Jonathan Copulsky

Jonathan Copulsky

Senior Lecturer and Executive Director of Spiegel Research Center

Jonathan Copulsky is an innovative marketing leader, growth strategist and thought leader with over 35 years of experience working at the intersection of brand, marketing strategy, content marketing and marketing technology. As a CMO, consultant and board member, Copulsky brings the ability to anticipate customer needs, reposition brands, architect fresh “go-market-solutions,” creatively apply new technologies, streamline customer-facing operations, build strong teams and engage diverse stakeholders to deliver measurable and impactful results.

Thought leadership has been a constant throughout Copulsky's career, with more than 35 bylined articles and interviews with leading business journals, such as The Wall Street Journal, Fortune and Business Week. His critically acclaimed book, "Brand Resilience," a brand risk management primer, was published in 2011. He also co-authored "The Technology Fallacy: How People Are the Real Key to Digital Transformation" in 2019 and is currently working on a follow-up book, “The Transformation Myth: Why You Can Never Declare Victory in the Face of Digital Uncertainty.”

Copulsky has been teaching in the integrated marketing communications (IMC) program at Medill since January 2015. He teaches classes on branding, marketing innovative offerings and marketing technology.

In addition to his work at Medill, Copulsky serves as the director for Kellogg’s Executive Education program in Business Marketing Strategy. He teaches in that program as well as the Advanced Marketing Management Executive Education program.

Prior to joining the Northwestern’s faculty, Copulsky enjoyed a long-career as a senior marketing executive and marketing strategy consultant. From 1992-97, he served as the chief marketing and sales officer at CCH Incorporated, a leading NYSE-listed professional publisher and software provider. At CCH, he was part of the leadership team responsible for the highly successful turnaround and sale of CCH to Wolters Kluwer. From 1997 to 2017, Copulsky was a senior client service principal at Deloitte. In addition to working with leading global clients on marketing strategy projects, he led Deloitte’s global research and publishing activities and corporate citizenship program. Copulsky also served as Deloitte Consulting’s chief marketing officer, with a focus on re-branding and repositioning the firm in the U.S.

Education


Copulsky obtained his B.A. from Haverford College and his M.B.A from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, where he was an Arjay Miller Scholar.

Authored Works


  • “From Purchasing Exposure to Fostering Engagement: Brand–Consumer Experiences in the Emerging Computational Advertising Landscape,” Journal of Advertising (2020)
  • “How Digital Leadership Is(n’t) Different,” MIT Sloan Management Review (2019)
  • “Do conversational platforms represent the next big digital marketing opportunity?” Applied Marketing Analytics (2019)
  • "The Technology Fallacy: How People Are the Real Key to Digital Transformation" by Jonathan R. Copulsky, Gerald C. Kane, Anh Nguyen Phillips and Garth R. Andrus (MIT Press, 2019)
  • “Conversational marketing: Creating compelling customer connections,” Applied Marketing Analytics (2018)
  • “Marketing technologies, customer data and analytics: Enabling responsive customer journeys and scalable marketing processes,” Applied Marketing Analytics, 2017
  • “Brand Risk,” chapter in Enterprise Risk Management: A Common Framework for the Entire Organization (Butterworth-Heinemann, 2015)
  • “One tweak at a time: How analytics improved our content marketing,” Applied Marketing Analytics (2014)
  • “The ‘Counterinsurgency Field Manual Should be on Your Reading List,” Ad Age (2011)
  • "Brand Resilience: Managing Risk and Recovery in a High-Speed World" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011)
  • “Looking for Financial Relief in Tough Times? Try Brand Licensing,” Ad Age (2009)
  • “Managing webmavens: Relationships with sophisticated customers via the internet can transform marketing and speed innovation,” Strategy and Leadership (2006)
  • “The Internet: Hype, Hope, and High Aspirations,” Telecommunications Reports International Journal (1999
  • “Relationship Marketing: Positioning for the Future,” Journal of Business Strategy (1990)