MiniMBA

Founder

Melbourne Business School

Teaching brand management at Australia’s top rated MBA program. Winner of the teaching prize five times. In 2013 I stepped down from a full time role and became an adjunct professor to focus on consulting and in 2019 retired completely.

Associate Professor

MIT Sloan School of Management

Taught the Core Marketing class on MIT Sloan's prestigious MBA program and then its EMBA program. Won the MBA Teaching Prize in 2009.

Visiting Professor

London Business School

Taught Core Marketing and the Brand Management elective on the LBS MBA program. Teacher of the Year in 2002.

Assistant Professor

University of Minnesota

My first tenure track position teaching Marketing to MBAs and Undergraduates at one of America's great Universities.

I have a PhD in Marketing and spent 25 years working as a marketing professor. I was an Assistant Professor at London Business School and the University of Minnesota, an Associate Professor and then Adjunct Professor at Melbourne Business School, and Visiting Professor at MIT. My MBA teaching won a shit ton of prizes including best teacher at LBS, MIT & MBS. 

I have also worked as a global brand consultant for clients that include Baxter, Loewe, McKinsey, Subaru, Donna Karan, Westpac, Shiseido, Flight Centre, Johnson & Johnson, De Beers, Sephora, Benefit, Amgen, Ericsson, Penfolds, Jurlique, Cloudy Bay and WD40. 

For thirteen years - from 2002 to 2015 - I served as the in-house brand consultant for LVMH - the world's largest luxury group - working in Paris with senior executives from brands like Louis Vuitton, Dom Perignon and Hennessy. 

I’ve been a columnist for 20 years, writing a weekly column for Marketing, then Marketing Week and now AdWeek in the US and The Drum in the UK. On seven occasions I've been voted Columnist of the Year at the PPA Press Awards, the highest award for magazine journalism in the UK. I’ve also been the British Society of Magazine Editors Business Columnist of the Year in 2018, 2022 and 2023. More scholarly articles include the Sloan Management Review, Harvard Business Review, the Journal of Advertising and the Journal of Consumer Research. 

I was a Thouron Scholar and spent 1995 at Wharton. I was a recipient of the Ferber Award in 2000 for my doctoral thesis. My co-authored pricing research was cited by George Akerlof during his Nobel Prize acceptance speech. AdNews rated me one of their “Power 50” and I made SmartCompany's top ten business thinkers list. The AMI gave me the Sir Charles McGrath Award, the highest honour for marketing in Australia. I gave the 30th Anniversary Levitt Group lecture for the Chartered Institute of Marketing in 2019 and the Ogilvy lecture for the Marketing Society a year later. In the 2024 honours list I was a made an Honorary Fellow of the IPA. 

These days I focus on my Mini MBA courses. I live in Tasmania with 3 Tasmanians plus many idiot rescue dogs. I have a boat that I never use. And a gym that I use even less. But I do find time to drink wine, usually in my underpants, until very early in the morning marvelling at the absurdity of it all. 

Note, I’ve maxed out at 30,000 LinkedIn connections. So please follow me instead. And I’ll follow you. Like FDR and Churchill. At Yalta.

Mark Ritson

When a founder takes out a page in the WSJ to protest how his brand is being run. It’s time to pay attention…
#brand #marketing

Open article: Corporate Pressure Killed Lululemon’s Creative Soul by adweek.com

Corporate Pressure Killed Lululemon’s Creative Soul

taplio