In this episode of the BRITE Ideas podcast, the Brand Center’s faculty director, Prof. Bernd Schmitt, interviews David Aaker (Vice-Chair of Prophet) one of the seminal thinkers on brand management within both academia and corporate strategy. The dialog is centered around an updated 2nd edition of David’s book Aaker on Branding: The Playbook to Build Strong Brands which was released this month.

David discusses the historical shift of strategy from a focus purely on market share and price promotions in the 20th century to an understanding of the value of brand that began in the 1990s. He highlights the power of brand resonance in consumer’s minds, how it offers differentiation from competitors, and how he helped push to incorporate loyalty as a part of management strategy rather than thinking of it as merely an outcome.

In today’s setting, David notes the deeper challenges of communicating brand stories and gaining public trust alongside the need to both manage the impacts of disruptive innovation and the necessity to harness it to drive growth. Amid rapid change it’s important to refresh oneself on the fundamentals. Enjoy!

On Episode 21 of BRITE Ideas, JP and Matt interview Joel Beckerman, Founder and Chief Creative Officer of Made Music Studio. As Joel notes early in the episode, humans are hard wired to connect to music and it “imparts emotion to all [our] other senses.” Joel shares his insights on how he works with his clients to create sonic elements that align with the brand and have the power to craft a distinctive connection – “sonic semiotics” -- so there is recognition of the brand, the story behind it, and it's vision. This is all fleshed out by Joel taking us through examples of successful branded sounds. In addition, Joel touches on how music and sound can impact human behavior and shares some of his hopes and concerns of AI and its capacity to create content. Finally, he details his BRITE idea of “sonic humanism” in which the emotional power of sound, music, and silence, can be used in ways to aid society. Enjoy!

On Episode 20 of BRITE Ideas, JP and Matt interview Kabir Ahuja '03SEAS '08BUS (Senior Partner, McKinsey and Co.) and Eric Sherman '20SPS (Knowledge Expert, McKinsey and Co.). The conversation delved into a wide range of areas from the role and relationship of the CMO within the C-Suite, leading brand and growth strategies, how AI is affecting organizations and society, marketing's unique potential to harness genAI, and the talent management issues that come with a rapidly changing world landscape. Enjoy!

On Episode 19 of the BRITE Ideas podcast, Matt speaks with Eric Siegel '93SEAS '95GSAS '95SEAS '98GSAS '98SEAS (ah, the multiple degrees that accumulate during a custom-designed PhD effort), former faculty at Columbia University, and author of Predictive Analytics and, his latest, The AI Playbook.

At the core of the conversation is Eric's reminder that traditional AI/ML efforts -- "predicting who will click, buy, lie or die," etc. -- are highly effective and still underutilized AI tools within organizations. The hype of generative AI is certainly warranted, but Eric is eager to help the data scientists and managers of organizations learn together a business framework and paradigm so more established predictive AI models move beyond testing and into production. Common misunderstandings about the true predictive accuracy of AI are discussed as well as the vital role of ethical reviews of model use. In particular, Eric highlights how important it is to avoid using models that create higher false positive rates and thus deny or penalize groups without just cause.

On Episode 18 of BRITE Ideas, JP and Matt speak with Andrew Winston '99 (author, "Net Positive" and "Green to Gold") about the challenges and opportunities for business and society to tackle climate change. Challenged by Andrew to reverse the "can business really be sustainable and profitable" conundrum, the episode dives right into the need to broaden what is valued by business and society and to price environmental effects into business decision-making. Details of the shared responsibilities for businesses, governments, and individuals are also outlined during the robust discussion.

On episode 17 of the BRITE Ideas podcast, JP and Matt speak with Allen Adamson (Co-founder of Metaforce; author of Seeing the How) and Amy Fuller (board director and former Chief Marketing and Communications Officer of Accenture) about how to better define personal branding to advance you career. The pair discuss the innate tensions around the need to be findable in a platform age, how to balance consistency and complexity, and how to build a reputation alongside a personal story.

In this episode of the BRITE Ideas podcast, JP and Matt speak with Kaaren Hanson (Chief Design Officer, Consumer and Community Banking, JPMorgan Chase) who shares her insights and actions of a systems-thinking approach to design truly great customer experiences. Hanson notes that organizational silos are still a major hurdle to brands developing truly great customer experiences, and she shares some structural and motivational steps she has taken at Chase to better connect the data and creative executions on experience in the hopes these can inspire other organizations.

On Episode 15 of the BRITE Ideas podcast, Matt and JP spoke with Leland Maschmeyer and Brian Collins, co-founders (and CEO and CCO respectively) of COLLINS. The pair dive deeply into the necessity of uniting business models, consumer behaviors and attitudes, and strategic foresight with design to effectively communicate the now and future vision of any brand. In particular, they highlight the value of building a great product from which all the value-based and brand identity considerations can then follow. They also highlight the need for global businesses to focus on regenerative practices to balance the inevitable tensions between growth and environmental and social sustainability.