Long before he was one of America’s premier marketing gurus, Jerome Conlon joined Nike almost straight from college in 1982 in the finance department. He moved to its brand new marketing group in 1986, which he essentially created, and stayed for a decade more as Nike sales grew about 16x, from $400 million to $6.6 billion.

He left Nike in 1996 to move to Starbucks, where he helped to grow what was then a niche brand into a national powerhouse, and from there to NBC, and then to his own firm where he now consults for leading brands worldwide. 

Since his Nike days he’s focused exclusively on branding and marketing, and through all these experiences he’s accumulated an incredible universe of compelling perspectives and principles, brilliant tools and super-helpful techniques. The purpose here in The Brand Bridge is to share his learnings, building on his prior breakthrough book Soulful Branding.

The specific inspiration for The Brand Bridge is my own book, Business Model Warfare. I had asked Jerome to read it and share his feedback, and as he made his way through it he realized that he had many more insights to share about branding.

We decided to do this book together, so what you will read here are Jerome’s ideas and experiences, edited by me, with a few links to business model innovation thrown in. The voice throughout the book is Jerome’s, and the stories and experiences are from his rich experiences of 35 years.