PLENARY SPEAKERS
Mary Beth Jowers, Managing Director at Olson Zaltman Associates (OZA), a research-based consultancy that uncovers deep insights to help its clients develop and implement effective strategies, remains involved in all phases of research from project design through interviewing and analysis to consulting with client teams on uses of the findings. Over the past 4 years, Ms. Jowers has worked with public and private clients on a variety of medical and health topics including positioning of pharmaceutical products, public health messaging, and the evaluation of messages aimed at donors and users of a non-governmental public health organization. As the OZA client base is quite broad, she also has extensive experience in other sectors including food and beverages, consumer packaged goods, and cosmetics/perfumes.
J. Walker Smith is President of Yankelovich, Inc., a leading market research company specializing in database marketing solutions and consumer lifestyles consulting. Dr. Smith is a recognized authority on marketplace trends and consumer buying motivations, and he is regularly quoted in Newsweek, Fortune, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and USA Today. Described by Fortune magazine as "one of America's leading analysts on consumer trends," Walker is a much-sought-after speaker and authority on social trends in America whose quotable insights appear regularly in the national media and business press. He is the co-author of Rocking The Ages: The Yankelovich Report on Generational Marketing and Life is Not Work, Work is Not Life: Simple Reminders for Finding Balance in a 24-7 World. Prior to this, Dr. Smith served as Partner and Head of Yankelovich Monitor from September 1995 until May 1999, and as Senior Vice President and Managing Partner of Yankelovich's Atlanta, Georgia, office from 1991 until September 1995.
Robert E. Spekman, Tayloe Murphy Professor of Business Administration at the Darden School of Business, University of Virginia, is an internationally recognized authority on business-to-business marketing, supply chain/channels management, and strategic alliances. His consulting experiences range from marketing research and competitive analysis to strategic market planning, supply chain management, channels of distribution design and implementation, and strategic partnering. In addition to teaching MBA courses, his executive program experience includes general marketing strategy, sales force management, channels strategy, creating strategic alliances, and business-to-business marketing strategy. He has edited/written seven books and has authored and co-authored more than 80 articles and papers.
Esther Thorson is Professor and Associate Dean for Graduate Studies and Research, and Director of Research for the Reynolds Journalism Institute at the School of Journalism at the University of Missouri–Columbia. Dr. Thorson has published more than 100 scholarly pieces on news effects, advertising, media economics, and health communication, and has edited six books. She has headed grant and research contracts totaling nearly $3 million and is the only female Fellow of the American Academy of Advertising. She applies research, both hers and that of her colleagues, in newsrooms and advertising agencies across the United States and abroad. She serves on eight journal editorial boards. She is the recipient of the American Advertising Federation's Distinguished Advertising Education Award, the American Academy of Advertising Outstanding Contribution to Research Award, a Missouri Alumni Association Faculty Award, and the Missouri Curator's Award for Scholarly Excellence.
Special Keynote Speaker
Jeff French, Director, National Social Marketing Centre in the United Kingdom’s National Consumer Council, has extensive experience developing, leading, and managing public health projects, social marketing programs, and health communication strategy at the national, regional, and local level. With more than 28 years of experience at the interface between the health, government, private and NGO sectors, Dr. French has a broad practical and theoretical understanding of national and international health and social development issues. Dr. French has been on the editorial board of two international journals and has had more than 40 chapters and articles published in the fields of community development, health education, health promotion communications, and marketing. Dr. French is a Fellow at Kings College University London and teaches at four other UK universities and is also a member of a number of national policy and program committees. Dr. French was the Director of Marketing and Policy at the Health Development Agency for 5 years. Since March 2005, Dr. French has been the Director of the National Social Marketing Centre based at the National Consumer Council in the UK and has been leading the development of the new national social marketing strategy on behalf of the Department of Health.
