Dr. B's Brand

photo by Alexandra Brasher

FALL 2018 | DIVIDENDS

Dr. B’s Brand

By Kelsey Waters

“Your brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room.” JEFF BEZOS, FOUNDER OF AMAZON.COM

In the world of business, the level of trust held in a brand can result in the loyalty or the loss of customers. In the world of higher education, students’ success may rely on the level of trust they have in a professor’s “brand.” Faculty members have to earn the loyalty of their students or deal with potential loss of attention and focus in class.

When professors step in front of a classroom or offer support outside the classroom, the personas they convey are their brands, their characters, their connections to the young people in their care.

Dr. Mike Breazeale, more commonly known by his students as “Dr. B,” understands this phenomenon better than most, and the self-described “mentor in a sweater vest” strives to help his students find their place in a world dominated by labels.

The Mississippi native started his academic career with the idea of becoming a doctor. Like so many other bright students, he was urged toward the medical field by friends and family; however, his father told him that a degree in accounting would set him up for a career with flexibility and growth. Still not sure what the future held, Breazeale chose to study accounting, and the future marketing professor flourished in a field of study that was much more analytical than creative.

Feeling the allure of success at an early age, Breazeale got into business while a sophomore at Millsaps College in Jackson, with the purchase of a local video store. Within a few years of graduating, he had also acquired Mississippi’s largest single-screen movie theatre – Deville Cinema. These ventures enabled him to follow his creative instinct and passion while also offering an artistic escape to local residents. After experiencing life as a business owner, Breazeale moved into real estate. With an effervescent personality and sincere interest in people, he found incredible success and soon started traveling the country to train other real estate agents. Sharing his stories with those he trained helped him see that he was being called to teach.

To pursue a teaching career, Breazeale earned a PhD in marketing at Mississippi State University. After completing coursework, his first stop as a professor would be Indiana University Southeast, followed by the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Both positions provided opportunities for him to grow as an educator and develop his own research interests. It was during his time in Omaha that Breazeale would begin studying the idea of “unbranding.” The concept was to work toward dismantling “violent extremist organizations” – terrorists – by diminishing the effectiveness of their marketing strategies. Unbranding could be used by the U.S. Department of Defense and other institutions overseeing public safety.

Also while at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, Breazeale began working with biometric technology that would help students and researchers dive deeper into the understanding of brands and consumers. As he made his move to Mississippi State in 2014, he knew he wanted expertise in this technology to be a goal of the College of Business. Working with colleagues like Dr. Melissa

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Moore, Dr. Adam Farmer and Dean Sharon Oswald, Breazeale has succeeded in bringing the newest technology to Mississippi State’s College of Business.

With generous help from alumni, Breazeale has established the Market Innovation Lab and Observatory, or MILO, in McCool Hall. The use of MILO in an undergraduate setting allows students in the College of Business to study biometric research, which he says makes them “imminently more hirable” and helps them “not just get jobs, but jobs they want.” Students in the Department of Marketing, Quantitative Analysis and Business Law, as well as other College of Business departments, are developing an analytical skill set that employers are eager to hire. Companies like Kohl’s are currently hiring biometric data analysts by the hundreds. For Mississippi State to educate its students in cutting-edge technology shows that they are competitive on a national level.

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For Breazeale, preparing his students for their careers by helping them create their own brands is an important aspect of his job. Asked to describe the Mississippi State marketing students’ brand, his eyes fill with joy.

“They’re versatile and well-prepared,” he says. “They have so many avenues, from fighting terrorism with the Department of Defense to working with startup musicians and companies. Marketing is so much more than advertising and selling.”

With the world of marketing being so diverse, how does Breazeale make himself stand out? Once again, by developing a brand. In addition to “mentor in a sweater vest,” he uses phrases like “passionately enthusiastic” and “destroyer of mediocrity” to describe his personal brand.

For his students it might be hard to decide if Breazeale is an Associate Professor at Mississippi State or a superhero sent to save them from bland or boring academia.

With classes like personal selling, consumer behavior and his brainchild and personal favorite, strategic brand management, Breazeale is focused on grooming his students for the next step. While he is a colorful character – in both personality and wardrobe – even he struggles with a college-age audience from time to time. The era of the cell phone is not lost on him, and he realizes asking students to go a whole class without checking their social media accounts is “like asking them to hold their breath until class is over.” With this in mind, his teaching tactics shift to fit the propensities of his students, and he offers a “cell phone break” during his classes. Small gestures of trust like this build his rapport with them.

The introduction of cell phone dependence is not the first barrier Breazeale has faced in his classes. He has always found students reluctant to speak up in class. The importance of sharing in a creative field like marketing should be obvious, but it can still be intimidating to speak one’s ideas in a room full of people. Following the example of a colleague, Breazeale introduced a “talking stick” into his classroom. Decked out in school colors, the talking stick denoted that the person who held it could speak freely. Soon, students started to speak up so that they could avoid breaking out the talking tool.

Breazeale’s goal is to “never make people feel dumb.” In the classroom, he says, it is not about being right or wrong, but instead it is about feeling comfortable building on the ideas shared within a comfortable and creative space.

He focuses on his students always. Whether inside the walls of McCool Hall or traveling abroad, Breazeale is constantly working toward their growth and experience. This past year, he took

DIVIDENDS | FALL 2018

FALL 2018 | DIVIDENDS

Breazeale earned the 2018 MSU Alumni Association Early Career Undergraduate Teaching Excellence Award. He is shown here with COB colleagues (from left) Associate Dean Kevin Rogers, Academic Coordinator Vergie Bash – recipient of the Irving Atly Jefcoat Excellence in Advising Award – and Dean Sharon Oswald.

photo by Beth Wynn

a group on an 11-day trip to Ireland, Scotland and Iceland. They joined students from Steven F. Austin University of Tyler, TX, for the adventure. During this educational journey, students had the opportunity to catch a glimpse of international branding adapted to other cultures, not to mention spending time at world-renowned companies like Guinness.

Breazeale and other marketing educators are always working to prove that their field of study is not “just sales.” By putting these students on the ground in places like Iceland, a country striving to reinvent itself, they provide opportunities to see that branding is about more than just products. Branding is a phoenix-like tool that can offer rebirth to companies, places and people.

Mississippi State University strives to offer an atmosphere of family. Breazeale views the Bulldog brand as “loyal in thought and deed,” and holds himself accountable for extending this brand to his students and his classroom.

“Once you have had me for a class, you have me for life as a resource,” he states.

While he has made this promise to every class throughout his teaching career, not everyone takes it to heart. But when that one student from eight years ago calls him for career advice, “that’s as good as it gets!”

Branding, when well done, carries with it personality, confidence and a sense of belonging, and Breazeale’s brand offers all of these to his students. He imparts his academic expertise to them every day in his classroom. More importantly, he imparts trust, belief and courage as they move toward the next part of their journeys.

As an educator, Breazeale is engaged, encouraging and adaptable. As a person, he is invested, sincere and full of love and patience. The halls of McCool are brighter with him inside. The students are stronger with his leadership. The COB’s faculty and staff are inspired by working alongside him.

In his eyes, Mississippi State University is a “hidden treasure” by brand. In the eyes of those around him, Dr. Mike Breazeale is the hidden treasure, a hero wearing a sweater vest like a cape.

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