About Lisa Merriam

I am a marketing consultant generating value where branding and content strategy come together to drive reputation, revenue, and relationships. I work with marketing agencies, consulting firms, Fortune 500 companies, and private equity-backed entrepreneurs to create brands, build awareness and thought leadership, and to increase market share, sales volume and profit margin.

My expertise includes research, brand strategy, brand naming, brand identity, brand launch, content strategy, creation—with a specialization in copy writing and search engine optimization–and distribution.

Prior to becoming an independent consultant, I was a director in the Brand Strategy practice of McCann-Erickson’s FutureBrand consultancy. I worked with clients as diverse as ExxonMobil, McGraw-Hill, D&B,  and UPS. Prior to that I was Marketing Director at E Ink Corporation, an MIT start-up that developed the display technology in the Amazon Kindle. During the dotcom bubble, I was Vice President of Marketing for CENUS Corporation, and Internet technology firm spun out of the University of California. I began my career selling advertising space and syndicated data at Downey Communications, a family-owned company. I learned about business, selling, writing, and entrepreneurship from my parents, both of whom started and ran their own successful companies.

I serve on the Board of Directors for the New York American Marketing Association and chair the communications committee, driving the content strategy and search engine optimization to increase member engagement and retention, while building the organization’s reputation as a hub of marketing expertise. I am the creator, producer, and host of the AMA Brilliance in Marketing video series.

I am a guest lecturer for the Columbia University School of Business Executive MBA program on social media and branding mergers and acquisitions. I have also taught naming at the Microsoft Tech Center New York , entrepreneurship at New York University, and branding at Tsinghua University in Beijing and at the Kotler Marketing Forum.

I am a contributor of subject matter expertise to NPR, CBS, CNN, BBC, Fortune, Crain’s, The Atlantic, Marketing Daily, and many others. I write for publications such as Forbes, Yahoo Finance, American Bank Marketing, Manufacturing, Apparel Magazine, China Business News,and Sporting Goods Business. My book Merriam’s Guide to Naming was first published in 2009, with a second edition that came out in 2013. I grew up in the media business and love publishing. I am co-owner and co-publisher at Phoca Press, which specializes in small, but worthy books about and by Navy SEALS.

I am a student of disruption and insurgency. I see change as a gateway to opportunity and something to be embraced. I particularly enjoy working on entrepreneurial projects for multinational corporations, for fast-growth start-ups, and in promising turn-around situations.