Kevin Lane Keller
Global Authority on Branding and Marketing Strategy
- E. B. Osborn Professor of Marketing at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business, with previous faculty roles at Stanford, Berkeley, and UNC
- Globally recognized branding expert and trusted advisor to leading companies including Nike, Disney, Intel, and Procter & Gamble
- Author of over 135 scholarly papers and co-author of the widely used textbooks Strategic Brand Management and Marketing Management
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Kevin Lane Keller's 2025 biography
Kevin Lane Keller: Trusted Advisor to the World’s Leading Brands
Kevin Lane Keller is the E. B. Osborn Professor of Marketing at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. Professor Keller has an AB (with distinction) in math and economics from Cornell University, an MBA from Carnegie-Mellon University, and a PhD in marketing from Duke University. At Dartmouth, he has taught popular MBA and executive education courses on strategic brand management and marketing management.
Previously, Professor Keller was a tenured member of the faculty at Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, where he also served as the head of the marketing group. Additionally, he has been on the faculty at the University of California at Berkeley and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, been a visiting professor at Duke University and the Australian Graduate School of Management, and has two years of industry experience as Marketing Consultant for Bank of America.
Professor Keller’s areas of expertise include consumer psychology and branding, communications and marketing strategies. His research has been published numerous times in each of the four of the major marketing journals – the Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Research and Marketing Science. An academic pioneer in the study of brands and branding, with over 135 published papers and over 365,000 Google Scholar cites, he is one of the most highly cited of all marketing academics world-wide and has received numerous awards for his research accomplishments.
Actively involved with industry, he has worked on a host of different types of marketing projects. He has served as a long-time consultant and trusted advisor to marketers for some of the world’s most successful brands, including Accenture, American Express, Disney, Ford, Intel, Levi Strauss, Nike, Procter & Gamble, and Samsung. Additional brand consulting activities have been with other top companies such as Adobe, Allstate, Beiersdorf (Nivea), BJs, BlueCross BlueShield, Campbell, Capital One, Caterpillar, Colgate, Combe, Eli Lilly, ExxonMobil, General Mills, GfK, Goodyear, Hasbro, Heineken, Intuit, Irving Oil, Johnson & Johnson, Kodak, L.L. Bean, Mayo Clinic, MTV, Nordstrom, Ocean Spray, Red Hat, SAB Miller, Serta, Shell Oil, Starbucks, Time Warner Cable, Unilever, and Young & Rubicam.
Professor Keller has served as an academic trustee for the prestigious Marketing Science Institute from 2000 to 2006, as their Executive Director from 2013 to 2015, and as a member of their Executive Committee and Board from 2015-2022. He has also served as an expert witness for top firms such as Amazon, Ernst & Young, Facebook, Mercedes-Benz, and the NFL. A popular and highly sought-after speaker, he has made keynote speeches and conducted workshops with top executives in a wide variety of forums. Some of his senior management and marketing training clients have included such diverse business organizations as AT&T, Bristol Myers Squibb, Cisco, Coca-Cola, Deutsche Telekom, ExxonMobil, Fidelity, GE, Google, Hershey, Hyundai, IBM, Macy’s, Microsoft, Novartis, Pepsico, S.C. Johnson, and Wyeth. He has lectured at over 150 conferences, conventions, seminars, and symposiums all over the world, from Seoul to Johannesburg, from Sydney to Stockholm, and from Sao Paulo to Mumbai.
Professor Keller is currently conducting a variety of research studies that address marketing, branding and communication issues. Heralded as the “bible of branding,” his textbook, Strategic Brand Management, now co-authored with Vanitha Swaminathan, is in its 5th edition and has been adopted at top business schools and leading firms across the globe. He is also the co-author with Philip Kotler and Alex Chernev of Marketing Management, the most widely used MBA textbook in marketing around the world, now in its 16th edition.
An avid sports, music, and film enthusiast, in his so-called spare time, he has helped to manage and market, as well as serve as executive producer, for one of Australia’s great rock and roll treasures, The Church, as well as for the late American power-pop legends Tommy Keene and Dwight Twilley. He is a long-time member of the Board of Directors for the Doug Flutie, Jr. Foundation for Autism. Professor Keller lives in Etna, NH with his wife, Punam (also a Tuck marketing professor).
Kevin Lane Keller's 2025 talks & topics
BUILDING GLOBAL POWER BRANDS
Much has changed in the 21st century, but one thing has not – the importance of brands. The ability of brands to set expectations for consumers and simplify and enrich their lives at the same time has never been more critical. A new generation of consumers seeks meaning in their lives and values brands that are innovative and relevant. For firms, brands remain their most important intangible asset, but they must be carefully nurtured and managed in a challenging world marked by major changes in the consumer, competitive, technological, political, economic, and regulatory environments. This reality is especially true in the e-cigarette market.
Professor Kevin Lane Keller’s talk would begin by establishing the importance of global branding, providing that foundation and more. He would address the need to balance short-term performance with long-term brand building, outlining the numerous marketing and financial benefits of having a strong brand. The bulk of his talk, however, would address crucial issues in building and managing a global power brand. He would focus on 4–5 main topics, sharing examples, best practices, and current case studies based in part on his extensive consulting experience with leading global brands like Nike, Starbucks, Ford, Disney, American Express, and many more.
Professor Keller would want to ensure that the topics he covers align with JTI’s priorities, so he would remain completely flexible in accommodating corporate objectives. At the same time, he would also suggest important topics to consider more broadly. The main ones he would recommend include:
- Establishing brand platforms defined by solving problems and satisfying consumer needs;
- Crafting brand narratives that tell the story of the brand’s past, present, and future;
- Integrating channels and communications so that “the whole is greater than the sum of the parts;”
- Maximizing perceived brand value; and
- Optimally incorporating AI into marketing strategy and tactics.
He could also allow time for a robust Q&A session, if desired.