A Liberal Arts Introduction to Marketing and Brand Strategy

Brands surround us: Middlebury; Google, Coke. Even you are a brand. But what is a brand? How do consumers make brand choices? And what defines the market of competing brands? In this course we will explore the fundamentals of marketing strategy and branded communications through the lens of a liberal arts education spanning psychology, biology, geography, economics, neuroscience and art history. We will discuss a range of brand cases along with a selective reading list including the gruesome story of Vermont railway worker Phineas Gage, Daniel Kahneman’s classic Thinking Fast & Slow”/, and cartoonist Scott McCloud’s guide to making comics.

/Tom Palmer is a Middlebury graduate (’85) who has held senior management positions in some of the world’s most admired companies in packaged goods and consumer research. He thanks his Middlebury advisor Bob Churchill and would like to pay it forward to today’s students./