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The world's top marketing directors

In today’s global marketplace, Marketing Director jobs focus on applying marketing theories and techniques in business, as well as managing a company’s marketing resources and activities. Many of the world’s top marketing directors demonstrate academic brilliance as well as exceptional industry experience.

Professor Philip C. Kotler (USA)

Perhaps the most respected marketing guru in the world, Professor Philip Kotler is the S. C. Johnson & Son Distinguished Professor of International Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Born in Chicago in May 1931, Kotler has had a distinguished academic career in the fields of economics, mathematics and behavioural sciences, and his book Marketing Management is the world's most widely used graduate level textbook in marketing. Kotler has been awarded honorary degrees from 16 universities worldwide, and four books by other marketing experts devote an entire chapter to his work.

Kenichi Ohmae (Japan)

The developer of the 3Cs model, Kenichi Ohmae is a business and corporate strategist. Born in February 1943 in Japan, his illustrious academic career includes a doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in nuclear engineering. Following a post as a senior design engineer for Hitachi, the international firm of management consultants, McKinsey & Company, welcomed Ohmae as a senior partner – a post he held for twenty-three years. Kenichi Ohmae has vast experience as a marketing director for a wide range of industries, including finance, chemicals, telecommunications, food and consumer electronics.

Wally Olins, CBE (UK)

A practitioner of corporate identity and branding, Wally Olins was born in London in December 1930. Educated at Oxford, Olins went into advertising, travelling to India before returning to London five years later to co-found Wolff Olins, which he chaired until 1997. He also founded Saffron Bran Consultants in 2001. Author of many books, his seminal work is Corporate Identity and he has taught in numerous business schools throughout the world. Winner of several achievement awards, Olins was appointed to create a brand identity for the state of West Bengal in 2010.

Professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter (USA)

The holder of the Ernest L. Arbuckle Professorship, Rosabeth Moss Kanter was born in March 1943 in Ohio. She studied sociology and English literature, gaining a PhD before turning to business. With many awards to her name, Kanter’s publications include the prize-winning Men and Women of the Corporation and she holds 23 honorary degrees from universities around the world. A major work-family research prize has been named in her honour. Kanter was the top-ranking woman in a 2002 study of Top Business Intellectuals and Good Housekeeping magazine cited her as one of the "125 women who changed our world" over the past 125 years.

Gary Hamel (USA)

Founder of the Chicago-based international management consultants, Strategos, Gary Hamel was born in 1954 and educated in Michigan at Andrews University and the Ross School of Business (University of Michigan). With colleague, C. K. Prahad, Hamel originated the concept of core competencies. A visiting professor to various UK and US institutions, he famously wrote about ‘resilience in business strategy’ in a 2003 Harvard Business Review article titled The Quest for Resilience. In 2008 the Wall Street Journal ranked Hamel as one of the world's most influential business thinkers, and Fortune magazine has called him "the world's leading expert on business strategy."