A working playbook synthesized from Vanderbilt Owen MGT 6560 (Marketing Strategy, Mod IV 2026, Professor Steve Hoeffler) and the canonical literature of marketing strategy: Keller's Customer-Based Brand Equity, Urbany & Davis's Three Circles, Hoeffler/Keller/Park's CSR Scorecard, the RNP body of work, and a curated library of business cases.
Marketing strategy sits between two fields and risks belonging to neither. On one side, strategy tells you where to compete and how to win. On the other side, marketing tactics (the 4 Ps — product, price, place, promotion) tell you what to do day-to-day. Marketing strategy is the layer that connects them: it translates strategic positioning choices into customer-facing decisions and brand-building moves that compound into durable competitive advantage.
This masterclass closes that gap. Built from Vanderbilt Owen's MGT 6560 (Steve Hoeffler), it treats marketing strategy as the discipline of building, positioning, and evolving brands through specific frameworks: 5Cs / STP / 4Ps for the macro structure, the Three Circles for competitive positioning, Keller's Customer-Based Brand Equity (CBBE) pyramid for brand-building, Hoeffler/Keller/Park's scorecard for CSR-driven brand equity, the Diffusion of Innovations model for adoption, and case-based reasoning across seven major teaching cases.
The course's defining methodological innovation: use AI to develop initial marketing strategy options, then layer marketing-strategy frameworks on top to add value beyond what AI produces. This was the unique contribution Hoeffler made in 2026 — forcing every student to first generate strategy with multiple AI models, then critique and improve those strategies using the canonical frameworks. The final group project (this masterclass's Module 9) demonstrates exactly this: four AI models produced four marketing strategies for Anthropic, and the team's job was to synthesize, validate, and improve them using the frameworks taught in class.
This masterclass treats every framework with the operational specificity that lets a manager actually use it. By the end, you should be able to take any company — yours or a competitor's — and write a complete marketing-strategy diagnosis and recommendation that any senior marketer would recognize.
Hoeffler teaches marketing strategy as the management of associations, perceptions, and customer relationships in the service of competitive advantage. The product matters; the brand more often than not matters more. Customer-Based Brand Equity (CBBE) is the operational definition: the differential effect that brand knowledge has on consumer response to the marketing of the brand. Strong brands command price premiums, drive repeat purchase, allow brand extensions, and weather competitive attacks. The discipline of marketing strategy is the discipline of building that brand-knowledge asset deliberately.
A second course-level commitment: competitive advantage in marketing is built on Points of Difference (PoDs), but maintained through Points of Parity (PoPs). PoDs are what distinguishes you from competitors; PoPs are what you must match to stay in the game. The Three Circles framework (Urbany & Davis 2007) operationalizes this: customer needs, company offerings, competitor offerings — and the strategic intelligence sits in the spaces between the circles.
Foundation modules (1–3) — the macro frameworks (5Cs/STP/4Ps, Three Circles), brand equity (CBBE), and brand positioning.
Specialty modules (4–5) — the two distinctive areas Hoeffler researches: Really New Products (RNPs) and Corporate Social Responsibility / Brand Equity through Purpose.
Strategy-domain modules (6–8) — omnichannel and retail strategy, disruptive brand-building, and direct-to-consumer.