Philip Kotler

Philip Kotler was born May 27, 1931, and spent fifty-six years at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management, arriving in 1962 as the S. C. Johnson & Son Distinguished Professor of International Marketing. His 1967 textbook Marketing Management became the field's standard reference, and he went on to write more than 80 books - from Principles of Marketing to later works on social media, innovation, and place branding. He built the field of social marketing, applying commercial techniques to public health and behavior change, and invented "demarketing" to manage excess demand. Consultancies for IBM, GE, AT&T, Merck, and national governments across 60 countries carried his ideas into boardrooms and policy. By 2015 his attention had turned to capitalism's failures: Confronting Capitalism, Democracy in Decline, and Brand Activism pressed companies toward economic justice and social responsibility. Scholars call him the father of modern marketing; the discipline still speaks his language.