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, 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 graduated from Middlebury in 1985 (as did his wife Heather Henderson Palmer) with a double major in Economics and Geography and a concentration in Modern Art History. That blend of disciplines has been instrumental in his business success, and it is the inspiration for this course proposal. He thanks his friend and Middlebury advisor, Bob Churchill, for inspiring him to learn for the love of learning and to teach for the love of teaching. As they say in advertising, Bob Churchill was the “pivot” in the story of his Middlebury experience./