Needless to say, I found Dr. Smith’s marketing strategy class both engaging and interesting. His lessons incorporated his passion for outside interests – like music and eastern culture – into compelling lectures and discussions. I found this approach particularly effective, as it provided numerous real world examples of the concepts that he was teaching.

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I was impressed with Dr. Smith’s Five Creatures Lesson. Marketers understand the power of story as a means to engage an audience, and FCL is a great example.

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Marketing Analytics introduced me to a number of tools that were new to me. Dr. Smith did a great job teaching the key tools and concepts used in marketing analytics without turning the class into a doctorate level decision science course.

During my educational training, I have been fortunate to have learned from many distinguished academicians. However, Dr. Smith presents a very unique combination of academic excellence, business acumen and cultural experiences that is rarely seen in academia. As a result of his skills, abilities and knowledge, I have grown significantly in my intellectual pursuits and international business perspective.

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More specifically, Dr. Smith’s extensive international travel and personal experiences lead to substantial classroom discussion and high quality student engagement. His brilliant command of classroom management ensured that all students had a vibrant voice during classroom sessions.

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As part of our EMBA program, Dr. Smith served as a faculty representative during our international business residency to Sao Paulo, Brazil and Santiago, Chile. During that trip, Dr. Smith demonstrated exemplary leadership skills, together with a masterful integration of classroom theory/teachings with “real-world” applications to the global companies we visited.

[…] thank you for the very reasonable workload in terms of assignments. I have had some professors ask for a ridiculous quantity of work. The written assignments you did ask for were across the board the most "useful" of any class I have taken from a synthesis point of view. The majority of written assignments in other classes - some of them tens of pages - I have been able to sit down and write without much thought or subsequent revision needed. To me, that meant the effort was mostly academic - useful to prove that I knew the material, but not useful in generating new learning. In contrast, each time I read one of your essay questions, I was initially overwhelmed and had no idea what to write. Only after a few days of thinking about it on and off and creating an honest-to-god outline (I generally never create outlines because the thoughts form as I write) was I able to write your papers ... and I really enjoyed the process! I love the “find connections and hidden patterns” style of learning you fostered.

I always remember the videos we watched in your class - about for-profit universities, startup businesses - and the impact your ability to connect the videos to class had on my education. When I was negotiating my salary and incentives at my current position, the words of "The Gambler" that you had us memorize resonated in my head.

I walked away from an offer on a Friday, only to get a call Monday which said they had reconsidered and agreed to my terms. You've gotta know when to hold them, know when to fold them, know when to walk away!

Your class taught the necessary marketing skills, but more importantly (at least in my opinion) gave the real world business development and life skills necessary to succeed.

I cannot actually express the surprise I had regarding how much I looked forward to attending Dr. Smith’s lectures. We learned! It was enjoyable! To this day, philosophically speaking, “think forward and reason backward” is a motto I live by – taught to me by Dr. Smith. Dr. Smith takes marketing to a new level.

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He taught us to decide who we want to be. His Five Creatures Lesson is transformative. Utilized in conjunction with “thinking forward, reasoning backward”, I am benefiting from this approach.

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After twelve years of grade and high school, four years of undergrad, and 4 years of graduate school, there are very few teachers and professors that have affected change in my approach to life. Dr. Smith is one of those.

Within the past year, I took Dr. Smith’s Marketing Analytics course because I identified an opportunity at Vanguard (1) to leverage data in order to better understand our clients on an individual basis, and (2) to develop a multi-channel strategy to serve our clients. Dr. Smith’s approach to analysis taught me how to more effectively partner with the data scientists at [COMPANY MASKED], including what questions to ask and how to interpret the data. This allowed our team to develop a nimble approach to building client-centric statistical models that gave us deep insights into the behaviors, needs, and desires of the six plus million clients served by my department. We then developed experiments to test the models across the many channels that clients use to engage with [COMPANY MASKED] such as marketing, advertising, web, and phone. Recently, the head of Retail Marketing commented that our approach and strategy was akin to work produced by world-class marketing organizations.

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Dr. Smith’s teaching style, knowledge, experiences, and ability to create an inclusive environment have motivated me to invest time in learning more about the marketing discipline. The outcome has been that I am becoming a better marketing strategist, consumer strategist, and business leader.

To say that class was a game changer for me, and my career path would be an understatement. I've since read "Hide a Dagger Behind a Smile" several times after it was a requirement, and applied it to my work in marketing. After several years on the agency side, I decided to make the transition to sales. While I'm unsure where the path will take me, I just wanted to send a quick note to let you know what an impact you and your class had for me.

Dr. Smith is a great professor. He kept the class interested during my online class. He requires you to read the book but during the class he provides a lot of information, which is not stated in the book. His approach to marketing strategy is different and provides great perspective of various marketing tactics.

Dr. Smith is a great professor!! I took him for my MBA degree online. Personally, I didn't care for marketing going into the class and was dreading it due to past experiences. Dr. Smith made the class enjoyable and interesting. He used real life scenarios and assigns articles to read and videos to watch. He truly is a great professor that CARES!!!