Discover, Learn, and Grow

In today’s hypercompetitive markets, brands don’t just compete—they redefine the game. Drawing on David Aaker’s groundbreaking book Brand Relevance: Making Competitors Irrelevant (eISBN 9780470922590), this course equips you with strategies to create category-killing brands that dominate by making rivals obsolete.

Whether you’re a marketer, entrepreneur, or executive, this course will transform how you approach competition—shifting from battling rivals to eliminating them from consideration.

This course teaches how to sideline competitors by creating uniquely indispensable brands. Forget incremental gains; you’ll focus on category design, strategic innovation, and customer obsession to dominate markets.

Key themes include:

• The Relevance Paradox: Why beating competitors is less effective than making them irrelevant.
• Category Leadership: How to define new markets where your brand sets the rules.
• Innovation as a Weapon: Develop offerings so distinct that competitors can’t catch up.
• Sustaining Dominance: Aaker’s tactics to maintain relevance amid disruption.

Self-Paced E-learning

End of Course Quiz Assessment

This course is ideal for :

• Marketing Directors and Brand Managers seeking breakthrough strategies.
• Entrepreneurs/Startups aiming to disrupt established markets.
• Product Innovators designing “must-have” offerings.
• Executives rethinking competitive positioning.
• Business Strategists focused on long-term market control.

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365 Days, Self-Paced E-learning

By the end of this course, you will have a solid understanding of using Aaker’s brand relevance model to Real-World Change:

1. The End of Competition: Aaker’s Framework for Irrelevance

• Why traditional competitive analysis fails.
• The role of category creation vs. category competition.

1. Designing “Marketproof” Brands

• How Tesla, Apple, and others built uncontested spaces.
• Aligning innovation with customer “must-haves.”

1. Sustaining Relevance

• Avoiding commoditization.
• Using ecosystems and subcategories to lock out rivals.

SMF Centre for Corporate Learning