Alan Middleton

Independent Author Speaker and Consultant With Sage Management Advice

York University

Born and educated in London, and Brighton, England, Alan graduated from the London School of Economics and Political Science, London University with a B.Sc. Honours Sociology. He subsequently earned an MBA and then a PhD. in Business Administration from the Schulich School of Business, York University in Toronto, Canada.

After working for the Universal Oil Products Company (UOP Inc.) in Chicago, USA and Esso Petroleum in Oslo, Norway, Alan commenced a career in advertising with the J. Walter Thompson (JWT) advertising agency in London, England. After four years working with such Clients as the ‘Access’ credit card, Dunlop, Kodak, RHM Bakeries and Unilever, Alan emigrated to Canada.

In Toronto, Alan became President and 33% owner of Amca Marketing Inc. a marketing consultancy with Clients in foodservice, packaged goods and services. Alan then joined JWT Toronto eventually becoming Vice- President/Client Services Director, managing the accounts of Bank of Montreal, Kodak, Pepsi Canada and Ralston Purina. In 1982 Alan was appointed President of Enterprise Advertising Associates, a JWT subsidiary. In seven years there revenues and profits more than doubled and high profile accounts like IBM won.

In 1989 he became President/CEO of JWT Japan, the third largest operation in JWT worldwide after the US and the UK. JWT Japan worked for DeBeers, Esso, Ford, Kelloggs, Kodak, Shiseido, Suntory and Unilever and added Kraft General Foods, Nestle-Macintosh, Haagen-Dazs, Sakura Bank and Sumitomo Trading while there. In 1990 Alan became Executive Vice President and Board Director of the worldwide JWT Company.

Leaving JWT, Alan spent time consulting in China and Canada before commencing his Ph.D. in Business Administration specializing in marketing, at York University’s Schulich School of Business.  He successfully defended his dissertation on brands and private label packaged goods internationally in 1996. Alan has taught Brand Management, Consumer and Organizational Buyer Behavior, International Marketing, International Strategy, Marketing Communications, Marketing Management and Not-for-Profit Marketing in the BBA and MBA programs at Schulich and has won a number of teaching awards for this activity.

Alan has extensive experience in teaching internationally. He has been a visiting Professor at the Graduate School of Business, Rutgers University in New Jersey, USA where he taught Marketing Communications and Marketing Management. Additionally he has taught International Marketing and International Business in the Executive MBA programs at NIDA, Chiangmai and Yonok business schools in Thailand, at IDEA in Buenos Aires, the leading graduate business school in Argentina, at Moscow State University and the Higher School of Economics in Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, and at Sichuan and South-West Normal Universities in China.

Alan has done marketing consulting work, facilitated creativity/problem solving sessions and delivered executive training for a wide range of Canadian, US and global companies.

In September 2001 he took over as Executive Director of the Schulich Executive Education Centre (SEEC) a strategic business unit at the Schulich School of Business offering open and custom non-degree executive and management education to over 10,000 executives a year in North America and internationally.

Alan is an Honorary Trustee of the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) having served as a Trustee from 1996 – 2002, and currently serves on ROM’s Marketing Committee. He is on the Board Marketing and Communications Committee at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, the national Board of Directors of AIESEC-Canada, and the Board of Advisors of AIESEC - York. He is Chair of Judges for the Product of the Year awards. He is Chair of Judges for the Marketing Hall of Legends Inductee Committee and additionally is a member of the management group of its Mentor Exchange.  He serves on the Advisory Board of the Centre of Excellence in Financial Services Education at the Toronto Financial Services Alliance, the Marketing Metrics Committee of the Ontario Tourism Marketing Partnership and the Academic and Scientific Committee of Leger Marketing.  

He is on the Board Governance Committee of the ABC Life Literacy Canada Board having served on the Board from 2001-2014 and as Chair 2003-2009.

He was a Director of the Canada-Japan Society and its Vice President from 1993 – 1997. He is a co-founder of the ‘Cassies’, the only advertising awards in Canada to recognize business results, was a judge in the first ‘Cassies’ and co-edited the case book of the winners. From 2003 – 2007 he was Chair of Marketing Magazine’s Editorial Board of Advisors. In the past he served on the Ontario Ministry of Health ‘Healthy Ontario.com’ Advisory Council and the United Way of Greater Toronto’s Marketing Committee.

He co-authored the books “Advertising Works II”,and“Ikonica – a Fieldguide to Canada’s Brandscape”, and authored three reports for the Association of Canadian Advertisers (ACA): “Improving the Marketing Communications Value Chain – A look at the role of Payment-By-Results Remuneration”; “Measuring Marketing Communications Returns-ROI or Dashboard?” and “Come Together – a guidebook for enhancing the value of the Client-Agency relationship in the marketing communications industry”. His chapter “Brand Treachery” appeared in the book “The Disloyal Company” and his chapter “City Branding and Inward Investment” appeared in the book “City Branding – Theory and Cases”. In 2012 “Measuring Marketing Communications effectiveness in an ever changing world – the role of the MarCom Dashboard” co-written and edited by Alan was published by the ACA. Since January 2014 he has been a regular monthly “Brand Doctor” columnist for “Marketing Magazine”.

In January 2005 he became the first inductee into the Canadian Marketing Hall of Legends in the Mentor category; in June 2012 he received the Association of Canadian Advertisers (ACA) Gold Medal Award and in December received the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal for his services to literacy. In March 2015 Alan was awarded the International Association of Business Communicators Toronto Communicator of the Year award.

Alan is a frequent speaker at conferences in North America on subjects relating to marketing, talent development or conducting business internationally. In any spare time he has, Alan swims, plays the occasional bridge and poker game, attends classical music, opera and theatre performances, and travels to, and reads anything to do with the sociology, culture, archaeology, anthropology and history of the world’s ancient cultures.

Speaking at: Deconstructing today’s market math