Month: June 2025

Personal Branding in Intro to Marketing

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Next school-year, I’ll be teaching a handful of high school marketing classes for the very first time—but here in the blog, I’ll be focusing on the first semester of the first-year course: Intro to Marketing.

As I think about how to open that class, one idea keeps rising to the top: what if we start with personal branding?

Instead of beginning with textbook terms or the traditional marketing mix, I’m exploring the idea of starting with something more personal and reflective. My plan is to guide students through a multi-day project where they build their own personal brand. It’s designed to help them connect with marketing through their own identity, strengths, and style.

Due to our early school year with a partial week before Labor Day, I’m developing this mini unit in a three-day format. I’m still refining the structure, and I’d love input from other educators, marketers, or anyone who works with students.

Why Personal Branding?

Marketing is about value, differentiation, and storytelling. Helping students define their personal brand gives them a framework to understand all three. It encourages self-awareness, reflection, and the ability to communicate what makes them unique—skills they’ll use in everything from job interviews to presentations to future campaigns.

The first unit in the course is called “Marketing is All Around Us”—so what better place to start than with the us? Beginning with personal branding allows students to immediately see marketing as something connected to their everyday lives. It also helps me get to know my students as individuals: what motivates them, what they care about, and what kinds of brands, causes, or voices they gravitate toward. It’s a foundation for building a strong learning community.

The Project

Here’s what I’m envisioning for the first three days of Intro to Marketing:

  • Day 1: Students explore the concept of branding by identifying three favorite companies and three public figures they admire. They also begin reflecting on personal strengths and interests.
  • Day 2: Students write a personal tagline and draft a one-sentence mission statement based on their reflections. We’ll use brand examples to guide them.
  • Day 3: Students finalize their personal brand posters using tools like Canva, Google Slides, or PowerPoint—or they can use the template I created. Posters include their tagline, mission, visual style, and personal values. We’ll wrap up with a gallery walk or group discussion.

I Tried It Myself

To test the idea, I created my own version. I picked well-known brands that I use often (like Target and Asics) and figures I admire, including Christiane Amanpour and Rafael Nadal. [I removed copyrighted images for this blog post.] My tagline is “Learning Through Living. Teaching Through Doing.” and my mission is to translate real-world experience into meaningful, relatable lessons that help students grow as marketers and as people.

It pushed me in great ways—especially creatively. Trying to design a logo and thinking visually reminded me how easy it is to feel stretched in a new domain. That’s a big part of my philosophy: I’m a lead learner. I expect to grow alongside my students.

What Students Might Learn (and What I Hope to Learn About Them)

I’m hoping this project can uncover strengths and interests early—beyond what traditional introductions offer. It could build confidence, spark creative energy, and surface key marketing principles like segmentation, positioning, storytelling, and brand identity.

But I know I’m still early in shaping this. I’d love to hear from others who’ve tried something similar—or have suggestions to take it further.

What Do You Think?

Have you used personal branding projects with students? Or done something similar in a workplace or training environment?

I’d love to hear your feedback, ideas, or favorite resources that could enrich this unit.

Please follow my blog and share it with others who might have insights to offer.

From Conference Room to Classroom

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After nearly three decades in marketing leadership—analyzing markets, launching campaigns, and guiding strategy from the conference room—I’m stepping into a brand-new space: the high school classroom.

This fall, I begin teaching marketing at a Career and Technical Education (CTE) program in Keene, New Hampshire. It’s an incredible opportunity for students: they gain real-world skills, earn college credit, and explore careers that may one day shape their futures. And, perhaps an even more incredible opportunity for me—as I make one of the biggest professional pivots of my life.

My goal is simple but meaningful: to help students not just learn about marketing, but to see themselves in it—as future strategists, creators, analysts, entrepreneurs, or even thoughtful consumers who understand how the world of business operates.

But here’s the truth: I’m not walking into this role with all the answers. I’m walking in as a lead learner—someone who brings experience but is committed to learning alongside my students, colleagues, and the wider community.

Part of what makes me a lead learner is that my formal training is in applied economics and international affairs—not marketing per se. While I’ve spent nearly 30 years in roles that span strategy, analytics, campaigns, and database marketing, there are whole areas of marketing—like graphic design, content creation, or social media branding—where I am very much a student. And marketing is always evolving. AI tools, platform shifts, and emerging channels are rewriting the go-to-market playbook in real time. My students and I will be exploring those trends together in the classroom.

I’ll also be reawakening my own creative side—something I haven’t tapped much in the past decade of my career. From visual merchandising to experiential marketing, I know there will be times when my students’ instincts outpace mine—and I welcome that. In fact, there are even certifications they’ll be earning—such as Google Analytics, HubSpot, and Adobe Illustrator—that I’ll be taking right alongside them. I’m also learning Google Classroom from scratch—just like many of my fellow first-year teachers.

I’ll be designing my curriculum using the Marketing Essentials textbook from McGraw Hill, which serves as our foundational resource. It’s a comprehensive guide that introduces key concepts—from the marketing mix to consumer behavior—and I’ll be adapting it to reflect both modern trends and student interests. You can explore the textbook here on McGraw Hill’s site.

That’s what this blog thread is about, after a decade of dormancy. Developing Future Marketers is a space where I’ll reflect on this career transition and the work of building a marketing curriculum from the ground up. I’ll share what I’m testing in the classroom, what I’m learning from my students, and what I’m still figuring out in real time.

My hope is that this becomes a space where others—especially marketers and educators—can share ideas, resources, and real-world examples that I can bring directly into the classroom. I’m looking for input, advice, and fresh thinking. I want to be a sponge right now, so I can better serve my students. Over time, maybe this blog can become a helpful resource for other new teachers too. But for now, I’m here to learn.

If you have classroom-tested activities, case studies, marketing stories, industry insights—or just ideas you think teens would find engaging—I’d love to hear from you. Your experience could help me reach a student in exactly the right way.

I hope you’ll reach out, leave a comment, or even just drop a resource you love—every suggestion helps me grow. Let’s build something meaningful together—for the next generation of marketers. And if you’d like to follow along, I’d be honored to have you subscribe to the blog.