Excerpt from course description

Corporate Branding and Storytelling

Introduction

This course equips students to critically analyze the diverse dimensions of corporate branding and evaluate its central role in strategic management. Rather than viewing brands through a single lens, the curriculum provides students with multiple analytical frameworks to deconstruct the structural, behavioral, and strategic aspects of corporate identity. By synthesizing traditional brand management paradigms with advanced brand storytelling techniques, the course challenges students to operationalize complex theories into actionable, narrative-driven brand strategies.

Furthermore, the course explores the contemporary paradigm shift in corporate communications, specifically positioning Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) imperatives as a critical megatrend reshaping brand architecture. Students will systematically deconstruct real-world business cases with a focus on brand authenticity, critically analyzing the alignment—or misalignment—of corporate narratives with sustainable corporate values. Ultimately, the course rigorously bridges theory and practice, requiring students to integrate theoretical insights with advanced case analyses, collaborative problem-solving, and strategic application.

Course content

Topics covered:

  1. Corporate Branding and Positioning:
    • Brand positioning strategies
    • Brand differentiation.
    • The Vision-Culture-Image (VCI) Alignment Model.
  2. Brand Storytelling
    • In the context of changing communication mediums and technologies
    • Elements of a story
    • Maintaining brand positioning and brand equity with brand narratives
  3.  
    • Identity and cultural archetypes
    • Determinants of brand personality
  4. Corporate Storytellers
    • Business stories
    • Founder stories
    • Customer stories
    • Organizational storytelling
  5. Brand Communities
    • Digital communities
    • Customer stories
  6. Multiplatform Storytelling
    • Transmedia narratives / multiplatform storytelling

 

The course includes cases representing diverse corporate branding opportunities and challenges.

Disclaimer

This is an excerpt from the complete course description for the course. If you are an active student at BI, you can find the complete course descriptions with information on eg. learning goals, learning process, curriculum and exam at portal.bi.no. We reserve the right to make changes to this description.