Brand Activism: Get in the Game or Stay on the Sidelines?
About the class
Today’s consumers increasingly demand to know where brands stand on charged topics before and after purchase. Embracing difficult conversations about culture and community is no longer an exception; it’s the norm. It’s become an expectation that those with a platform use it to express themselves. Brands have a platform. The decision is how and when to use it: get in the game or stay on the sidelines.
Rather than reacting to the news of the day, if your brand is going to join the conversation, it’s important that it has a clearly defined mission, firm values and a strong purpose to inform that view. A thoughtful, authentic response will resonate with your audience. A single misguided tweet, campaign or temporary logo update could destroy it.
During the course of this webinar, we’ll explore how and why some brands get involved in the discussion while others choose to avoid it. Participants will also:
• Learn the value of thinking beyond a logo when developing your brand’s strategy.
• Explore the benefits of strong leadership for your brand when it comes to activism.
• Dig into how future business leaders work out these difficult decisions in the classroom before they make it to the workplace.
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About the Presenter
An award-winning marketing executive with more than 25 years of experience building and managing brands, Kathleen Harrington Clark’s career spans a broad range of brands and industries, from professional sports (Houston Astros) and top tier hospitals (Texas Children’s Hospital) to Fortune 500 companies in technology (Compaq), energy (Reliant/NRG, Shell), and higher education (Baylor College of Medicine, and currently, Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business).
Since joining Rice, she has rolled out a new nickname, Rice Business, to build awareness for the top-ranked business school, and Rice Business Wisdom, the school’s ideas magazine -- an “Innovations that Inspire” award recipient from AACSB. She also teaches Brand Strategy, an elective in the MBA program. Originally from Boston, Kathleen holds a B.A. in English from Holy Cross College and an MBA from Harvard Business School.