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Tim Calkins speaker

Tim Calkins

Marketing professor and brand strategist helping leaders build stronger brands and better presentations
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About

Gender: Male
Nationality: United States
Languages: English
Travels from: United States

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Biography Highlights

  • Marketing educator and speaker at Kellogg School of Management, known for his dynamic teaching on strategy and brand building, with multiple top teaching awards to his name.
  • Acclaimed author of branding and business communication books, including How to Wash a Chicken, Defending Your Brand and Breakthrough Marketing Plans.
  • Trusted consultant to Fortune 500 companies, advising organizations like Abbott and Novo Nordisk on brand strategy and competitive positioning.

Biography

Tim Calkins: Mastering Brand Strategy and Business Communication

Tim Calkins helps people and organizations build strong brands. He is an award-winning marketing professor, author, speaker, and consultant.

He is Associate Chair of the Marketing Department and Clinical Professor of Marketing at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. He teaches courses including Marketing Strategy and Biomedical Marketing.

Tim is a prolific author. His latest book, How to Wash a Chicken – Mastering the Business Presentation (Page Two, 2018), was named Top Business Book by the IndieReader Discovery Awards, and received the Gold Prize for Business and Economics from the Foreword Indie Book of the Year Awards.

Tim also wrote Defending Your Brand: How Smart Companies Use Defensive Strategy to Deal with Competitive Attacks (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). Earlier, Tim wrote Breakthrough Marketing Plans (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012 and 2008). He was co-editor of Kellogg on Branding (Wiley, 2005) and Kellogg on Branding in a Hyper-Connected World (Wiley, 2019).

Tim has received numerous awards for his teaching. He won the Lawrence G. Lavengood Outstanding Professor of the Year Award, the top teaching award at Kellogg, in 2006 and 2013, making him one of just six people to have won it twice in the award’s more than forty-year history. He was a finalist again in 2022 and 2023. In 2018, he received the Top Professor Award from Germany’s Kellogg-WHU Executive MBA Program. He received the Sidney J. Levy Teaching Award in 2008 and 2022. In 2016, Poets & Quants included him on its list of “Favorite MBA Professors.”

Tim maintains a blog on brand strategy: Building Strong Brands. Inc. included the blog on its list of “Six Blogs That Can Teach You More Than an MBA.” You can find the blog at www.timcalkins.com

In addition to teaching at Kellogg, Tim works with major corporations on strategy and branding issues. His recent clients include Abbott, Amgen, and Novo Nordisk.

Tim began his career at the consulting firm Booz Allen and Hamilton. He joined the marketing team at Kraft Foods in 1991. During his almost 11 years at Kraft, he led brands including Miracle Whip, Taco Bell, Parkay, and DiGiorno. He was responsible for the launch of more than two dozen new products.

He received his BA from Yale and his MBA from Harvard.

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Available: In person, Virtually
Available: In person, Virtually
Available: In person, Virtually
Available: In person, Virtually
Available: In person, Virtually
Available: In person, Virtually
Available: In person, Virtually
Available: In person, Virtually
Available: In person, Virtually

Books

Tim Calkins book

How to Wash a Chicken: Mastering the Business Presentation

How to Wash a Chicken is not a book about public speaking (or chickens), it’s a comprehensive playbook for business leaders and people on their way up to give the best presentations of their lives, and embark on a circle of presentation success. All too often, the best intentions and most innovative ideas get lost in a poorly executed presentation. Author Tim Calkins understands the power of a compelling presentation and the difficulty in accomplishing one. The brand strategist, professor and author has been giving presentations since he was eight, when he delivered his first official presentation with an uncooperative chicken at a 4-H competition. From business updates to project recommendations to marketing plans, Calkins has given more than five thousand presentations to date. With concrete suggestions, helpful tricks, and step-by-step guidance that’s applicable to all industries, Calkins sets out to propel his readers to create and deliver effective business presentations and pitches. When all lessons from How to Wash a Chicken are applied, readers will be empowered throughout the preparation and presentation process. They will be able to present with more confidence and conviction than they ever had before, setting them on a path of professional growth.

Read more..

How to Wash a Chicken: Mastering the Business Presentation

How to Wash a Chicken is not a book about public speaking (or chickens), it’s a comprehensive playbook for business leaders and people on their way up to give the best presentations of their lives, and embark on a circle of presentation success. All too often, the best intentions and most innovative ideas get lost in a poorly executed presentation. Author Tim Calkins understands the power of a compelling presentation and the difficulty in accomplishing one. The brand strategist, professor and author has been giving presentations since he was eight, when he delivered his first official presentation with an uncooperative chicken at a 4-H competition. From business updates to project recommendations to marketing plans, Calkins has given more than five thousand presentations to date. With concrete suggestions, helpful tricks, and step-by-step guidance that’s applicable to all industries, Calkins sets out to propel his readers to create and deliver effective business presentations and pitches. When all lessons from How to Wash a Chicken are applied, readers will be empowered throughout the preparation and presentation process. They will be able to present with more confidence and conviction than they ever had before, setting them on a path of professional growth.
Buy the book
Buy the book
Tim Calkins book

Breakthrough Marketing Plans: How to Stop Wasting Time and Start Driving Growth

Almost every company creates a marketing plan each year, and many spend hundreds of employee hours researching, preparing and presenting their tomes to senior executives. But most marketing plans are a waste of time; they are too long, too complicated and too dense. They end up sitting on a shelf, unread and unrealized. Breakthrough Marketing Plans is an essential tool for people who create marketing plans and people who review them. The book provides simple, clear frameworks that are easy to apply, and highlights why marketing plans matter, where they go wrong and how to create a powerful plan that will help build a strong, profitable business.

Read more..

Breakthrough Marketing Plans: How to Stop Wasting Time and Start Driving Growth

Almost every company creates a marketing plan each year, and many spend hundreds of employee hours researching, preparing and presenting their tomes to senior executives. But most marketing plans are a waste of time; they are too long, too complicated and too dense. They end up sitting on a shelf, unread and unrealized. Breakthrough Marketing Plans is an essential tool for people who create marketing plans and people who review them. The book provides simple, clear frameworks that are easy to apply, and highlights why marketing plans matter, where they go wrong and how to create a powerful plan that will help build a strong, profitable business.
Buy the book
Buy the book
Tim Calkins book

Defending Your Brand: How Smart Companies use Defensive Strategy to Deal with Competitive Attacks

Here Calkins shows business how to create and maintain a defensive strategy including: how to understand and get competitive intelligence; how to determine if your brand or company is at risk; how to create a defensive strategy; limiting risk and preventing a trial; understanding your own IP as a weapon – and much more.

Read more..

Defending Your Brand: How Smart Companies use Defensive Strategy to Deal with Competitive Attacks

Here Calkins shows business how to create and maintain a defensive strategy including: how to understand and get competitive intelligence; how to determine if your brand or company is at risk; how to create a defensive strategy; limiting risk and preventing a trial; understanding your own IP as a weapon - and much more.
Buy the book
Buy the book
Tim Calkins book

Kellogg on Branding in a Hyper-Connected World

World-class branding for the interconnected modern marketplace Kellogg on Branding in a Hyper-Connected World offers authoritative guidance on building new brands, revitalizing existing brands, and managing brand portfolios in the rapidly-evolving modern marketplace. Integrating academic theories with practical experience, this book covers fundamental branding concepts, strategies, and effective implementation techniques as applied to today’s consumer, today’s competition, and the wealth of media at your disposal. In-depth discussion highlights the field’s ever-increasing connectivity, with practical guidance on brand design and storytelling, social media marketing, branding in the service sector, monitoring brand health, and more. Authored by faculty at the world’s most respected school of management and marketing, this invaluable resourceincludes expert contributions on the financial value of brands, internal branding, building global brands, and other critical topics that play a central role in real-world branding and marketing scenarios. Creating a brand—and steering it in the right direction—is a multi-layered process involving extensive research and inter-departmental cooperation. From finding the right brand name and developing a cohesive storyline to designing effective advertising, expanding reach, maintaining momentum, and beyond, Kellogg on Branding in a Hyper-Connected World arms you with the knowledge and skills to: Apply cutting-edge techniques for brand design, brand positioning, market-specific branding, and more Adopt successful strategies from development to launch to leveraging Build brand-driven organizations and reinforce brand culture both internally and throughout the global marketplace Increase brand value and use brand positioning to build a mega-brand In today’s challenging and complex marketplace, effective branding has become a central component of success. Kellogg on Branding in a Hyper-Connected World is a dynamic, authoritative resource for practitioners looking to solve branding dilemmas and seize great opportunities.

Read more..

Kellogg on Branding in a Hyper-Connected World

World-class branding for the interconnected modern marketplace Kellogg on Branding in a Hyper-Connected World offers authoritative guidance on building new brands, revitalizing existing brands, and managing brand portfolios in the rapidly-evolving modern marketplace. Integrating academic theories with practical experience, this book covers fundamental branding concepts, strategies, and effective implementation techniques as applied to today’s consumer, today’s competition, and the wealth of media at your disposal. In-depth discussion highlights the field’s ever-increasing connectivity, with practical guidance on brand design and storytelling, social media marketing, branding in the service sector, monitoring brand health, and more. Authored by faculty at the world’s most respected school of management and marketing, this invaluable resourceincludes expert contributions on the financial value of brands, internal branding, building global brands, and other critical topics that play a central role in real-world branding and marketing scenarios. Creating a brand—and steering it in the right direction—is a multi-layered process involving extensive research and inter-departmental cooperation. From finding the right brand name and developing a cohesive storyline to designing effective advertising, expanding reach, maintaining momentum, and beyond, Kellogg on Branding in a Hyper-Connected World arms you with the knowledge and skills to: Apply cutting-edge techniques for brand design, brand positioning, market-specific branding, and more Adopt successful strategies from development to launch to leveraging Build brand-driven organizations and reinforce brand culture both internally and throughout the global marketplace Increase brand value and use brand positioning to build a mega-brand In today’s challenging and complex marketplace, effective branding has become a central component of success. Kellogg on Branding in a Hyper-Connected World is a dynamic, authoritative resource for practitioners looking to solve branding dilemmas and seize great opportunities.
Buy the book
Buy the book

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