Dr. Kevin Lane Keller: Professor of Marketing
Kevin Lane Keller is a global authority on strategic brand management whose research, frameworks and industry partnerships shape how leading organizations build, measure and grow powerful brands.
Quick Facts:
- One of the world's leading authorities on branding and marketing
- More than 135 published academic papers
- Over 365,000 Google Scholar citations
- Former Head of the Marketing Group at Stanford University
- Formats:
Keynote speaker, academic thought leader and branding strategy expert
- Audiences:
Executive leaders, CMOs, brand and marketing teams, academic institutions and organizations seeking research-driven brand strategy.
- Outcomes:
- Clear frameworks for building, measuring and managing brand equity
- Evidence-based guidance for communications and marketing strategy
- Tools for applying brand research insights to drive long-term business performance
- Travels from: Dartmouth, MA
- **Fee range: $20,001 - $35,000
Keynote Topics
Talent Short Bio
Kevin Lane Keller is the E. B. Osborn Professor of Marketing at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College and one of the world’s most influential scholars in consumer psychology, branding and marketing strategy. With degrees from Cornell, Carnegie Mellon and Duke University, he has taught premier MBA and executive courses on strategic brand management and marketing management at Dartmouth and previously served as a tenured professor and head of the marketing group at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. He has also held faculty positions at UC Berkeley and UNC Chapel Hill and visiting appointments at Duke and AGSM.
Keller’s research spans brand equity, consumer behavior, communications strategy and marketing metrics. With more than 135 published papers and over 365,000 Google Scholar citations, he is among the most cited marketing academics globally and has earned numerous research awards across the field’s leading journals.
Beyond academia, Keller has served as a trusted advisor to many of the world’s most successful brands, including Nike, Disney, Intel, Procter and Gamble, Samsung, American Express and Ford, along with consulting engagements for dozens of additional multinational companies across industries.
Talent Videos
Lessons in Building and Managing Strong Brands with Kevin Lane Keller
Kevin Lane Keller shares a comprehensive masterclass on how strong brands are built, managed and extended, illustrating key principles through six in-depth industry case studies.
Read Summary & Key Moments
Summary
In this 56 minute talk, Kevin Lane Keller introduces foundational concepts of branding before guiding the audience through six brand lessons drawn from his consulting and academic work. He opens with a light acknowledgment of the class setting and outlines the session: branding fundamentals, followed by case-study-based lessons from Nike, Disney, Levi’s, Red Bull, Procter and Gamble and Samsung.
He begins with Branding 101, emphasizing that brands fundamentally create awareness and differentiation, helping companies avoid commodity competition. Strong brands provide predictability and reduce consumer risk, anchoring both rational and emotional value. Keller stresses that great products form the core of strong brands, but every customer touchpoint shapes perceptions. Strong brands also improve marketing efficiency, enhance employee engagement, provide resilience in crises and represent significant intangible financial value.
He illustrates brand value through marketplace effects: transforming product experience, building loyalty, enabling price premiums, increasing channel support and fueling long-term growth. He shares the Snapple story to demonstrate how brand value can swing dramatically based on management decisions and alignment with core brand meaning.
Keller then transitions into six cases. Nike exemplifies innovation, relevance, customer closeness and blending rational performance with emotional aspiration. Disney demonstrates the necessity of top-down brand stewardship and clarity through a brand mantra that prevents misaligned licensing.
Levi’s illustrates the consequences of failing to innovate, maintain relevance and manage portfolio architecture. Red Bull shows the power of creating a new category and building a brand through design, symbolism and experiential marketing. Procter and Gamble highlights scientific brand building, understanding functional and emotional benefits, optimized architecture and the strategic use of value pricing and brand purpose. Samsung showcases how a compelling value proposition around quality, design and affordability allowed it to overtake Sony in consumer electronics.
Keller concludes by noting that branding is both art and science, then offers career advice for young marketers: cultivate customer empathy, interpret trends intelligently, build a philosophy and toolset, commit to lifelong learning and have fun in the practice of marketing.
Key Moments
- 15:20 Snapple case and the impact of misaligned brand management, distribution, communications and revitalization strategy.
- 22:10 Nike, Disney and Levi’s case studies illustrating innovation, relevance, guard rails, architecture and competitive positioning.
- 38:50 Red Bull and Procter and Gamble lessons on category creation, emotional payoffs, brand science and value pricing.
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