Marketing and Brand Strategy

Building on the Business Fundamentals core course, this afternoon elective provides students with a practical introduction to the strategic foundations of marketing and brand building. It is designed as a rigorous but accessible afternoon elective for motivated high school students who want to understand how companies identify target customers, position products, build strong brands, and design campaigns that create attention, engagement, and loyalty in a digital-first marketplace.

The course begins with the core principles of marketing, including customer insight, segmentation, targeting, positioning, and the role of branding in competitive markets. Students will explore how creativity, psychology, and data interact to shape consumer behaviour and brand perception. Building on these foundations, the course examines modern marketing tools such as social media platforms, influencer partnerships, content strategy, and campaign measurement. Through case studies of global brands and emerging digital campaigns, students will learn how companies design marketing strategies that resonate with consumers and drive engagement. The course culminates in a collaborative capstone project in which students develop and present a mini brand campaign.

Learning Outcomes 

By the end of this course, students should be able to:

• Explain the role of marketing in business strategy and describe how brands create value by understanding and serving customer needs
• Analyze how creativity, psychology, and consumer insight influence purchasing behaviour and brand perception
• Apply basic marketing frameworks such as segmentation, targeting, and positioning to define audiences and craft brand messaging
• Evaluate how brands use storytelling, digital platforms, and influencer partnerships to build engagement and long-term loyalty
• Interpret basic campaign metrics and audience insights to assess marketing effectiveness
• Collaborate in teams to develop and present a concise marketing campaign supported by strategic reasoning and creative execution

Topics Covered

• Introduction to marketing: customer value, market positioning, and why brands matter
• Consumer behaviour: what drives attention, engagement, and loyalty
• Segmentation, targeting, and positioning
• Brand strategy: differentiation, brand personality, and storytelling
• Integrated Marketing Communication: how brand messaging is created and works together to build synergistically, both the media and the message to support brand strategy
• Digital marketing and social media strategy
• Influencer marketing and creator partnerships
• Measuring marketing effectiveness using engagement and audience insights
• Designing marketing strategies for new products and emerging brands
• Developing and presenting a mini brand campaign

Capstone Project

The capstone project will be a team-based mini brand campaign pitch. Working in small groups, students will select a product, brand, or new concept and design a short marketing campaign intended to reach a clearly defined target audience.

Hands-on Activities

• Brand recognition and positioning exercise
• Audience insight workshop
• Social media campaign breakdown
• Content creation workshop
• Campaign metrics exercise

Guest Speakers

Guest speakers will reinforce the applied focus of the course and provide students with direct exposure to real-world career paths in marketing, branding, and digital strategy. Subject to availability, the speaker series accompanying the curriculum will feature professionals from different parts of the marketing ecosystem. Students will attend a panel discussion, engage directly with speakers, and participate in a mini networking session afterward.

*Information is subject to change as instructors finalize course syllabi