Stephen Greyser

Stephen A. Greyser is the Richard P. Chapman Professor of Business Administration (Marketing/Communications) Emeritus at Harvard Business School, where he specializes in brand marketing, advertising/corporate communications, sports management, and nonprofit management. A graduate of Harvard College, he received his MBA and DBA degrees from HBS, where he was the Chirurg Advertising Fellow. Since 1958, he has been active in research and teaching in marketing at HBS. His longtime association with the Harvard Business Review included five years as an editor and research director, and subsequently as Editorial Board Secretary and as Board Chairman. At Harvard College, he is a Trustee of WHRB, a Faculty Associate of Winthrop House, and a past director of the Harvard Alumni Association; he was also a member of the Harvard Professional Sports Panel advising Harvard undergraduates considering professional sports careers. He is a Hauser Center Faculty Fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School. He delivered the invited 2003 Commencement Day address, “A Look at Your Inner Mirror” for Harvard’s Extension School.  

He is responsible for sixteen books and monographs; is a frequent contributor to journals on marketing, advertising, and business/consumer attitudes (including 15 HBR articles and two lead articles in the Journal of Advertising Research), and has published some 300 Harvard case studies. His public service in the advertising field includes two terms as a public member of the National Advertising Review Board, the industry's self-regulatory vehicle. Professor Greyser has worked for over 30 years interpreting consumerism's impacts on marketing for both the business and public policy communities.  

He has served as a national Director of the American Marketing Association and Chairman of its Publications Board, on the Advisory Council of the Association for Consumer Research, and as Past President and Chairman of the American Academy of Advertising, the national association of advertising educators. He was a trustee of the SOCAP Foundation, and is a member of the Market Research Council. In addition, he has been a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Marketing, of Marketing and Public Policy, of the AMA management and application journal, Marketing Research, of the AMA's Marketing Management, and the European-based Marketing Management and International Journal of Sports Marketing and Sponsorship.

Professor Greyser was a founding faculty member and research director of Harvard's Institute in Arts Administration.  He was founding chairman of the Trustees Marketing Committee for the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston) of which he is an Overseer, and has served on the Getty Trust's Advisory Committee for the Museum Management Institute. He was also an Overseer of WGBH, and is a Trustee of The Sports Museum (Boston).  He has co-chaired the HBS Executive Education leadership seminar for nonprofit CEOs/COOs.

Professor Greyser has served on numerous corporate and nonprofit boards. He is past national vice-chairman (1991-3) and a director of the Public Broadcasting Service (the U.S. non-commercial television system), for which he chaired the Public Television Task Force on Future Funding in 1991. He also sat on the boards of Doyle Dane Bernbach, Restaurant Associates, Gruntal & Co., Opinion Research Corporation, and Tonka (toys). His consulting and executive teaching activities include work both in the U.S. and overseas in marketing, advertising, public relations, publishing and broadcasting, sports management (including relationships with the NBA and the Boston Red Sox) and the management of nonprofit organizations.

He is a frequent speaker, television panelist, and commentator on advertising, consumer marketing, sports management, crisis communications, and consumer issues both in the U.S. and abroad.  His views on the meaning of the Olympics for China were seen by millions in China on CCTV after the 08/08/08 Opening Ceremonies.