Wharton@Work

June 2025 | 

Made to Measure: Wharton’s Custom Executive Learning

Inside Wharton’s Approach to Custom Executive Learning

Today’s business problems don’t come with a playbook. That’s why companies serious about tackling their strategic challenges partner with Wharton to co-create custom executive education programs. These programs are built around each organization’s goals — combining academic rigor with business relevance to drive measurable impact. Few understand this better than Professor David Reibstein, a longtime architect and instructor of Wharton’s custom marketing programs. In this conversation, Reibstein shares what sets successful custom programs apart, how client collaboration works best, and why tailored learning matters more than ever in a fast-moving environment.

Wharton@Work: Let’s start with the first contact between an organization and Wharton. A leader or leaders identify an area ripe for development and an infusion of new insights, research, and best practices. We know some of them reach out to you directly, and others contact the Custom team at Wharton Executive Education. Then what?

Dave Reibstein: As a marketer, what I need to do with a company is to first find out their needs. Sometimes they have a specific challenge they want help addressing. Sometimes they want to raise the overall aptitude of the people in the company. And other times, as with a Mexican-headquartered company we recently did a program for, they want to bring in leaders from multiple regions to help them understand what next-level marketing looks like, to get them oriented towards the future, and to level-set across the organization. But no matter the need, every client wants to bring cutting-edge research and practices into their organization, so they come to Wharton to learn cutting-edge research and things they should be thinking about that maybe they aren't currently.

W@W: In terms of the program content itself, how does that come together?

DR: I'm not a master of all trades, so I never try to teach everything myself. If a client wants the latest thinking on AI, I bring in professors like Eric Bradlow or Stefano Puntoni. If they're interested in customer lifetime value, I turn to Pete Fader. For pricing, it’s John Zhang and [Jagmohan] Raju. We have a deep and talented bench at Wharton, and part of my job is to act like a general contractor — diagnosing the need, identifying the right experts, and assembling the team. Then we curate the sessions into a coherent, purposeful flow. That’s the exciting part.

W@W: You mentioned AI and customer lifetime value — relatively new tools and concepts in marketing. How does the evolution in the field influence program content?

DR: We still teach the fundamentals — those haven’t changed — but a big part of what we do now is help people think through how digital and other advancements have altered the way we go to market. Customers interact with brands in totally new ways, and they generate all kinds of data along the way. And Gen AI is now shifting the whole field of marketing again. These big changes have become a core part of what we build into our programs.

W@W: What are some of the benefits of custom learning that companies considering it might not have thought about?

DR: Many companies are surprised to see what happens when they bring employees together who didn’t know each other. I ran a program for a pharmaceutical company that started in Philadelphia, and over time, it grew into programs in Munich, Barcelona, Singapore, Tokyo, and Bogotá. Eventually, they asked for one just for senior leaders, which we held in California.

In each case, the programs were regional, but a lot of the participants hadn’t met before. So not only were they learning from us — they were learning from each other. It became a real team-building experience, both for the individuals and for the company as a whole.

Another benefit is knowledge sharing. As a marketing professor, I often see companies doing great work in one region or product category and wanting to figure out how to scale that success elsewhere. These programs give them a platform to do that. When you bring people from around the world together, they share best practices across regions, products — everything. It’s incredibly instructive.

W@W: You teach MBA students, executive MBAs and full-time executives. What's the difference between teaching traditional students versus executive ones?

DR: It's really rewarding to see the maturation and evolution that ends up happening over a semester with my students. That is one benefit of teaching the MBA students over the course of a semester or quarter. When executive MBAs in particular come into my classroom, I'll talk about something, and then they go back to work. They come back two weeks later and they might say they tried what I had covered and it worked for them — but it didn't work for someone else. Then we spend some time talking about those differences and what are the conditions for successful implementation. I end up learning from that feedback as well.

With the executive programs, I like talking with them at the end of each day about how they could apply what they just learned. What they are going to do differently next week? When I can get the cooperation from their firm, I like them to write down their anticipated deliverables and send that to their CEO or senior manager who is going to check back in with them three months later. It adds a level of accountability that can help them really apply what they’ve learned.

W@W: What was the strangest or most out-of-the-ordinary request that you’ve gotten?

DR: That's a funny question. I have been asked a few times by senior management to grade the program participants. They want to know who really stood out, or who seemed like a misfit. I have not been hesitant to provide such feedback. It’s an interesting part of my profession to evaluate people and how well they're capturing the concepts.

W@W: What about rewarding experiences? Does one program stand out?

DR: Honestly, every program is rewarding. But at the top is what I heard from the president of a company a few months after a program ended. He said, “We applied what you were talking about as soon as we got back, and it saved us $400 million.” It’s always been my belief that marketing impact is measurable, so to hear that people tried something and were able to put a number on how much it just earned them is very rewarding.

W@W: You’ve been researching and teaching that concept for a couple of decades — the book you co-authored, Marketing Metrics, first came out in 2006 and is now in its fourth edition. Unlike that client you just mentioned, are there still firms that don’t realize they can quantify their marketing efforts?

DR: Absolutely, and unfortunately so. Plenty of companies still lean on gut feel and have no way to tell what’s actually driving value — so they can’t scale or improve. Marketing isn’t just creative; it’s measurable. My goal isn’t simply to deliver a well-rated program but to change how people think and act. If participants go back and do exactly what they did before, we’ve missed the mark. These programs are built to equip leaders with the tools and mindset to use data — so they return ready to measure, optimize, and boost performance.