competences, and marketing capabilities.  

The city of Milan offers a useful entry point for studying branding, as it is home not only to some of the most well-known Italian brands (e.g. Prada, Armani, UniCredit Bank, Campari, Luxottica) but also to the many multinational corporations that have chosen the city as their Italian or European headquarters (e.g. General Electric, Samsung, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Starbucks, Ikea). Indeed, according to Il Sole 24 Ore, Italy’s principal financial newspaper, the number of foreign companies who chose to open an office in Milan grew by 7.5% from 2009 to 2016. This reflects how, thanks to its role in hosting the 2015 Expo (World Exposition), Milan has recently rebranded itself as a place, leveraging its greater international visibility to position itself as one of the most vibrant, fast-growing, and trend-setting cities in Europe.  

This course will provide an overview of brand management in an Italian context by exploring the key concepts and definitions of branding and by introducing students to branding strategies that foster growth and competitive advantage, even in fast-changing industries and markets. Real world cases and local field studies, as well as investigation of the lessons learned by the city of Milan itself, will allow us to outline best practices, while hands-on assignments and workshops will help us put this knowledge into practice.