Mark Ritson

BIOGRAPHY

Mark Ritson holds a PhD in Marketing and spent 25 years as a marketing professor. During his academic career, he served as Assistant Professor at London Business School and the University of Minnesota, Associate Professor and later Adjunct Professor at Melbourne Business School, and Visiting Professor at MIT. His MBA teaching earned numerous awards, including recognition as Best Teacher at London Business School, MIT, and Melbourne Business School.

Alongside academia, Ritson has worked extensively as a global brand consultant for leading organisations including Baxter, Loewe, McKinsey, Subaru, Donna Karan, Westpac, Shiseido, Flight Centre, Johnson & Johnson, De Beers, Sephora, Benefit, Amgen, Ericsson, Penfolds, Jurlique, Cloudy Bay and WD-40.

From 2002 to 2015, he served as the in-house brand consultant for LVMH, the world's largest luxury group. Based in Paris, he worked closely with senior executives from iconic brands such as Louis Vuitton, Dom Pérignon and Hennessy.

Ritson has been a marketing columnist for more than two decades, writing weekly columns for Marketing, Marketing Week, Adweek in the United States, and The Drum in the United Kingdom. He has been named Columnist of the Year seven times at the PPA Press Awards, one of the highest honours in UK magazine journalism. He was also recognised as Business Columnist of the Year by the British Society of Magazine Editors in 2018, 2022 and 2023. His work has additionally appeared in leading publications including MIT Sloan Management Review, Harvard Business Review, the Journal of Advertising and the Journal of Consumer Research.

A Thouron Scholar, Ritson spent 1995 at the Wharton School and received the Ferber Award in 2000 for his doctoral thesis. His co-authored research on pricing was cited by Nobel Prize-winning economist George Akerlof during his Nobel Prize acceptance speech. He has been recognised as one of AdNews' "Power 50", included in SmartCompany's list of Australia's top business thinkers, and awarded the Sir Charles McGrath Award by the Australian Marketing Institute, the organisation's highest honour.

Ritson delivered the 30th Anniversary Levitt Group Lecture for the Chartered Institute of Marketing in 2019 and the prestigious Ogilvy Lecture for The Marketing Society in 2020. In 2024, he was appointed an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA).

Today, Mark Ritson focuses primarily on his globally recognised Mini MBA programmes, helping marketers develop practical, evidence-based marketing and brand-building skills.