By Emily Roemer

This week Ken Carbone came by the studio for the first time since Covid shutdown. He quickly gave us an introduction and then we jumped right into a workshop — with only three hours to complete it. Ken had told us that he did this brand expansion workshop before in several different formats, some 5 weeks, some 5 days, but never 3 hours. We were happy to be his guinea pigs for this exciting workshop. 

We were asked to bring in a company that exemplifies the USA. We had groups that brought in everything from Pillsbury to Aveeno. My group choose to tackle MoMA. We were then asked during the workshop to expand this company into something different or bigger. For example, my group evolved MoMA into a traveling RV tour around the US to show art to small communities who lack access to fine art. Every group came up with a dynamic and different way of looking at their brand. It was eye opening to experience how much we could expand a brand in just three hours. At the end of class, we presented our ideas to Ken, who acted as the CEO of each company. We got a huge kick out of him being Mark Zuckerberg. 

All in all, my class all thought Ken’s workshop was wildly helpful and expanded our thinking. We all need to take a break from thesis thinking sometimes, and Ken helped us with