Week 6:
10th October 2025
Culture is the most powerful force influencing human behavior, affecting everything from clothing choices to voting habits, yet many lack a deep understanding of it. This gap in knowledge prevents business leaders from fully utilizing culture’s potential to motivate action. Understanding cultural dynamics grants influence, whereas ignorance results in being influenced. The session aims to explore cultural mechanisms, enabling leaders to leverage cultural power effectively.
Week 7:
17th October 2025
What if anything can the digital age teach us when creating brand strategies and should strategies refer only to communication or take the leap into Experience? Applying key concepts of experience design to brand thinking. Brand experience (BX?) and implications for audience definitions, how campaigns are planned and how we measure success. The role of technology in all of this and why design thinking may be the answer.
Week 10:
14th November 2025
Mischief has dominated the industry, earning titles like #1 Global Ad Agency of the Year (Ad Age A-List, 2022 & 2024), #1 Ad Agency of the Year (Campaign US, 2022 & 2023), US Ad Agency of the Year (Adweek, 2023), Most Effective US Independent Agency (Effie Awards, 2023), and World’s Most Innovative Ad Agency (Fast Company, 2022, 2023, 2024). What’s the role of strategy behind this phenomenal success?
In this session, we’ll take a deep dive into the role of strategy in Mischief’s creative process. Guided by Jeff McCory, CSO at Mischief, we’ll explore how strategy fuels breakthrough ideas, the types of insights that shape award-winning work, and the art of crafting briefs that truly inspire. We’ll also uncover what it takes to be a great strategist in one of the world’s most disruptive and effective agencies.
Hoala Amsterdam Director and Program Curator.
Agustín Soriano, Independent Strategy Consultant (freelance) | Ex- CSO McCann, Volvo Cars, Forsman&Bodenfors | 2x Gold EuroEffie winner
Agustín brought the Hoala experience in 2015 to Amsterdam with the first international edition of the Hoala´s professional master course in Brand Strategy where he was also part of the internationally recognized line up of lecturers.
This experience allowed Agustin to apply all the learnings from the previous editions to this renewed and powerful online program.
Why Brand Strategy?
In today’s highly competitive, fast-paced, and culturally complex marketplace, strategic planning has become critical for brands striving to remain relevant and stand out. The challenge is magnified by elusive audiences and the ongoing fragmentation of media, highlighting the increasingly crucial role of strategists. It’s no wonder that strategy has emerged as one of the most sought-after roles in the advertising and communication sector.
Moreover, the traditional approach to strategy, still taught in some academic and creative schools, fails to meet the real-world challenges that brands encounter daily.
Recognizing these challenges, HOALA is committed to offering cutting-edge training for strategists and brand professionals. We ensure our courses are constantly updated and taught by the world’s leading strategic thinkers, aiming to provide an unparalleled, innovative, and transformative learning experience.
What are you going to learn
This course aims to equip you with both a robust theoretical foundation in strategy and extensive practical insights relevant to a strategist’s everyday tasks. The core ambition of the course is to transform participants into multifaceted strategists.
We’ve curated a program featuring 12 exceptional lecturers, each responsible for creating a bespoke session around an assigned topic. In these 12 tailor-made contemporary and insightful strategic sessions you are going to learn:
- Using tools and deep intuition to identify and solve brand communication challenges.
- Transforming the information from the research phase into insightful inputs that accelerate and inspire the creativity process.
- Evolving into a brand expert adept at navigating the digital media landscape and engaging with consumers
- Profound consumer understanding, prioritizing research to unearth insights and understanding human behavior.
- Inspiring as an idea communicator who can lead teams and clients.
How are you going to learn it
GROUP
SESSIONS
- 12 online sessions led by eminent strategy experts, offering a blend of theoretical insights, practical knowledge and firsthand experiences from their work with current and past brands.
- 3 hours of tailor-made contemporary and insightful strategic sessions based on the most important topics for strategists today.
PRIVATE
SESSIONS
- You will have 2 one-to-one private sessions with the 2 lecturers of your choice
- 30 min where you can ask the questions you always wanted to ask, to solve the doubts you always wanted to solve and to receive the mentoring you need from the best strategists in the world.
- Availability for these personal sessions is on a first-come, first-served basis, and once you formalize your enrollment.
- Each lecturer has a limited number of sessions they can be part of, so sign up as soon as possible and be the first one to choose!
Building from your own experience and leveraging the world’s best strategists’ thought leadership, experience and points of view, you will be able to make a disproportionate impact in your profile in just 3 months.
Consider asking your company
We’re thrilled to support and help people with an employer who can support the time and money it will take. Because if you think about it, it is a great deal for both sides – you will get the best strategy training in the world and your company and clients will gain a strategy talent on steroids.
The Hoala Experience
More than 10 years making our attendees the center, generating a unique, personalized, close and quality experience that will transform you professionally and personally.
Practical Information
From 5th sep – to 28th nov 2025
Fridays afternoon, from 17:00-20:00 hrs, CEST.
Online
3.800€
Limited vacancies
Registration period:
Until all vacancies are filled
Alumni testimonial
FAQS
Founded in Spain in 2013 by Alexia Grau, Hoala has become the main reference in the world for specialized training in creativity, strategy and innovation for professional communicators.
The first edition of the Professional Master Course in Brand Strategy was celebrated in 2013 in Valencia, Spain. In 2015 it was the turn for the first international edition in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. And since 2020, Hoala Amsterdam offered the course online while keeping intact the spirit of our foundational principle: “to deliver the most powerful strategy training in the world for communication professionals”.
This course is designed to help professionals working with brand communication to dramatically boost their strategic game and skills. This master course will challenge you to learn from different points of view, to see differently, to make better-informed decisions and to engage and connect with consumers in a deeper and more meaningful way.
The master course gathers the best strategy leaders from the best agencies and brands around the world to engage a selected group of students in an intense 12-week process. Since the first international edition, students from 25+ different countries worldwide have joined us in Hoala Amsterdam.
Each week, a new session about a key strategic topic is led by a different lecturer with the objective of sparking insightful conversations and debates. During each session, every student is expected to participate and add to the conversation. The entire course is conducted in English, and skill and confidence in English is a specific admission requirement. The course demands online attendance.
Attending students include strategists and planners, freelancers, creatives, account directors, independent professionals, brand managers, entrepreneurs and corporate employees. Represented agencies and brands include Adidas, Google, McCann Erikson, 72&Sunny, Ogilvy, J. Walter Thompson, Saatchi&Saatchi, BBDO, TBWA, Publicis, DDB, Y&R, Isobar, among others. For a more complete list of companies and alumni, visit our Hoala Alumni section.
The course is structured through 12 online sessions where world-class strategy leaders from the most renewed agencies in the world will provide you theoretical and practical knowledge, as well as their professional experience with the brands they work for.
The master course has an online format, so you will be able to combine the course with your professional duties. The weekly sessions are have 3 hours long and will be run on Fridays afternoon, from 17:00-20:00 hrs, CET. Conscious of time differences and depending on where in the world the lecturer is at, Hoala can carry out modifications in dates or time that will be communicated beforehand to all the attendees.
In addition to this, these 3 hours online sessions will be complemented with 2 online one-to-one private sessions with the lecturers of your choice. The selection will be done in strict signing order in the course as each lecturer has a limited number of sessions they can be part of.
In order to continue with the personalized and close training style that Hoala is famous for, we introduced for this online edition 2 one-to-one private sessions for each attendee with the lecturers of their choice. This selection will be done in strict signing order as each lecturer has a limited number of sessions they can be part of.
Choose the 2 lecturers from this year’s program you would like to talk with and prepare those questions you have always wanted to ask. Interested in positioning strategy? Choose Mark. Comms planning maybe? Michael is your guy. Research perhaps? Lucy will for sure blow your mind. Regardless of who you choose, get ready to receive guidance, tips, formed opinions and uncomfortable answers!
Each one of the 2 one-to-one sessions will be 30 minutes long and will be arranged in sync with the agenda and availability of each chosen lecturer.