I topped off my Thanksgiving vacation break by doing a series of healthcare branding and marketing guest lectures at Emory Goizueta Business School.
Through highly interactive sessions with Goizueta Marketing classes, each comprised of between 50-60 students, I stepped through a Trajectory case study featuring Reading Health System. We just rebranded and executed the system-wide healthcare marketing relaunch for this PA-based organization, so the timing was perfect. Emory also has a significant healthcare campus, so all students could easily relate to the Reading Health System case study.
Here are my key takeaways from this experience:
• I think I learned just as much from the students as they did from me, based on the great interaction and large number, and high level, of questions. These kids are really smart!
• Kudos to professor Ashish Sood, as these students crave real-world experiences, and he’s constantly satisfying their appetites by bringing in guest lecturers.
• Students are highly interested in the more recent realities, and challenges, of managing organizational transparency, integrating social media into brand-building and managing change based on what even they realize is a fluid and not necessarily favorable business environment.
• There’s a wonderful eagerness to challenge traditional concepts, e.g. the more we limit our view to, and attempt to compete with, traditional competitors, the more we can actually end up sounding and acting the same; consumers don’t care at all about a client’s business definition, but rather about how a brand can fit into their world.
• It’s very apparent that our future is in good hands, indicative of the energy and intelligence of these next-generation branding, marketing and finance professionals.
