Guest speaker on branding: Rufus Gifford

On Monday 25 April, Rufus Gifford, the United States Ambassador to Denmark, gave a presentation to more than 60 students from the Marketing Management study programme at Cphbusiness Lyngby.

- We have to acknowledge that we, on the team, never would have managed to get the message out as clearly as Rufus Gifford, who in an authentic way held the students’ attention, says Assistant Lecturer Rune Gregers Meyer from Marketing Management at Cphbusiness.

Among other things, Rufus Gifford spoke about Barack Obama’s campaign before he became president, how to reach out to people through their mobile phones, the view on Denmark in the United States, and how to represent such a diverse country as the US is with a population of more than 320 million.

- We have worked with branding, and in our team we discussed how we could make the topic super interesting and practice-oriented to our students. We agreed that Rufus Gifford was the epitome of personal branding and public diplomacy, and then we chose, probably a little untraditional, to tweet to him, says Rune Gregers Meyer.

An inspiration to the audience

One of the students who listened to the ambassador’s presentation and asked various questions was Niklas Knudsen, who is currently at the second semester of his Marketing Management degree. He was excited about the ambassador’s visit at Cphbusiness.

- I think he did really well, and the way he communicates gives you the feeling that he has given many presentations before. It is difficult to catch that many students’ attention at one time, but he did, says Niklas Knudsen and continues:

- He inspires me to be better at the things I do. His approach to just jump into things can be very useful to me, when I am going to start new projects.

Qualified questions and a down-to-earth ambassador without filter

Ambassador Rufus Gifford mentioned that he is keen to get out to people, whom he has not spoken to before. That was one of the reasons to his visit at Cphbusiness - a visit that both students and employees were excited about.

- To Cphbusiness, it is very important to connect reality and theory in a practice-oriented understanding for the students. In Lyngby, we use a lot of energy to invite the world that surrounds us in, and through this we want to contribute to a deeper understanding for the students, says Jan-Christian Haxthausen, Dean – Innovation & Entrepreneurship, and continues:

- Personally, I also found this to be true through the super qualified questions the students asked Rufus Gifford, who by the way was down-to-earth and spoke from his heart without filter.