Jay Conrad Levinson

Jay Conrad Levinson (1933–2013) was an American author and marketing pioneer who forever changed the way small businesses think about promotion. Born in Detroit and raised in Chicago, Levinson studied psychology at the University of Colorado before embarking on a distinguished career in advertising. He rose to become Creative Director at Leo Burnett in London and Senior Vice President at J. Walter Thompson, where he helped craft some of the most enduring campaigns in American marketing history — including the Marlboro Man, the Pillsbury Doughboy, and United Airlines' beloved "Fly the friendly skies" tagline.

Levinson's most revolutionary contribution came in 1984 with the publication of Guerrilla Marketing, a book that upended conventional wisdom about how businesses compete. Named by Time magazine as one of the top 25 best business books ever written, it argued that small enterprises didn't need massive budgets to win customers — they needed creativity, energy, and unconventional thinking. He defined guerrilla marketing as the use of "unconventional marketing tools used in cases when financial or other resources are limited or non-existent," giving entrepreneurs a powerful philosophy and practical playbook for punching above their weight. The book spawned an entire genre, with Levinson ultimately authoring works published in 62 languages and read in MBA programs worldwide.

Beyond his writing, Levinson taught guerrilla marketing at UC Berkeley's extension division for a decade and founded the international Guerrilla Marketing Association, spreading his methodology to a global community of small business owners. His ideas became a foundational pillar of modern entrepreneurial marketing, proving that imagination and boldness could outmaneuver dollars and scale. His program with Nightingale-Conant distills these hard-won insights into actionable strategies for anyone ready to market smarter, not just bigger.