Founder & Chairman of Planet Jockey
Kevin Allen is the Founder & Chairman of Planet Jockey and best-selling author of The Hidden Agenda: A Proven Way to Win Business and Create a Following. He worked for McCann Erickson, where he led the pitch for the famous MasterCard “priceless” campaign, and has since founded his own firm, KevinAllenPartners. He has worked with Google, Microsoft, Burberry, and many others, along with being featured in AdWeek, Harvard Business Review, Forbes, and has given lectures at Columbia University and Regent’s College London.
Mr. Allen spoke about coming up with the MasterCard “priceless” campaign, and how it was a fundamentally human process of showing people that were buying things that really mattered. It was about recognizing the shift in attitudes from the outgoing 1990s to the directed, personal, meaningful early twenty-first century. He spoke about how innovation means coming up with a specific, but seemingly impossible statement, similar to Kennedy’s “we choose to go to the Moon,” and often in the form of a “we will…” statement. His process to pitching strong, innovative ideas to the company centers on identifying the people in the audience. “Catalysts” must be parsed out from “Followers,” “Observers,” and “Resistors.” Tune in to learn more about who these people are and how they can be won over. Original AirdateL 4/1/2014
