IIFT students author book on branding with inputs from Kevin Keller, David Aaker

They have gone back to the original guru to take inputs from these gurus for their latest book on Branding titled The Titans of Branding. The voices whose views have been amalgamated into the book include the likes of Kevin Lane Keller, David Aaker, Don Schultz, Jagdish Sheth, Leo Berry, Bernt Schmitt, Raj Srivastava, Rod Brodie and Leslie de Chernatony. All of them are world-renowned academicians from some of the best B-schools in the world like those at Northwestern University, Berkeley, Emory University, Dartmouth College, Auckland and Birmingham. The book, called The Titans of Branding, is based on a set of interviews of nine stalwarts in the world of branding. The students realized that the all these international voices had never been brought under one roof as a book.Kevin Lane Keller has co-authored our Marketing Management book with Philip Kotler. In the second year, we read another of his books where we studied a lot about David Aaker. Jagdish Sheth is a man whose names always pipes up during some lecture or the other. To be actually interviewing these people and then writing a book on that was dreams come true for us, said the IIFT students.The main idea behind the book is to generate new ideas and look at creating a new path towards branding and innovation in a world that is as globalized as it is today. The USP of the book, of course, is the diversity of its voices- academicians whose views are respected all across the world. For them, it was the chance of a lifetime when they were asked to co-author a book as part of an international research project in association with the Emory University, USA and Hanken University, Finland. The book was launched recently at a seminar held at Helsinki in Finland which the students attended. They also made a presentation to the august gathering of attendees on the new ideas suggested by them. The four students are graduated this year from IIFT. Their names are Nishant Gupta, Apramey Dube, Vividha Kaul and Esha Mehra. The nine branding stalwarts interviewed for the book are: 1. Kevin Lane Keller, E B Osborn Professor of Marketing at The Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College2. David Aaker, E T Grether Professor of Marketing and Public Policy, Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley3. Jagdish Sheth, Charles H Kellstadt Professor of Marketing, Goizueta Business School, Emory University4. Don E Schultz, Professor Emeritus, Integrated Marketing Communications, Northwestern University5. Rod Brodie- Associate Dean, University of Auckland Business School, New Zealand6. Rajendra Srivastava, Roberto Goizueta Chair in e-commerce and marketing, Goizueta Business School, US7. Leslie de Chernatony, Professor of brand marketing, Birmingham School of Business, Birmingham8. Leo Berry, Oklahoma State University9. Bernd Schmitt, Robert D Calkins Professor of International Business, Columbia Business School, New York