"Gotta do it directly. In the first place, communication is very important and you don't want to have any ambiguity. In the second place, clients really like to get the information straight. They don't want it fuzzed up, and they usually know where you're coming from. I once wrote a 12-page, single-spaced memo to the CEO of an Asian company in which I told them they were about to make a $2 billion mistake. That was direct." -- David Aaker
How do you deliver bad news?
David Aaker, Vice Chairman, Prophet+
David Aaker, Vice Chairman of Prophet consults exclusively for Prophet clients. He is the creator of the Aaker Model™, has published more than 100 articles and 15 books, including his latest, Brand Relevance: Making Competitors Irrelevant, and others including: Spanning Silos: The New CMO Imperative, Managing Brand Equity, Building Strong Brands, Developing Business Strategies, Brand Leadership, Strategic Market Management, From Fargo to the World of Brands, and Brand Portfolio Strategy. Follow David on Twitter.
He is also featured in a chapter of Conversations with Marketing Masters — a collection of insights from some of the world’s most influential marketing gurus. He has been awarded best article awards by the Journal of Marketing and the California Management Review.
Professor Emeritus at the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, he has been awarded four career awards including the 1996 Paul D. Converse Award for outstanding contributions to the development of marketing.
David is also an advisor to Dentsu; an active speaker in the U.S., Asia, and Europe; and is on the Board of Directors of California Casualty Insurance Company and the Contra-Costa Food Bank.
He received a Ph.D. and M.A. from Stanford University and a B.S. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.