Steve Rappaport

Stephen D. (Steve) Rappaport, Advertising Research Foundation Knowledge Solutions Director, is responsible for creating the knowledge resources, tools and services which help members build brands.

Listen First! draws upon Steve's decades of experience in listening, through harvesting online content, media content analysis, issues analysis, text analytics and unstructured data management. Steve's listening interest started in academia, where he trained under a number of distinguished researchers who pioneered media content analysis, and then continued in business. There his work focused on reputation management, customer insights, marketing strategy, and corporate positioning primarily in the financial services, media, entertainment, sports, and pharmaceutical industries. Steve is the lead author of the best-selling The Online Advertising Playbook: Proven Strategies and Tested Tactics from the Advertising Research Foundation (Wiley 2007, translated into multiple languages.

At ARF, Steve leads the Digital Media and People councils. Steve speaks with and counsels leading companies such as diverse as Kraft, Campbell, Toyota, Taco Bell and Kaiser Permanente; keynotes, presents or panels at major industry conferences, ranging from the World Federation of Advertiser to the Mobile Marketing Association, lectures at leading business schools like Columbia and NYU; publishes in academic journals and the trade press, and is quoted in a variety of places.