Tim Calkins
Most established brands lose share not because a competitor invented something new, but because the incumbent had no plan for the attack when it came. Marketing teams are trained to launch and build; very few are trained to defend a position, protect a price corridor or hold a category against a credible challenger. The cost of that gap shows up in lost margin years before it shows up in lost revenue.
Tim Calkins is a Kellogg marketing professor and former Kraft Foods brand operator who helps leadership teams build, defend and grow brands as commercial assets rather than communications projects.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Tim Calkins
- A practical authority on defensive strategy, a discipline most marketing teams do not formally teach. Defending Your Brand was named 2013 Marketing Book of the Year by Expert Marketer Magazine and remains one of the few named texts on how incumbents respond to competitive attack
- A decade of operating credibility at Kraft Foods running brands including Miracle Whip, DiGiorno, Taco Bell and A.1. Steak Sauce, with responsibility for more than two dozen new product launches
- A teaching record that boards take seriously: twice-winner of Kellogg’s Lavengood Outstanding Professor of the Year Award, one of six faculty to do so in its 40-plus year history
- Direct, current consulting work with Abbott, Amgen, Novo Nordisk, Eli Lilly and Kraft Heinz through Class 5 Consulting, which keeps the frameworks tested against live commercial pressure
- A specialism in biomedical and healthcare marketing that makes him useful to pharmaceutical and medtech leadership teams that find generic brand keynotes irrelevant
Biography highlights
- Clinical Professor of Marketing and Associate Chair of the Marketing Department, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University
- Almost 11 years at Kraft Foods leading brands including Miracle Whip, DiGiorno, Taco Bell, Parkay and A.1. Steak Sauce; responsible for more than two dozen new product launches
- Author of Defending Your Brand (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) and Breakthrough Marketing Plans (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, 2012); co-editor of Kellogg on Branding (Wiley, 2005) and Kellogg on Branding in a Hyper-Connected World (Wiley, 2019)
- How to Wash a Chicken: Mastering the Business Presentation (Page Two, 2018) won Top Business Book at the IndieReader Discovery Awards and the Gold Prize for Business and Economics at the Foreword Indies
- Two-time winner of Kellogg’s Lawrence G. Lavengood Outstanding Professor of the Year Award (2006, 2013); also recipient of the Sidney J. Levy Teaching Award and the Kellogg-WHU Top Professor Award
- Founder of Class 5 Consulting, advising Abbott, Amgen, Novo Nordisk, Eli Lilly, Kraft Heinz and Hearst on brand and growth strategy
- BA History (cum laude), Yale; MBA, Harvard Business School
Biography
Most marketing teams are trained to launch and to build. Very few are trained to defend. That asymmetry is what Tim Calkins has spent two decades teaching against, first as a brand operator at Kraft Foods, then at Kellogg, where he holds the Associate Chair of the Marketing Department and is Clinical Professor of Marketing.
His book Defending Your Brand (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) is one of the few named texts on how incumbents respond to a credible competitive attack. Expert Marketer Magazine called it the 2013 Marketing Book of the Year. The thinking sits on top of close to 11 years inside Kraft, running brands including Miracle Whip, DiGiorno, Taco Bell and A.1. Steak Sauce, and launching more than two dozen new products.
Through Class 5 Consulting, his current clients include Abbott, Amgen, Novo Nordisk, Eli Lilly, Kraft Heinz and Hearst, work that keeps his frameworks tested against live margin and share pressure. At Kellogg he teaches Marketing Strategy, Strategic Marketing Decisions, Biomedical Marketing and Marketing Strategy for Growth and Defense, and co-edited the school’s flagship branding texts, Kellogg on Branding (Wiley, 2005) and Kellogg on Branding in a Hyper-Connected World (Wiley, 2019).
His standing inside the school is itself a credential. He is one of only six faculty in the 40-plus year history of Kellogg’s Lavengood Outstanding Professor of the Year Award to have won it twice, in 2006 and 2013. His later book, How to Wash a Chicken: Mastering the Business Presentation (Page Two, 2018), took Top Business Book at the IndieReader Discovery Awards and the Gold Prize for Business and Economics at the Foreword Indies, and is read inside Fortune 500 communications and commercial teams as a practical text on how senior executives lose, and win, the room.
Key speaking topics
- Brand strategy and brand building
- Defensive strategy and competitive response
- Marketing planning and growth strategy
- Brand portfolio management
- Healthcare and biomedical marketing
- Business presentations and senior executive communication
- Lessons from Super Bowl advertising
Ideal for
- CMOs, brand directors and category leaders inside established consumer, healthcare and B2B brand businesses
- Pharmaceutical, medtech and biotech commercial leadership teams running launch or defence on a regulated product
- Senior executives preparing for high-stakes internal and external presentations
- Executive education and leadership programmes inside Fortune 500 marketing and commercial functions
Audience outcomes
- A working framework for defending a brand position against a credible competitive attack, drawn from Defending Your Brand
- A clearer view of how to allocate marketing investment across the brand portfolio under pressure on margin
- Specific, named tactics for sharper marketing plans, applicable inside the audience’s own planning cycle
- Practical correction on the recurring failure modes of senior executive presentations, drawn from How to Wash a Chicken
- Sector-specific application for healthcare and biomedical audiences, where most generic brand content does not land
Talks
A working session on why strong brands generate disproportionate commercial value and what specifically separates a managed brand asset from a marketing budget.
Key takeaways:
- How brand strength translates into pricing power, distribution leverage and defensibility
- Where most large companies misread their own brand equity
- What the brand team actually owns, versus what it gets blamed for
A direct treatment of defensive strategy: what to do when a credible competitor moves on your category, your price corridor or your customer.
Key takeaways:
- A decision framework for assessing the seriousness of a competitive attack
- Specific defensive moves used by incumbents that hold position, and the ones that fail
- How to build the muscle of defence into a marketing organisation that has only been trained to grow
A practical session for senior executives on how to win the room in high-stakes internal and external presentations, drawn from How to Wash a Chicken.
Key takeaways:
- The recurring failure modes of executive presentations and why they happen
- How to structure a presentation around a single defensible argument
- What changes when the audience is a board, a regulator or a buy-side investor