More reasons to enroll early: Save $250 on tuition + 50% off your deposit. Enroll by Oct 31.
Build and pitch a team brand campaign, from customer insight to content and metrics, in this two-week marketing course for high school students at UBC Sauder School of Business.
Rated 4.6 out of 5 for classroom experience by students surveyed across the broader program in 2026.
Course Description
A campaign can look great and still miss the people it needs to reach. Make every choice count, from the audience to the final pitch.
In this course you will investigate why people notice, trust, and remember some brands over others. Explore customer insight, identity, culture, and consumer psychology. Analyze familiar brands to see how segmentation, targeting, and positioning shape their stories and build loyalty.
Take that thinking into social media, influencer partnerships, content strategy, and other digital channels. Compare campaigns and messages, then study basic engagement and audience measures to ask whether a strategy is reaching the intended people. Strong creative work needs more than a catchy idea: it needs a clear audience and purpose.
With a small team, choose a product, brand, or new concept and build a mini campaign. Define your target audience and message, choose channels, create sample content or activation ideas, and identify ways to measure success. Bring the decisions together in a final pitch explaining how your campaign could capture attention and support a brand's goals.
This two-week course is part of UBC Sauder Business Academy. The course is available to residential and commuter students. Beyond class, students connect focused academic work with campus life, growing independence, and clearer direction about what students may want to study or pursue next. The program is developed and academically led by UBC Sauder School of Business.
What You Will Do
• Analyze familiar brands for audience, positioning, and personality
• Connect consumer psychology, identity, and culture to buying decisions
• Define a target segment, brand position, and key message
• Compare social media, influencer, and content strategies
• Create sample content and choose audience and engagement metrics
• Build and pitch a team mini campaign grounded in customer insight
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the course, students will be able to:
• Explain how consumer insight and positioning shape brand strategy
• Choose messages, channels, and metrics for a defined target audience
• Develop and defend a team campaign that connects creative choices with business goals
You’ll leave with a team-developed brand campaign, a final pitch, and a certificate of completion.
Why Marketing Strategy Skills Matter
Marketing strategy teaches students to connect creative choices to a specific audience and objective. A memorable message is not enough by itself; students must ask whom it serves, what insight supports it, how the brand is positioned, and which channel fits the behavior they want to influence.
Campaign metrics add accountability. Engagement and audience data help students evaluate whether an idea reached the intended people and what should change next. Team campaign work also develops collaboration because strategy, writing, visuals, and presentation must support one coherent message. These habits strengthen communication, research, audience awareness, and evidence-based creativity across school projects and future business or media study.
Who Should Attend?
For students who have completed 9th, 10th, 11th, or 12th grade.
If you notice why one brand speaks to you while another doesn't, enjoy creating content, or want to understand the strategy behind social media, this course lets you put those interests to work. You'll study campaigns, consider how identity and culture influence audiences, and help develop a brand idea from insight to pitch.
You don't need an existing brand concept or specialized marketing software. Come ready to create with a team, examine audience data, and explain the thinking behind your decisions.
Recommended by More Than 4 out of 5 Students
Based on students surveyed in Summer Discovery’s 2026 UBC Sauder program.
Your Summer at UBC Sauder School of Business
The UBC Sauder Business Academy gives high school students a two-week introduction to university-level business at the UBC Sauder School of Business in Vancouver. Led by UBC Sauder School of Business faculty and industry experts, the program combines lectures, simulations, case studies, and faculty-led workshops with team projects that address real business challenges. Students explore leadership, marketing, finance, strategy, and entrepreneurship, then present their ideas to faculty and industry guests in a final showcase.
Outside class, optional on-campus housing, student socials, and networking events bring together students from Canada and around the world. The Point Grey setting, with forest, ocean, and mountain views, gives the summer a distinctly West Coast character as students build business fluency, confidence, independence, global connections, and clearer direction about university study and future careers.
The program is developed and academically led by UBC Sauder.
Summer Discovery Certificate of Completion
After successfully finishing this course, you will be awarded a certification completion for your accomplishment.
*This is a preview, not what you will receive