Celesq® Presenters

Allen Adamson is a noted industry expert in all disciplines of branding. He has worked with a broad spectrum of consumer and corporate businesses in industries ranging from packaged goods and technology to health care, financial services, hospitality, and entertainment. Given his broad perspective and depth of experience, Allen is able to help clients see and seize opportunities before the competition, activating solutions that enable them to shift ahead of the market, generating long-term value and increased brand equity. He and his teams help clients identify what truly matters to the audiences they serve – what is relevant to them – and deliver on it brilliantly. 

Allen’s newest book, Seeing the How: Achieving Market Advantage by Transforming the Stuff We Do, Not the Stuff We Buy, published in May 2023, focuses on the consumer experience as a competitive advantage and how this change in perspective has allowed companies to achieve dramatic growth and categorical leadership. The book’s driving idea was sparked by Allen’s recognition that experience transformation has been fast outpacing product transformation as a winning and sustainable marketing strategy. 

His previous books, BrandSimple, BrandDigital, The Edge: 50 Tips from Brands that Lead and Shift Ahead, are used as textbooks in higher education business programs across the country. 

Allen has a multifaceted knowledge of all things brand and branding, resulting from having worked on both the client and agency side of marketing. He spent the earliest part of his career as a marketing executive in packaged goods at Unilever, one of the world’s largest consumer goods companies, overseeing a broad range of consumer products. He is proud to acknowledge that he spent much of his early business life in supermarket aisles, perusing one aisle or another to understand the consumers’ outlook– and that of his brands’ competitors. 

On the agency side, Allen held senior management positions at iconic advertising firms, including Ogilvy & Mather and DMB&B, before arriving at Landor Associates, a full-spectrum brand consultancy dealing with brand development and the myriad factors that make one brand more successful than another. He eventually rose to the position of Chairman. Under his leadership, the company partnered with a variety of global brands, including Accenture, GE, Johnson & Johnson, FedEx, HBO, Marriott, MetLife, P&G, Sony, and Verizon. Additionally, he guided non-profit organizations, including the 9/11 Memorial and Museum, the Central Park Conservancy, and the Council on Foreign Relations, among others.

For the past several years, Allen has been an adjunct professor and frequent guest lecturer at New York University’s Stern School of Business, where he lectures on the significant and numerous challenges brands are confronting – and overcoming – in a fast-changing marketplace. He also serves as the brand expert-in-residence at the Berkley Center for Entrepreneurship at NYU Stern. He works with student entrepreneurs from across NYU to help them develop and execute their brand “story,” providing guidance on the many aspects required to launch successful brands. 

Given the depth and breadth of his expertise – his perspective of brands from both an academic and a long-standing practitioner’s point of view – Allen has been called on as an expert witness for companies across several industries involved in litigation over the protection of their brand assets, the distinguishing characteristics that differentiate one brand from another. His multidimensional experience makes him unparalleled in his ability to offer valuable insight to those defending brands that have come under competitive threat and encroachment of these assets. 

A sought-after industry commentator, Allen has appeared on ABC News, NBC’s Today Show, CNBC’s Squawk Box and Closing Bell, and Fox Business Network. He is often quoted in publications including The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Advertising Age, the Washington Post, and Bloomberg. He also regularly writes a column for Forbes on current branding topics. He speaks on branding for a range of professional organizations, corporate events, and industry conferences. 

Allen is co-founder and managing partner of Metaforce, an elite marketing collective of the industry’s top talent. It was created to help leaders understand all the forces at work inside and outside their businesses to identify strategies yielding the highest returns. Once determining the best strategy, Metaforce’s consortium of partners, each an industry expert in their field, pivots to help clients brilliantly act on and execute customer experiences in the market. Metaforce combines the best aspects of brand management, strategy, and experience consultancies to deliver solutions that ensure its clients shift ahead of the dramatic marketplace changes to meet fast-evolving customer needs. 

Allen received his B.S. from Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public ommunications and an MBA from New York University’s Stern School of Business.