Martin Lindstrom

Biography

Martin Lindstrom, born 1970, founded his own advertising agency at the age of 12. Needless to say, Lindstrom has a highly unusual background.

The rapid rise of his career has made him one of today’s most respected branding gurus in the world according to the Chartered Institute of Marketing. He sits on several boards globally, and his clients include Disney, Mars, Pepsi, LEGO, American Express, Mercedes-Benz, Reuters, McDonald’s, Kellogg’s, Yellow Pages and Microsoft. Lindstrom is a former global COO of British Telecom/LookSmart, BBDO executive, founder and CEO of BBDO Interactive Asia, and co-founder of BBDO Interactive Europe, both of which grew to become their region’s largest Internet solution companies.

Over the course of twenty years of hands-on marketing experience, Lindstrom has conceived a revolutionary set of principles that transform marketing strategies into positive business results. He rejects the old rules of the industry that conceptualized branding as an art form composed of vague commercials and awareness messages. Instead, his unique vision is scientific and process-based, all supported by global studies conducted by a team of more than 600 researchers. The CEOs of McDonald’s, Mattel, LEGO and Disney have all endorsed Lindstrom’s work and vision making branding the driver of sales and profits, and consequently the centerpiece of business.

At his revolutionary lectures on 360-degree branding, Lindstrom has a reputation for earning „a guaranteed standing ovation“, and this accompanies his popularity as a columnist. Lindstrom publishes his observations on branding in a weekly column, which reaches a global audience of more than one million people in thirty countries. His last four books on branding written with industry icons such as Don Peppers, Martha Rogers, Patricia Seybold and Philip Kotler are sold worldwide and have been translated into more than twenty languages.

Topics

• Buyology. Truth and Lies About Why We Buy
• Branding in Asia
• Contextual Branding
• Brand Blogging
• B2Branding
• Country of Origin as a Branding Statement
• BRANDsense
• BRANDchild
• ROI Branding
• Financial Branding

Publications

• Buyology: How Everything We Believe About Why We Buy is Wrong, 2009
• Brand Sense : Build Powerful Brands through Touch, Taste, Smell, Sight, and Sound, 2005 (with Philip Kotler)
• Brandchild: Remarkable Insights into the Minds of Today’s Global Kids & Their Relationships with Brands, 2004 (with Patricia Seybold)
• Clicks, Bricks and Brands: The Marriage of Retailer E-Tailer, 2002
• Brand Building on the Internet, 2000 (co-author)