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NEW YORK, March 9, 2016 – The American Marketing Association, NY Chapter today announced three leaders responsible for outstanding contributions to the field of marketing as 2016 inductees to its Marketing Hall of Fame®: Bob Greenberg, founder, chairman/CEO of trailblazing agency R/GA; John Hayes, former chief marketing officer at American Express; and legendary marketing strategist and author Al Ries.
The three will be celebrated at the 2016 Marketing Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony on Thursday, April 28, 2016, 6:00-9:00 pm in the auditorium at PwC headquarters, 300 Madison Avenue at 42nd St in New York. For tickets and other information, please visit www.marketinghalloffame.org.
The Marketing Hall of Fame was established by the NY chapter of the AMA (http://www.nyama.org) to celebrate brilliance in marketing across all fields and industries. Each year, the program recognizes individuals who are making outstanding contributions to the field and inspiring a new generation of marketers.
The honor is open to any current marketing practitioner from the corporate, agency, research or academic worlds with a minimum of 10 years experience who is responsible for marketing innovations that have had dramatic impact on business results, raised marketing’s profile in business overall or moved the profession forward by creating new tools and approaches.
Past Marketing Hall of Fame inductees include Trevor Edwards, president, Nike Brands; Yvon Chouinard, founder, Patagonia; Shelly Lazarus, chairman emeritus, Ogilvy & Mather; Beth Comstock, CMO, GE; Joseph V. Tripodi, former chief marketing & commerce officer, The Coca-Cola Company; David Aaker, vice chairman, Prophet and BerkeleyHaas School of Business, UC Berkeley professor emeritus, and Philip Kotler, author and distinguished professor of International Marketing, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University.
The selection process began last September with an open call for nominations, drawing more than 200 nominations. NYAMA’s Marketing Hall of Fame Committee evaluated the nominations against the inductee criteria and developed a shortlist of the 50 highest-qualified nominees. This shortlist was reviewed by the Marketing Hall of Fame Academy (https://mhof.wpengine.com/marketing-hall-of-fame-academy/), an exclusive, invitation-only body of 180 senior marketers, agency executives, researchers and academics hand-selected by the NYAMA Board of Directors, who cast ballots to determine the 12 finalists.
This year’s three inductees were selected from the finalists list by the Marketing Hall of Fame Final Judging Panel, which included top executives from the industry’s leading marketing, advertising and research associations and organizations and past Marketing Hall of Fame inductees: David Aaker, vice chairman, Prophet and BerkeleyHaas School of Business, UC Berkeley professor emeritus; David W. Almy, CEO, Marketing Research Association (MRA); Trevor Edwards, president, Nike Brands; Gayle Fuguitt, CEO, Advertising Research Foundation (ARF); Nancy Hill, CEO, 4As; Russ Klein, CEO, American Marketing Association (AMA); Shelly Lazarus, chairman emeritus, Ogilvy & Mather; Bob Liodice, CEO, Association of National Advertisers (ANA); Kendall Nash, past-president, Qualitative Research Consultants Association, and Earl Taylor, CMO, Marketing Science Institute.
“Our 2016 inductees represent an extraordinarily impressive cross-section of influential marketers, all world-renowned for their outstanding contributions to the field,” said Joanna Seddon, president of the NYAMA and president, Global Brand Consulting, OgilvyRED. “Selection of these inductees is the decision of the several hundred marketers leading marketers who form our Marketing Hall of Fame Academy and final judging panel. This rigorous process has once again resulted in our honoring three leaders who are shaping the ways we practice marketing today and inspiring the marketers of the future.”
“We established the Marketing Hall of Fame to recognize our most admired colleagues for the many brilliant ways they have advanced our profession,” said Robert Kahn, 2016 Marketing Hall of Fame chairman, NYAMA board member and founder, Kahn Consulting, Inc. “We are extremely proud to celebrate the extraordinary contributions of Bob Greenberg, John Hayes and Al Ries, all of whom truly represent the pinnacle of leadership and innovation in our field.”
The 2016 Marketing Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony on April 28, 2016 at PwC headquarters in New York will include cocktails and hors d’oeuvres followed by presentations from each of this year’s inductees. By providing an overview of their careers and most notable successes, the event will offer attendees rare insights into each inductee’s view of how marketing will evolve in the future.
The NYAMA Marketing Hall of Fame Committee is chaired by Robert Kahn, founder, Kahn Consulting, Inc. The committee includes OgilvyRED’s Joanna Seddon; Don Sexton, professor of marketing, Columbia Business School; Randall Ringer, CEO, Verse Group LLC; Lukas Pospichal, managing director, GreenBook and NYAMA; David Rogers, faculty, Digital Marketing and executive director, BRITE, Columbia Business School; Lee Hornick, president, Business Communications Worldwide; Priya Doty, senior director product marketing, CA Technologies; Cristiano Andreotti, creative director, Verse Group, LLC; Lisa Merriam, president, Merriam Associates; Molly Purcell, marketing and administrative coordinator, NYAMA; Jack Mello, Jack Mello PR and other NYAMA volunteers.
Premium sponsors for the 2016 Marketing Hall of Fame include R/GA, PwC, media partner Advertising Age and others to be announced soon. Past sponsors included a range of leading brands and agencies such as American Express, IBM, GE, Blackstone Group, Twitter, The Wall Street Journal, J. Walter Thompson, BBDO, Ogilvy, McCann Worldgroup, Wieden+Kennedy, OMD | the grid, Columbia Business School, GreenBook, Insight Innovation Exchange, Thornberg & Forester, Verse Group LLC and others. For information about sponsorship opportunities, please contact NYAMA board member Lee Hornick at leehornick@hotmail.com.
2016 Marketing Hall of Fame inductee bios:
Bob Greenberg, founder, chairman/CEO, R/GA
Bob Greenberg has been a pioneer in the advertising and communications industry for nearly four decades. He leads the vision for R/GA, an agency that serves as the partner for Fortune 500 companies and world-renowned brands, including Nike, Beats by Dr. Dre, Unilever, Samsung, Google, Verizon, and Johnson & Johnson.
R/GA is one of the world’s most influential agencies, emphasizing the importance of business and brand consulting, product and service innovation and breakthrough communications in the connected age. Bob recently led the vision for the new R/GA headquarters. By connecting the physical and digital landscapes and reimagining the relationship between architecture, design, and technology, Bob built a connected space that inspires creativity, innovation, and collaboration while helping to retain its top talent.
Bob, along with his brother Richard, founded R/Greenberg Associates (R/GA) in 1977 with the idea of creating a company that valued design but also focused on developing leading-edge motion graphics and live-action film and video production. The company created groundbreaking visual effects for movies such as Alien, Predator, Se7en and Zelig. To date, R/GA’s body of work spans 400 feature films and 4,000 television commercials, and the company has offices in New York, Chicago, Austin, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Portland, and internationally in London, Bucharest, Istanbul, São Paulo, Santiago, Buenos Aires, Sydney, Singapore and Shanghai.
Bob has evolved the company several times since its founding, transforming it from a world-class movie title shop, to a digital studio, to a major digital advertising agency and today, to an all-in-one full-service agency, product and service innovator and consultancy. Now in its fifth business model, R/GA has become one of the most successful integrated marketing services companies, creating everything from new products and digital services to social and mobile campaigns to broadcast commercials.
He has served on the boards of numerous schools and organizations, including the Tisch School of the Arts (Dean’s Council Advisory Board), NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, and Parsons The New School for Design. Bob currently serves on the boards of Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Ad Council, and the Berlin School of Creative Leadership, and is also a member of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Bob has won almost every industry award for creativity, including the Academy Award, D&AD, and Cannes Lions. Among his most notable awards are the Cannes Lions lifetime achievement Lion of St. Mark, Honorary Royal Designer for Industry (HonRDI) from the Royal Society for Arts, the ANDYs Bravery Award, the 2007 BDA Lifetime Achievement Award, Clio Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006, Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award for Communications in 2003, and the Chrysler Award for Innovation in Design. He was also the Cannes International Advertising Festival Cyber Jury President in 2004 and 2013, served as a member of the 2005 Titanium Jury, and President of the Titanium and Integrated Jury in 2010. Bob was also recently inducted into the Advertising Hall of Fame and the Creative Hall of Fame.
John Hayes, former chief marketing officer, American Express
John Hayes is former chief marketing officer of American Express, which does business in over 120 countries. For more than 20 years, John oversaw American Express’s marketing efforts worldwide, shaping both the company and its brand.
In addition to overseeing marketing strategies and product development, he led the functions of global advertising, digital marketing, market research, corporate sponsorships, brand management and publishing organizations. He has been the force behind the business strategies that have resulted in iconic campaigns such as “My life. My card.” Under John’s leadership, American Express also created over 200 new product launches including the coveted Centurion black card, Blue and more recently Serve from American Express.
Giving back is a core value at American Express and the company is often credited as having launched the first cause-related marketing campaign in history. John has continued this tradition, helping to impact the lives of many through programs such as “Charge Against Hunger” providing food for those in need across the country, “Save The Music” supporting music programs in underprivileged schools in America, and most recently, “Members Project” which empowers the community of members in new ways to make a difference in the world in which we live.
In 2001, John brought American Express in as the founding sponsor of the Tribeca Film Festival, created to revitalize and bring business and energy back to lower Manhattan after the events of September 11, 2001, and in 2006 he was one of the creators of the (RED) campaign, a revolutionary marketing effort to address the AIDS emergency in Africa.
John served on the Yahoo Board of Directors, and is a member of “The Well” at Charity Water and sits on the council for Save the Children – Newborn and Child Survival campaign. He has been recognized for his contribution to business and the community on numerous occasions, most recently receiving the “2010 Corporate Marketing Executive of the Year” by the Delaney Report, “2009 Global Leadership Award” from the UJA of NY and honored with the “2007 Distinguished Citizenship Award” from the John A. Reisenbach Foundation. His work also received an Emmy Award in 2007 from the Academy of Television, Arts and Sciences and numerous Cannes Lions including two Grand Prix awards in 2012.
John received a BA in communications from Seton Hall University and was the president of Lowe and Partners, prior to joining American Express.
Al Ries, marketing strategist and author
Al Ries is a legendary marketing strategist and the bestselling author of 11 books which have sold over three million copies worldwide, including “Positioning, Marketing Warfare,” “The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing”, “Focus” and “The Fall of Advertising & the Rise of PR”.
In 1972, Al co-authored the now infamous three-part series of articles declaring the arrival of the “Positioning Era” in Advertising Age magazine. The concept of positioning revolutionized how people viewed advertising and marketing, which was traditionally thought of as communications. “Positioning” told marketers to forget communicating the benefits of a brand, instead you need to look inside the mind of the consumer to find a position you can own. Success depends on finding an open hole in the mind and then become the first to fill the hole with your brand name.
Positioning wasn’t the only big idea Al Ries contributed to marketing. In his six decades of work, Al has introduced many new ideas including focus, origin of brands, immutable laws of branding” and the rise of PR. His latest book, “War in the Boardroom”, covers the battle between marketing and management over strategy.
As a marketing consultant, Al has worked with hundreds of companies around the world including Apple, Disney, Doritos, Frito-Lay, Ford, Microsoft, Monsanto, Georgia-Pacific, Great Wall Motors, P&G, Papa John’s Pizza, Samsung, Siemens and Unilever.
He started his career in the ad department of General Electric, and six years later joined Needham Louis & Broby and then Marsteller Inc. By 1963, he was ready to break out on his own and founded the Ries Cappeillo Colwell advertising agency. It was a successful as a B-to-B agency, but the launch of the positioning concept put them on the map and became the buzzword of the decade. The agency was renamed Trout & Ries Advertising in 1979, with Al serving as chairman, and in the long-awaited “Positioning” book was published in 1981. Al and Jack Trout went on to write four additional books together: “Marketing Warfare”, “Bottom-up Marketing”, “Horse Sense” and “The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing”.
Al began the third act of his career in 1994 when he joined with his daughter Laura Ries, fresh out of Northwestern University and after a short stint at TBWA Advertising, to form Ries & Ries consulting.
In 1996, Al wrote his seminal classic book “Focus”. which continues to be his mantra for successful brand building and positioning. In 1997, the Ries duo relocated to Atlanta for the weather and access to the world’s busiest airport. Over the past 20 years, Al and Laura have written five books together including “The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding”, “The 11 Immutable Laws of Internet Branding”, “The Fall of Advertising & the Rise of PR”, “Origin of Brands” and “War in the Boardroom”. Their latest marketing ideas are “Visual Hammer” and “Battlecry”, with Al writing the prefaces to these two books published by Laura.
Al turns 90 years old in 2016, but you would never know it. He continues to actively work full-time consulting with clients, writing his Advertising Age column and traveling the world giving speeches, going to Sri Lanka, Italy, Japan and China in the last year alone. The Ries & Ries China office has been particularly busy the past decade, educating and consulting with Chinese marketing professionals on the principles of positioning and focus.
Al has served as president of the Association of Industrial Advertisers (now the Business Marketing Association) and president of the Advertising Club of New York.
The mission of the New York American Marketing Association (NYAMA, www.nyama.org is to inspire, support and celebrate brilliance in marketing. Founded in 1931, the NYAMA is the principal community for marketing professionals across all industries and disciplines in the New York area. Offering programs, monthly events, and interaction with the chapter through volunteer activities, we provide marketers with an opportunity to increase their knowledge and reach in the marketing community.
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