ROBERT CROSTON, VICE PRESIDENT & PRINCIPAL CONSULTANT
Bob's twenty plus year career in marketing, brand management, advertising, and sales management includes diverse experience in financial services, higher education, consumer goods, and professional services. Bob is well published and particularly skilled at strategic planning and brand development; having crafted campaigns and positioning platforms for noteworthy brands such as General Motors, Fidelity Investments, Bank of America, Harvard Business School, BEA Systems, Nellie Mae, and the U.S. Department of Commerce.
Bob came to the Wellesley Hills Group after building, managing, and then successfully selling Forte Croston, a marketing services firm. Bob grew Forte Croston from nothing to capitalized billing of $12 million over his tenure as Managing Partner. There, he developed Corporate Introspection™, the agency's proprietary brand process, which is noted for its brand architecture and business assessment model that efficiently develops organizational platforms across all mediums and to all constituents.
Bob has been at the forefront of practicing truly strategic and integrated marketing communications. He pioneered the creation of accelerated development and assessment tools to cost effectively offer advanced marketing and brand services to emerging companies. Bob also has established training programs on complex communication issues to educate and demystify the marketing process.
Before Forte Croston, Bob spent over a decade with McCann-Erickson, the world's largest advertising agency. There, he gained extensive management and marketing experience by guiding the transformation of General Motors' GMC Division from a work-oriented truck brand to a consumer-oriented premium brand. He also contributed in the creation of a brand management structure within General Motors that repositioned the production-oriented company as market-driven. Bob received McCann's Truth Well Told award for outstanding performance and was appointed to the agency's Pulse Committee.
Bob coordinated plans unifying McCann's public relations, Internet development, and event/promotional entities with its core advertising services to offer, what was then, some of the first integrated services available. He also designed McCann-Erickson's standard format for the composition and presentation of quantitative and qualitative research materials.
Bob began his career as the Marketing Manager of Tri Companies, a diversified travel-related organization, where he supervised strategic planning, campaign implementation, and program assessment.
More About Bob
Bob was a multi-sport athlete at Hartwick College and studied brand management at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He is a competitive mountain and road bicyclist, plays ice hockey, and enjoys just about any water or snow based activity.