A new Executive Education programme, designed to enable senior level professionals to maximise their organisation’s market penetration, increase revenue and enhance brand awareness has been launched by Imperial College Business School.

The Strategic Brand Transformation Imperial Virtual Programme will enable participants to proactively question and test their assumptions of how to effectively engineer sustained growth, cut wasteful spending and bring positive change to their organisations at a time when many face an uncertain and untested economic landscape.

Led by Thomas Bayne, Director of Mountainview Learning, alongside Imperial’s Dr Omar Merlo, an expert in strategic marketing and customer engagement, the programme will deliberately bring together a range of professionals who hold responsibility for innovation and growth. Over the course of three days, preceded by a five-day orientation period, business leaders, C-suite executives, strategy leaders, brand managers and customer experience managers will combine and challenge their thinking, ideas and understanding.

Dr Merlo believes the timing of this programme’s launch is vital, as organisations face an unprecedented challenge in remaining effective in a world impacted by the repercussions of both political and environmental issues, such as Brexit and the recent pandemic.

Dr Merlo says,

“There are many long-held assumptions about what drives growth for organisations, but many are outdated relics from pre-digital revolution or were not true in the first place. Consequently, by following them, they return sub-optimal results. The Strategic Brand Transformation Imperial Virtual Programme aims to tackle these problems, enabling participants to question and test their assumptions, understand and engineer the true drivers of business growth and become change agents.”

The programme will be taught virtually via the Business School’s award-winning online learning Hub. Lectures will be delivered live to participants combined with opportunities to conduct group exercises in virtual “Break out” rooms. Together, participants will engage in case study-analysis and problem-solving activities, peer discussions and undergo self-assessment to better understand their own learning and professional development needs.

Modules included on the programme include sessions in “Brain Science”, analysing decision making and buying behaviour, understanding growth frameworks and metrics and overcoming the common barriers between consumers and brands.

Upon completion of the programme, participants will be awarded a verified Digital Certificate of Participation by Imperial College Business School Executive Education.

Thomas Bayne says,

“There is enough compelling evidence to say that many brand owners are unaware of the ‘rules of thumb’ their customers are using to make buying decisions. It doesn’t matter how brilliant your product or service is, or how much you spend on marketing; what matters is how much you know about these rules of growth and how to take advantage of them.

For example, if you want your brands to fly, penetration is the number one growth metric, yet only 6 out of 100 brands across 64 different categories increased it by 0.5 percentage points or more in two consecutive years (pre Covid 19).

If you want to do it more profitably, be aware that some brands are spending more than twice as much (per $1 of net sales) on marketing as their direct competitors which has a devastating impact on brand profitability.”

The Strategic Brand Transformation Imperial Virtual Programme is the latest of a series of successful virtual programmes launched by the School’s Executive Education department, leveraging the Business School’s proven excellence in delivering digital learning to effective address core business needs.

Applications for the programme are now open, and the upcoming cohort commences on April 7th. More information can be obtained from the Imperial College Business School Executive Education website.