Bob is well-known as a strategist in corporate and consumer branding, marketing and advertising with an extensive array of large-scale international engagements in 20+ countries. In his roles at top agencies, including Ogilvy, McCann, Landor and FutureBrand, he has worked for many of the world’s most prominent brands , including American Express, Goldman Sachs, Exxon Mobil, General Motors, IBM, GE, Coca-Cola, Lufthansa and Air Canada.
His branding experience began at Landor in San Francisco at a time when founder Walter Landor was still active in the business and the discipline of “corporate identity” was just coming into vogue. Bob went on to join FutureBrand as one of its first partners, where he spearheaded a 3-year global repositioning for Saudi Aramco, working directly with the CEO and the Kingdom’s oil minister, and led the brand strategy for Ansett and Qantas Airways in Australia, among many other client engagements.
Following 10 years at FutureBrand, Bob became MD of Ogilvy’s BIG (Brand Integration Group), working alongside its creative leader, Brian Collins on breakthrough concepts such as the Hershey store in Times Square. He subsequently shifted to the client side as CMO of NetJets, a Berkshire Hathaway company, where he led the marketing department during a period that resulted in a company turnaround from a loss of over $700M to a profit of over $200M. More recently, he has been running his own business, Kahn Consulting, which has provided brand strategy, naming, brand architecture and identity development mostly to B2B brands, completing over 200 client assignments.
Bob has a BA from the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from Pepperdine; is past President and Board Member of the American Marketing Association New York and co-chair of the Marketing Hall of Fame.