Is Brand Management considered 'Marketing' or something else?

They will both be viewed as marketing from a b-school perspective but are pretty different disciplines so I would not position it as the same both from an admissions perspective or a recruiting perspective while a student.

I remember when I was going through consulting recruiting and I was coming from an IT consulting background and tried to position my experience as similar to pure strategy mgmt consulting akin to MBB and the recruiters / partners at the firm cautioned me against this. So nothing wrong with talking about your experiences in marketing and your desire to continue un the field but make sure you recognize how different the disciplines can be even under the marketing umbrella

As per my experience, brand management is a branch of marketing.

Both are fairly different. Brand management is strategic. You spend a lot of time understanding, deciding and then building what your brand stands for. Your various communication messages then need to reinforce it. Digital is one of the many mediums to use in building the brand.

Digital marketing on the other hand is highly process oriented. It is all about getting the right number of click rates and then conversions. Highly data driven, analytical and often measured directly in terms of quantifiable outcomes - how many leads generated at what cost. how many sales transactions at what cost of user customer acquisition.

As you can see, both are fairly different, but still related, as the end objective of marketing function is to generate leads for the sales function which can be converted to revenue for the organization. There is no question of change of industry here. Both brand management and digital marketing are horizontal functions which are relevant for any industry. You can position your goals as a transition to a new role within the same function.

Hmm...a lot of what you said about Brand is what I do. Then again, smaller e-commerce companies don't have Brand Managers since there are less overall pieces (the biggest being no physical) so you're essentially worried just as much about voice as CTR....possibly even moreso. I've always been the voice for the brand and main copy person. Process, metrics and due diligence are a HUGE component but so is messaging and brand awareness.

But your perspective is interesting...I can see that how adcoms used to more traditional experience would not understand the interplay in smaller firms. Is that something that I can address as a similarity specifically (that 'Wearing a lot of hats' is similar to BM but at a much smaller scale, and I'd need to learn the broader strategic mindsets that an MBA would provide in order to translate my skillsets to that area)?

You can build a story with BM as a career goal, connecting it to your current work in terms of already doing it in a limited capacity - also using this to personalize your reason for wanting to do BM, thus aspiring to step into it in a more strategic role.

Fellow digital marketer here. Actually at this point even more specific, digital media.

Our path is a good one to justify an MBA as we understand a core component (and the fastest growing) of brand management and need an MBA to help make the jump in general management and broader understandings. I would say you are looking to change function. Industry depends on actual industry.

For example if you're doing marketing for an apparel CPG and want to work with Nike in brand management I'd say same industry different function. As with most of these applications it comes down to how you explain your journey. Do that well enough and the adcom will hopefully understand it's not really that much of a jump for you and that an MBA is an excellent way to accelerate/facilitate your journey towards those goals.

Hello from the GMAT Club MBAbot!

Thanks to another GMAT Club member, I have just discovered this valuable topic, yet it had no discussion for over a year. I am now bumping it up - doing my job. I think you may find it valuable (esp those replies with Kudos).

Want to see all other topics I dig out? Follow me (click follow button on profile). You will receive a summary of all topics I bump in your profile area as well as via email.