die Kurbel

Here is a story of a group of students from our Master's Brand Strategy class who worked on a brand strategy for die Kurbel, a beautiful local cinema in Karlsruhe. They are Natalia Platonova, Kim Alishia Hübsch, Maria Osipova, Madiha Younus and Salvador de la Serna. Their work resulted in changes in 'die Kurbel' Facebook page, redesign of the postcards and an increase in visitor numbers!

Natalia Platonova, Alumnus Master Management

What is interesting about die Kurbel, it is not a chain, and not commercial organization, but a communal (Verein) type. At the same time, based on our personal observations, it did not have a lot of visitors despite a good selection of films in a program...Within this project we defined the values and target audience of the Kurbel; proposed practical easy steps for improving brand social-media strategy; and gave recommendations for holistic communication strategy. As a result, die Kurbel brand visibility improved significantly, as well as the recognition of the core brand value message (communal cinema). Social-media and home pages got more visitors and enjoy increased activity. Finally, the number of visitors increased +13 ppt in comparison to the year ago.

Vielhaber Bakery

Elli Vielhaber is part of the sixth generation of a family run business called Vielhaber Bakery that was founded in 1819. During the 2015 Brand Strategy Class in our master’s program, Elli and her classmates worked on defining the future of the brand to expand the concept area into other revenue streams to attract younger customers. To do so, the difficulties and challenges about this objective were analysed, field research was undertaken and a detailed strategy was described.

One of the most difficult moments was presenting their concept idea to her father. Elli’s father says “The project result presented ideas and thoughts that I would have never thought off; very innovative and different to what we have done so far. We will discuss which ideas we will implement as a new marketing initiative and I am already curious about the result.”

Elisabeth Vielhaber, Master Management

It has been an important and insightful process to learn how to develop a brand strategy that can be adapted to any brand objective. So the class was not only helpful to define a strategy to attract younger customers, but it can be applied to every other brand aim.