01: Idie Kesner on Branding

A peer-to-peer discussion with the Dean Emerita of the Kelley School of Business at the University of Indiana.

Show notes:

On the inaugural episode of Deans Counsel, moderators Ken Kring and Jim Ellis speak with Idie Kesner, the Dean of Indiana University's Kelley School of Business since 2013.

Their conversation revolves around Idie's branding journey at Kelley, including branding's benefits and the necessity for a School or College to not only obtain funding for it, but to gain the support of skeptical faculty and budget-minded campus leadership.

Learn more about Idie Kesner: kelley.iu.edu/faculty-research/f…le.html?id=IKESNER

Idie Kesner Bio:

Idalene “Idie” Kesner was appointed dean of Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business in 2013 after serving as interim dean in 2012, and she remained in that role until 2022. She is also the Frank P. Popoff Chair of Strategic Management. Kesner joined the Kelley School faculty in 1995 and served in many leadership roles, including associate dean of faculty and research, chairperson of the full-time MBA program, and chairperson of the Department of Management & Entrepreneurship. She is currently serving as Editor for the journal Business Horizons.

Her research focuses on corporate boards, executive succession, and mergers and acquisitions. She teaches courses in strategy, consulting, and crisis management in the school’s graduate and executive programs. She has consulted with many national and international firms on management and board-related issues, and she currently serves on five boards. She has won dozens of teaching awards at the Kelley School and at the University of North Carolina, where she was a professor for 12 years. In 2019, she was named Business School Dean of the Year by Poets & Quants, a popular business school media outlet.

Kesner earned her MBA and PhD from the Kelley School and her bachelor’s degree in business administration from Southern Methodist University.

01: Idie Kesner on Branding Podcast Transcript

Ken 0:00

it thank you for being with us. Here today, delighted to have you engaged in this conversation, we together know that we're going to find out some things about your experience at the University of Indiana Kelly, that will be informative to us and others. You know, our history is interesting. We have always tried to get you to do other things. But you've been too engaged in building Kelly, to take our calls very seriously. But frankly, you know, we've been watching, we've been hearing. So we thought today's conversation, you know, could be informative to all about how you've done what you've done over the course of two excellent terms. So welcome, glad to jump into the conversation with you.

Idie Kesner 0:49

Thank you, thank you for having me. It's It's really an honor to be among other successful Dean's and to be invited to this forum.

Jim 0:59

Well, it's great to have you and we appreciate it. It's been so much fun, as Ken said, watching from afar how you build Kelly, and I congratulate you on that absolutely spectacular job and knowing full well, some of the pitfalls and the speed bumps you hit. And that's kind of what we thought we'd talk a little bit about and sort of how you how you built the Kelly brand and how you dealt with some of the issues that you had. And our goal is to just impart your wisdom on the, on the new Dean's and sitting Dean's that are trying to do the same kind of thing in their institutions. So let's kick it off. And just kind of let you explain to us, you know, what is branding in your mind? And it? How do you go about building a brand for an institution, which is it's hard to differentiate? I mean, we all teach net present value, discounted cash flow and the four P's of marketing. So how do you? How do you differentiate a school to build a brand?

Idie Kesner 1:55

Well, Jim, I think that's a wonderful question and an important question. And I will say that it was one of the most important objectives that I had set out even before I was selected as the dean. So you know how the search processes work. You have a bunch of candidates who submit their applications, and it's narrowed down and you do airport interviews, and then it's narrowed down further. And you probably have about four Dean's that have ultimately come to the school to visit and give talks and I was the internal candidate, there were three external candidates. And I was the internal candidate in that that process of giving talks to every conceivable audience to faculty, group of students, group of alumni group of staff, every conceivable audience, I repeated over and over again, that if I was selected as dean, there'd be three things that I would focus my attention on with the hope that I would make some progress on them during my tenure as dean, and number one on that list was building the Kelly brand was making the Kelly brand well known. That was number one on the list, because I understood, and I'm not a marketing person, yet I understood that if we could do that it would feed all the other objectives that we had set out for ourselves. And so I I proposed that that would be top of my list. And indeed it was, I will tell you is interesting going early on because even though that was top of my list, and oh, by the way, I should mention, I said in those talks, if if these things, things I've mentioned are the things that you want to accomplish as a school, then I'm your person, and if not, if not, and I can't be present for the other presentations, please no, as an alum of this school, someone else has a better idea, I would vote for them just know that I can't be there to vote, but I would vote for them if they have better ideas about how to move the school forward. And so I felt very fortunate being selected as the dean. And I immediately started working on the brand immediately. And not surprisingly, got a lot of pushback at that point in time got some pushback from the administration that saw marketing as sort of an amorphous use of money and wondered whether there were better uses for our money that it's so intangible to them. I got pushback from the faculty, of course, wanted the money to go to their research accounts, as opposed to helping with the branding message for the school overall. And so you have to endure that pushback very early on and, and set it as a priority and make the investments and then as success occurs. You have to feed that data back to the faculty and to all of your constituents so that they know the value of the investment you just made. They understand it. So it's a bit of endurance in the in the first cycle and then a bit of proof in terms of the data in subsequent cycles. But I can't think of a better use for our resources. The we had a reserve left by the previous Dean, I couldn't think of a better use for those resources early on in my career as dean,

Jim 5:10

what are some of the examples of things that you did to build that brand? And how did you see those as really prioritized? And how did you look at those different things?

Idie Kesner 5:21

Now? That's a great question. Well, let me begin by saying something that may not be obvious to everyone else. And that is, even though we had reserves, we had resources to invest in marketing and brand building. We're not a wealthy school by any stretch, we have a good amount of financial reserves. But we certainly had to be cautious in how we spent it. So we actually went out and searched for an alum, who was very senior in a marketing organization and said, Can you help us with this, and that alum gave us access to a branding company that his organization used pro bono, I cannot tell you exactly how valuable that was. To us. It's, I can't even express the value that that was. That company worked on our branding message, our awareness building and branding message, we didn't have a brand before, worked on it for at least eight months. And then they came to us with a presentation came to the senior leadership team with a presentation about what they felt would be a good brand idea for us. And I remember it so clearly. Because Jim, it there was a there was a snowstorm that day. And I can't remember precisely whether our team was supposed to be in New York or their team was supposed to be in Bloomington, Indiana, but we couldn't get to each other because of the snowstorm. So we did it on the phone. And this was before zoom really but what we did it on the phone, and they announced what the branding message was going to be. And I remember there was dead silence, dead silence on the phone. And like every good administrator, I sort of had to, I had learned the lesson, let the silence hang, because someone will want to speak up, someone will feel uncomfortable and speak up. And I was I was quiet for a long time. And then pretty soon, everybody was uncomfortable because no one was speaking up. And I finally said, you know, I'm gonna say, I don't think the brand new have created reflects us. I am having a hard or difficult time with this. And I specified it. And as soon as I made that pronouncement, everybody else on my team said, yeah, that's what's bothering me. Now, rather than this group that was working pro bono, rather than them saying, take it or leave it, you know, we've been working without pay, you just take it. We're saying, Okay, we'll tweak it. You know, we'll tweak the message somehow. They said, we'll start over. And I was just amazed by that, because the thought that they were going to give us their all again until we nailed it down. So the next time, which was months later, this time, our team was able to get to New York, I went to New York, and they presented to me, they presented the very first message, which was go from moment to momentum, and which is what we use, and we, we talk about it now. I'll explain it just a moment to you. But as soon as I heard it, I said, that's it. That is it. And they said no, wait a minute, you haven't heard the other two? And I said, No, no, that's it. And they said, no, no, you have to hear the other two. And I said, Oh, okay. And they presented the other two. And then I said, nope, nope, nope, that's the first one. That was it. And here's why. We had always, always believed in that kind of messages, our educational philosophy, we always believed this faculty and his staff here, that we were creating moments for our students that we hoped would create momentum for their careers that all of the things that we do in the classroom and outside of the classroom, were about these very special moments that helped build momentum. And if our students understood and knew how to take advantage of those moments, and treated them with respect and, and dignity and understood their importance, then they themselves would help us in that creation of momentum. And so as soon as I heard it, I understood it. That was our educational philosophy, and that our faculty could get around it. So the team, the branding team that had been working for free came to the school a few months later to do the big presentation. We assembled all of the faculty in a large auditorium. We wouldn't be able to fit in the auditorium today, but we could in those days because it was it was probably a dozen years ago now, we assembled in a large auditorium, and they presented it. And then I held a faculty vote after they presented the this sort of brand message. And with the exception of one faculty member this this, you know, hundreds of faculty members in the room with the exception of one vote was positive. And I knew we had nailed it, I knew we had reflected the essence of what we saw ourselves doing for our students and our other constituents is taking their their careers from a moment into the momentum that we knew we could, we could help in terms of developing. So selecting the right message is important and you can't compromise you can't, you can't say okay, well, we'll just go with that message. It sounds okay to me, or it sounds like it has a nice ring to it, you have to know that it is the essence of who you are and what you are. And then once you have it, you have to invest whole hog in it, you have to, you have to really put your investments behind it and transcend any one unit within the school. Because we didn't have the ability to have brand messages for all 30 of our degree programs, we had to have a single brand message, we're just not wealthy enough to to have 30 different brand messages and make it work like a Procter and Gamble or another kind of, of consumer product company, they can have multiple brand messages for various products.

Ken 11:30

I was wondering whether their work, that's a fabulous story, and whether there were ways in which you had to socialize and prepare your respective communities to select that moment.

Idie Kesner 11:45

Yeah, so we did have to continue the flow of feedback communication was very, very important at every stage that we were working on it. And then can, as I mentioned to you what really became important is afterwards, ensuring that they understood the value that it presented. So I'm just going to give you that illustration, because it's it's both important beforehand, socializing. But it's important afterwards, communicating exactly what happened in the value that it represented. So in our first tranche, our first investment of money, we had invested over a three year period $10 million. And that 10 million. And by the way, as I mentioned before, we now have 30 programs. But at that time, we probably had about 25 different programs. And we decided we would measure the results in just two of those programs. By the way, our largest program, our undergraduate program was not one of those two, but we were going to measure the impact on two of our programs, the two programs that we measured in those days where the full time MBA program and the online MBA program and those two programs alone, that first investment over the first three years of $10 million produced in just those two programs, $33 million dollars in incremental revenue, it was a huge, huge uplift. If we measured all of our programs, imagine what the value would have been. We did the same thing with the next tranche that we invest in an equal amount of money over an equal amount of time. And the new this time we measured for four programs. And the uplift was 58 million in incremental revenues. We knew that our story was not being told we knew that. And so we could tell that, that the information that was going to come out in the brand building was going to help us financially tell our story that in a better way. You know, it's really interesting, because early on when I when I worked with the marketing company that helped us I remember we had done a study by a company called Simpson Scarborough, which does market research for universities and schools of business. And the study was, it was expensive at the time, I thought. And I remember it had been the agreement had been signed on by one of our department or program chairs. And I was swallowing hard because it was very expensive. But in that analysis, that market research of all of the respondents that they contacted, it was hundreds of them. Only one person could name our school that was a long time ago, but only one person and I knew that our story wasn't being told. And that was the problem and I said to the company Oh woe is us in our story is not there are stories not being told no one knows about us? And they said no, no, it's the perfect way for marketing to play a role because you have a positive message you have a positive story. Let us help you tell that story. And they were so enthusiastic about being able to create the brand and then promote the brand with a with a marketing message. I should also note that I had been the Associate Dean before becoming the Dean before the interim, and then becoming dean. And I had traveled all over. And we had done a presentation in India. And I remember I was presenting to a very large company in India. And in fact, one of my former students, and I, we had done an amazing presentation about creating a MBA, an MBA program for their organization for their employees. And he said to me, it, that was the best presentation we ever heard. But we can't go with you, because no one knows you here in India. And then I hit follow that with a trip to China, and I met with a, a dean there, and the dean had been a visiting professor at our school, and she said, Oh, that was the best presentation we've ever heard to do this joint program. But no one knows you here in China. So I had had these experiences that told me that our our name, our message was not getting out. And this was the most important thing we could do, in order to send that message is to invest in ourselves.

Jim 16:10

What would you tell a Dean from a school that maybe has a particularly strong department discipline? You know, let's I mean, Wharton and finance in Illinois and accounting and Northwestern the tale of their marketing prowess has been for years and years and years and years, maybe beyond, slaved its useful life. What would you tell someone from a school like that? Who's really kind of marketing a discipline to take the entire school up discipline wise? You did it by virtue of the MBA online MBA, and I believe me, I followed your lead on that online MBA, because it's, it was really the gold standard. You know, what do you tell someone in terms of a general versus a specific thought process?

Idie Kesner 17:01

Yeah, it's a great question, Jim, you don't have to run away from your successes, even if they are disciplinary successes or programmatic successes, you can leverage to them, we felt it necessary to really send a message and have a brand message that transcended any one discipline or, or any one program. And so what we really tried to do was find the successes in a discipline or inappropriate them, and then begin to leverage those and begin to build off of those. So let's go back to your example of what we did in our Kelly direct online program. Our Kelly direct online program was very different from other programs, it's very hands on, it's very connected to the students, the faculty build very close relationships with the students. It's not a watch this video and turn in your assignments and or watch this, this professor who recorded it three years ago, and then in then you turn in these assignments to someone else who's going to grade it, it's a relationship with the individual professor will notice how that is a reflection of our brand message go from moment to moment, and the professors are creating these moments for you. And that, in turn, is going to help with the momentum in your career. And so what we were doing was building off the successes we already had in that relationship building that had been important to us. And our entire history. It's a part of our culture here. It's one of the reasons that I'm so proud of the faculty here, they build those connections to their students and to all constituents. And so we were taking those strengths that we had, that we had observed in a strategic plan, a strategic analysis, and we were using that to create the brand message. So I would say don't run away from your successes, but don't allow that also to limit you.

Ken 18:56

Do you have a sense? Looking back? Whether there are either metrics or impressions of the changes in morale, influence of culture, relationship with the rest of the university that this kind of rising the tide was able to provide?

Idie Kesner 19:16

Yes, absolutely. So it's a really good question. I, as I mentioned to you early on the first year, when I was making these investments, there was a lot of pushback, the faculty felt that I could have spent that money by distributing it and allowing them to do their research. And I kept saying over and over, that this is going to this tide is going to allow all ships to rise that when we invest in the school overall, it'll create the resources we need that will allow us to invest in the other aspects of the school, including your research, including adding faculty and including the role that we play at the university overall. And again, I mentioned this earlier, but try asked me, I'm not sure the Provost and the CFO were too excited about my investment, this this large investment that I was making. But I actually put it all on the line. I remember saying, this is so important to me, and to building this school, that if you decide this is not an investment that can be made, then I think we have to ask whether I'm the right Dean, because this is something I'm absolutely committed to. And I don't think you should put it on the line at all times. But that was one of the times where it was that important to me. Now, having said this, I do have to tell you a funny story about this that I think about often. So I am probably the most risk averse person anyone will ever meet. I'm not necessarily proud of that. But it is inherent, my character. I learned how to take a few more risks, thanks to the previous Dean, but I'm still very risk averse. Now I can prove it to you, I can prove I'm the most risk averse person. So I was on the faculty at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, before I moved back to Indiana, I stayed back because I was a graduate of the program. I was in North Carolina for 12 years moved back to Indiana. And when I moved back to Indiana, I built the exact same home I had in North Carolina, that's a risk averse person, trust me, you don't get more risk averse than that. So here I was making this huge investment, right? This this very, very large investment, taking our reserves to do so. And I remember thinking something's going to happen. And I'm going to try and shut it down. That's how risk averse I am. So I need to build a team around me that ensures that I don't make that mistake. So called in my CMO. He wasn't it doesn't actually, he did not actually have the title CMO. But that's the role he played. And I said to him, in this as a previous person holds the role. And I said to him, Look, this is how it's gonna go down. something's gonna happen. And I'm going to try and pull that money back. And your job. Your job is to tell me no, we got it. And he laughed. He thought I was teasing. And it was a few months later, probably six, nine months later, and I realized that we had overextended in some other areas, and substantially so and I called him into the office and I said his name was Darren and I said, Darren, I need that money back. And he said, No. And I said, Oh, dear, and I know what I told you to say, but I need that money back. Something's happened, I need that money back. And he said, No. And I said, Now Darren, you report to me, and I need that money back that we put in the account. He said, he said no. And he marched down to my colleagues office. And my colleague, my associate dean came in, marched in after that and said, Now it you know, this was number one in your list of of goals you wanted to achieve. Number one, and you had set objectives. Don't do this, don't do this. And he was right, I listened, I surrounded myself with people who had kind of a different approach to things and balanced me out in terms of my risk aversion. And in the end, it worked out, right, we ended up just fine on the budget. But that's the other thing. If you're not one to spend money in an area like brand building. Or if you're tempted to to reverse out on things like that you need to have a team that can supplement whatever your weakness might be, whatever your the downside risk might be, because you don't build brand in a year, you can't put in a little money and then walk away, you might as well send it down the sink, if that's what you're going to do. Just pour it down the sink, you have to build brand, with ongoing investments over multiple years. And that exercise in that that incident was a great reminder of staying true to it, and surrounding myself with people that would help me stay true to the message into the into the objective.

Jim 24:09

So first of all, this is a lesson not just in brand building, this is a great lesson in leadership. And your leadership is is unbelievable. And kudos to you. But a couple of questions along those lines. Number one, that team that you built around you. Which every textbook on leadership says don't surround yourself with Yes, people and you sure as heck did not do that. Was that a team that you put in place? Was it a team you inherited? Did you have to go through a transition there number one and the second question is how did you deal with a faculty member that might have the same kind of like, I know I spend a lot of money here and we need money for our research, etc, etc. I mean, and we know how faculty get a little self centered in that regard. and they want that in their accounts rather than your marketing account. So, you know, leadership is all about how you deal with those kinds of questions. How did you handle it both? With your team and with faculty?

Idie Kesner 25:11

Yeah, so let me answer their first question. That is I inherited some people and some people I brought in. And so it was a transition in terms of the leadership team. I didn't dismiss everybody, because I knew I needed some history. And I needed some insights in terms of how things operate, and how things worked, even though I was an insider myself. But I also knew that over time, we weren't going to keep everybody in leadership roles, and we were going to have to roll people in. But to the point that you made Jim, I was very conscious of knowing my strengths and weaknesses, and trying to fill the team out, that would supplement my strengths and weaknesses. So anybody I brought on, had to bring new strengths to the team, not just replicating where I was. And I tried to often to center myself or to put myself as close to the middle on a variety of issues as I could, and build people out on two ends of the continuum to make sure I have that perspective. And of course, we met often, and we shared thoughts openly about how things were going. So that composition of the team is incredibly important. And it's not essential that you dismiss everybody, but it is essential that everybody have an open mind and be willing to discuss and that you, as a leader, be willing to take in that information without being critical to invite that information without scaring people away in terms of being able to express their thoughts and ideas. To the next part of your question. This is where, even though I was facing a lot of resistance, where I had to feed back the accomplishments, every time we accomplished something, every time we made a move in a positive direction, especially on the brand building, every time it brought new resources or positive rankings, or, or whatever it was that we were being helped by visa vie the brand message and getting that brand out there. I fed that back to the faculty. So they understood the connection between the investment and the accomplishments that we were that we were achieving. And don't we shouldn't be like about this faculty who want to join a school, they look not only to what they're going to be accomplished individually at the school, but they look to things like the quality of the students the quality of the school's reputation, that the emphasis that the school has on, on its programs, and so forth. So I knew enough to know even attracting faculty was going to be a part of being able to show what we were accomplishing, and being able to prove the value of the investment.

Ken 27:55

I'm sort of wondering, you know, what, the kind of momentum that you've been able to show and leave sort of how do you prepare the next scene? What do you what's your what's your role? And what do you not need to do in order to make the next scene successful?

Idie Kesner 28:14

Well, I'm very conscious of engaging when someone asks for my engagement, but not being too involved to allow the next Dean, whoever that might be, because our search is ongoing. Now, the luxury of of, you know, coming in with their own goals and objectives and their own thoughts in terms of moving the school forward. A lot has happened in 10 years in school is not the same as it was when I took over. And so the next day needs to think about the new environment and think about doing things perhaps differently than I did things where then I would have done things. So I don't want to step on anybody's toes. But I want the new dean to know that I'm here. And will will answer any questions and help in any way that I can be a part of the school, I must say, having retired from the Dean's position. And back to the faculty position. I always say the faculty position is the best one in academia. I am really enjoying myself. But I told the interim dean and will certainly tell the new dean when that person is in place, that I am here if they need any help whatsoever. But I hope that they will move the school forward in terms of some of the things we've accomplished and build off of what we've been able to do.

Jim 29:34

Well, you are a great role model for having done the job you did. And like I said, I watched you from afar with great admiration and listening to you today. That just expanded that admiration. I thank you so much for your time today. This has truly been great, and we really, really appreciate it.

Idie Kesner 29:54

Well, thank you. It's been an honor a real honor. And obviously if anybody has any follow up questions, I'm always available to answer them.

Jim 30:03

Thanks, I thank you. All right.

Ken 30:05

Bye, bye.

Jim 30:07

That was really,

Ken 30:08

really informative. Yeah. And, and, you know, frankly, you know, the combination of her being forthright, gracious, self aware, is really impressive. I mean, she got things done that, you know, a lesser mortal would have, would have had real difficulty with. I think that her learning on the job was brisk. And she just kept it kept adjusting. And, frankly, you know, whereas we say, it's better to be lucky than then good. She was both, you know, she was good enough to make her own luck. I mean, to get that brand theme ratified by all that was more than the merit of the idea.

Jim 31:01

I happen to agree with you can I thought that, and you said it best, the self awareness, analyzing not only her strengths and weaknesses, but the schools strengths and weaknesses. And being open about that, and willing to talk about it. This is where we need, I need help from people, I need help from the marketing, the marketing organization, think the only thing that someone might listen to this and say, Well, I can't afford a marketing organization, because I don't have the reserves. And the what I would say there is their job is to just figure out how to get an outside pro bono group to look at their school, give them the opinion, you know, somebody will say, I'm going to use my marketing department like, oh, no, that's really not going to work. You need to go outside and have someone with a very, very objective viewpoint as she did. And I think she got lucky there that the first idea she bounced, and they were willing to come back and say, Okay, well, by that, I mean, that's part of the creative process. But she really did a spectacular job. And, and I, as I said, I watched her from afar and I, when she did that online, Kelly direct program, I was watching that very closely, and it was done on the gold standard. So it was just terrific.

Ken 32:15

Yeah, the other thing I noted, again, you know, she's so gracious that she doesn't, she's not bragging. But you know what, by by developing a team, almost a Team of Rivals who were selected many ways because they would and could be forthright and direct with her. She also then went on to create a culture, sort of a cabinet culture. So it wasn't just a selection of the individuals. It was a tenor and tone of her both individual and group relations that really allowed them to speak truth to power