Associate Professor of Marketing at the Orfalea College of Business
University: California Polytechnic State University
Location: San Luis Obispo, CA
Dr. Brennan Davis is the Hood Professor of Marketing and Associate Professor of Marketing at the Orfalea College of Business California Polytechnic State University. He has seven years of experience teaching the marketing core class, marketing research and marketing analytics. He specializes in connecting large datasets to answer questions in the domain of transformative consumer research. Professionally, Dr. Davis has eight years of experience in marketing management in the automotive and technology industries. In 2015, he received the Hood Professorship of Marketing in the Orfalea College of Business.
Brennan’s scholarly interest in transformative consumer research is reflected in current research on marketing and obesity. He investigates theory about place, social psychology and unhealthy consumption. He has publications in the Journal of Public Policy and Marketing where he won the best paper award for the journal in 2014 from the American Marketing Association, and in American Journal of Public Health where he won the best paper award in 2009 from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. He has also published in the Journal of Business Research and has working papers targeting other top academic marketing and consumer research journals.
Brennan enjoys teaching the marketing core course to introduce to students the exciting, powerful and critical function of marketing. Marketing is the only customer-facing function of business and is vital to the firm’s success. Brennan is also developing a course on marketing analytics of big data, to be formally offered in fall 2015. He is working with an advisory task force of corporate and academic representatives to help create marketing curriculum that will prepare Cal Poly students for the best jobs in the future of marketing.
Other Experience:
- Assistant Professor, Baylor University
- Assistant Professor, Azusa Pacific University
- Marketing Manager, Project InVision
- Marketing Consultant, Nissan Motor Corporation’s National Headquarters
- Advisory Board Member, Transformative Consumer Research
Source: Orfalea College of Business
STUKENT PRODUCTS USED
Dr. Davis has used the following materials in his teaching:
Digital Marketing Essentials
Mimic Pro Simulation
Social Media Marketing
Mimic Social Simulation
DR. DAVIS’ TEACHING TIPS
I really like the Digital Marketing Essentials textbook because the material is so engaging. Student engagement is important to me, so I encourage classroom engagement in two ways:
#1
I incorporate audience response systems (also known as clickers) into my PowerPoint slides when teaching Digital Marketing Essentials. I use the test bank questions found in instructor resources to create the clicker questions, which help me confirm whether I am adequately explaining concepts as we go. Rather than using clickers for assessment, I just make it fun.
The groups in my class compete for high score across a lesson’s clicker questions, and I award a few very nominal extra credit points to the winning group at the end of each class. The benefits are many. The practice keeps students engaged with the Digital Marketing materials during class. It also allows me to see live how many students missed a question and have the opportunity to explain better or understand why they misunderstood (or just wake them up sometimes). And it allows students to confirm their own learning, about which they sometimes feel insecure.
#2
I pepper activities throughout my lessons. Many of these come from the lesson plans inside instructor resources. And sometimes I will just add an activity that seems right.
For example, the concepts of landing pages and pages that encourage backlinks are oddly difficult for students to understand because they are so used to designing home pages. So, I ask each group to draw these for fictitious clients on the whiteboard during each respective lesson. And we talk about why their page may or may not work for its unique purpose. Each is a 15-minute exercise that gets them out of their seats and learning by doing the concept. Note that the Wishpond exercise, also in instructor resources, is also a helpful exercise for this purpose.
So much is revealed about what is actually learned and what still needs to be learned when I ask students to engage the materials through experiential learning.
California Polytechnic State University
DR. DAVIS’ HOBBIES
My wife and I take my family of four boys into the Sierra Nevada mountain wilderness to go backpacking every year. The digital world is a lot of fun when it comes to marketing, but nothing beats the sights and fresh air of a week in nature.
Sierra Nevada Mountains
Connect with Brennan Davis
Congratulations, and thank you, Brennan!
