Karlshochschule International University
Master in Specialization Brands & Stories
Karlsruhe, Germany
Master degree
DURATION
LANGUAGES
English
PACE
APPLICATION DEADLINE
EARLIEST START DATE
STUDY FORMAT
On-Campus
Key Summary
About: The Master in Specialization Brands & Stories at Karlshochschule explores brands as social, cultural and economic phenomena. You’ll study economic, psychological, character-theoretical, sociological and cultural approaches alongside narratology to design strategic brand communication. The programme covers consumer behavior, brand strategy, storytelling, narrative theory and brand transformation to help you analyze why people choose brands and how to reinvent them when markets or values shift.
Career Outcomes: You’ll be ready for roles in branding and communication. Potential careers include brand manager, marketing strategist, communications consultant, content strategist. Related skills: brand management, strategic communication, consumer insight, narrative design and cultural analysis.
If you want to get ideas out into the world, if you want to advertise products and services, if you want to popularize people and their visions, you have to think in terms of brands and stories. Brands can be many things, a technological innovation, an unpackaged store, an art museum, a mayoral candidate or an environmental movement.
In this specialization, you will learn to understand brands in all their complexity. This specialization does not follow a pure management approach, but is interdisciplinary: economic approaches stand alongside psychological, character-theoretical, sociological and cultural approaches. This is the only way to understand why people choose certain brands, why they can develop strong relationships with them and how they influence our culture.
But if you want to work with brands in your future career, it’s not enough just to understand them – you have to understand how to develop and communicate them strategically. One of the most effective forms of communication is storytelling. People don’t vote for campaign slogans, they trust the story of candidates, even appeals for donations for NGOs are more successful if there is a convincing story behind them – and the most successful product brands usually have successful ‘storytellers’ in their marketing departments. In this specialization, we therefore learn the basics of narratology and how to use them for successful brand strategies.
The role of transformation also plays a very special role in this specialization: How can brands be used to transform markets – but how must brands also be transformed when their environment changes? Sometimes brands come under fire because trends change, new values gain importance, or other narratives become popular. Then it is important to develop transformation expertise and reinvent brands time and again.
