Erich Joachimsthaler is the Founder of Vivaldi Partners, a strategy and marketing innovation firm with headquarters in New York City and offices in Los Angeles, Munich, Duesseldorf, London, Zurich, Amsterdam, Hamburg and Buenos Aires. Erich founded Vivaldi Partners at the end of 1999. Today, the firm focuses on developing breakthrough innovation, growth and marketing strategies for its clients by leveraging its expertise in brands, new products, and deep consumer or customer insights drawing on its strong operating experiences in several key industries and categories.

Erich is actively involved in many of the client relationships at Vivaldi Partners and has served major client engagements for the last 15 years. A key element of the philosophy of Vivaldi Partners is the finger-in-the-pie type of management consulting. This means that the most senior partners of Vivaldi Partners are actively involved in consulting with clients. Erich practices this commitment as do all other senior partners of Vivaldi Partners. He has extensive expertise in consumer goods, retailing, telecommunications, media and entertainment and technology sectors.

During the course of the last 20 years, Dr. Joachimsthaler has held faculty positions at the University of Southern California, Istitutos Estudios Superiores de la Empresa (IESE) in Barcelona and the Darden School, University of Virginia. In 2004-05, he received invitations to speak or guest lecture at the following business schools: Harvard Business School, Insead, London Business School, University of Toronto, Duke University and Helsinki Institute of Technology. During 2005-06, he served as Visiting Professor at IESE's prestigious European executive program in Munich and Barcelona, among the top five executive programs in the world according to the Financial Times 2004 survey.

In his career, Erich has published nearly 60 articles in such respected academic journals as the Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Marketing, Journal Consumer Research, and Sloan Management Review. Centered on marketing issues, this research has addresses these issues from a quantitative and methodological as well as strategic and marketing perspectives. Since the early 1990s, Erich's research has focused on branding and marketing issues. With his partner, David A. Aaker, he has written numerous articles and award-winning best practice cases.

In addition, Dr. Joachimsthaler's major articles on branding have been published in the Harvard Business Review ("Brand Building without Advertising" Nov-Dec 1997 and "Global Brand Leadership - Not Global Brands" Nov-Dec 1999). The 1997 article in the Harvard Business Review has been one of the best-selling marketing articles. Since the early 2000s, Dr. Joachimsthaler has contributed on the average five articles per year in major journals in Europe or the US. His book Brand Leadership, co-authored with David Aaker and published by The Free Press (January, 2000), has been translated into seven languages: Spanish, German, Japanese, Italian, Finnish, Korean and Japanese. His article: Managing Brand Portfolios published in 2000 in the California Management Review was the best selling marketing article over five years in that journal. Dr. Erich Joachimsthaler has published a new book on the broadening strategic role of marketing in building growth businesses, entitled: Hidden in Plain Sight: How to Find and Execute Your Company's Next Growth Strategy, published by Harvard Business School Press in May 2007. Hidden in Plain Sight was one of the top ten best selling marketing books on Amazon for 2007 and was published in eight translations.

Dr. Joachimsthaler is an internationally recognized authority on strategy, marketing and branding, being quoted regularly in the USA Today, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Investors Business Daily, Advertising Age, Absatzwirtschaft, Brandweek, Business Week, Marketing Week, US News & World Report, Forbes and a host of trade publications. He has been featured at CNBC PowerLunch, CNBC Europe and Forbes TV.com. He is also a regular speaker at industry conferences and company meetings in both Europe and the U.S. Erich holds degrees in economics, statistics and business administration from both German and U.S. universities, having received a Master of Science degree in quantitative methods and marketing and a Ph.D. in Business Administration from the University of Kansas. Subsequently, he completed a Post-doctoral Fellowship at the Harvard Business School in 1988.