Brand Academy Hamburg: a global boot camp for creative minds

By Li You | China Daily | Updated: 2017-10-26 07:03

For modern economy all over the world, branding becomes more and more important. Not only do people buy products that they know are of excellent quality.

They also favor those branded products that they can easily recognize and relate to on an emotional level.

Brand design and management, one may say, is the science and art of fostering the image and emotional value that a product needs to successfully reach the minds and shopping baskets of the consumers.

Currently, the Brand Academy in Hamburg is the only university internationally that focuses on education and research on branding as its specialty, according to Simone Roth, a professor at the university.

Beginning with the idea of a product as a brand, then exploring positioning and developing brands and creating marketing concepts, the university cultivates international, high-level innovative talents in the fields of brand design, brand communications and brand management.

Aiming to acquaint the students with the techniques that successful marketing and brand management involves, their courses are rooted in diverse cultures, vibrant market economies and well-developed brand culture.

Shan Fan, the president of the university, points out that focusing on the individual's creativity and developing their personalities, the courses demand a lot and encourage a lot.

"I have never regretted my course choice of brand management (in the Brand Academy), because it was simply the perfect complement to my vocational training in brand communications," said Monika Brauers, a student at the university.

"What I particularly appreciate about the Brand Academy is the direct intensive exchanges with the lectures and professors, that makes you feel challenged and supported at the same time," she also remarked.

Besides the courses delivered in classrooms, Brauers was given the chance to gather practical experience through different activities during her study program. The university has launched cooperative projects with famous brands like Adidas, BMW, Porsche, Bosch, Bayer, Hugo Boss and over 100 other corporations and established 25 practical teaching sites in seven cities including Hamburg, Berlin, Munich and Stuttgart.

The Brand Academy also serves the German manufacturing industry and assists in the development of German brands.

Over 20 Fortune 500 companies are industrial partners of the Brand Academy, including Unilever, British-American Tobacco, Siemens, Volkswagen, Allianz, and Lufthansa Airlines.

This cooperation projects are an important factor for Brand Academy's faculty and students at the Brand Academy receiving multiple awards in a wide range of major competitions.

These include the Cannes Advertising Festival, the Red Dot Design Award, the iF Design Award and the German Design Award.

Devoted to establishing its branding power at an international level, the university is keen on forging closer ties with China and Chinese students.

Since its establishment, it has been supporting China's development path and the role China has taken internationally.

According to the university, it offers a German perspective upon the transition from "Made in China" to "Created in China".

Also the Brand Academy cooperates with Chinese institutions in higher-level education, holds academic conferences to address China's current issues and has already initiated many academic visiting programs for scholars to China.

This is part of the overall intercultural, international outlook of the university, as Robert Steiman, a postgraduate student at the university, put it.

"We have students from Ghana, Mexico, China, Russia, Indonesia and Germany."

Truly one may say that the Brand Academy is a place where students are learning in a global boot camp how to best serve the branding economy on a local level.

liyou@chinadaily.com.cn