Who am I?

Brian D. Aitken

Brian is a Webby Award nominated marketer, entrepreneur, and best-selling author.

He supervised the launch of Adobe Lightroom 4, Photoshop CS6, and the Creative Cloud at Edelman Digital, was the Head of Creative Strategy at Emergent Order, helped build the digital advertising practice at Ketchum as their Managing Supervisor of Paid Media and was the Vice President of Social Strategy at ASSEMBLY, AdAge’s 2018 Media Agency of the Year, before joining JPL where he launched their New York City office and is currently their Managing Director, NY and Head of Paid Media & Analytics.

Aitken has founded or advised startups in digital publishing, AdTech, and FinTech spaces including Alister & Paine Magazine, Axe & Compass, FuelX, and Peloton Street.

He is an advisor to–and adjunct faculty member at–the Rutgers Business School and regularly participates in MIT’s Initiative on the Digital Economy.

Programmatic Advertising 96%
Data & Analytics 99%
Integrated Marketing 91%
Alpine Skiing 78%
Innovation Development 99%
Tinkering on Old Porsche's 62%

@briandaitken

Follow me on Instagram for
inspirational posts and photos
of my adventures.

My Work
All Brand Strategy Digital Strategy
Detecting $250,000 in Ad Fraud Vulnerability

Detecting $250,000 in Ad Fraud Vulnerability

Digital Strategy View Project
Branded Content + Creative Direction for Ferrari

Branded Content + Creative Direction for Ferrari

Digital Strategy View Project
Managing Corporate Crisis with Paid Media

Managing Corporate Crisis with Paid Media

Digital Strategy View Project
Global Digital Launch of Photoshop CS6

Global Digital Launch of Photoshop CS6

Digital Strategy View Project
Ethnographic Research for The North Face

Ethnographic Research for The North Face

Brand Strategy View Project
Around the World With Lightroom

Around the World With Lightroom

Digital Strategy View Project

GET THE BOOK

“I read the book in one setting. Searing. Infuriating. Uplifting. All at once. Brian Aitken has written a searing memoir about his experience inside a legal system that has lost it’s moral compass” – Clark Neily III, Institute for Justice

Buy Now

Thoughts on Marketing, Freedom, Mountains and Entrepreneurship.

The War Chest

4 Takeaways on Performance Marketing from #AWNEWYORK
Marketing

4 Takeaways on Performance Marketing from #AWNEWYORK

This post originally appeared on the JPL Creative Thought Leadership Blog. Even with 98,000 attendees, not every marketer can make it to Advertising Week New York. And even if they could, with the many sessions and separate pathways it’s impossible to attend them all. Fortunately, I was there and met one-on-one with some of the biggest…
October 19, 2018
Definitive Top Ten Awesome Things I Did in 2017
Philosophy

Definitive Top Ten Awesome Things I Did in 2017

I saw Bradley Brownell’s “Definitive Top Ten Awesome Things I Did in 2017” and decided to make one for myself. Like his, it’s a touch braggy, but I think it’s good to sit back and reflect on accomplishments from time to time. When you’re constantly chasing “something” it’s easy to believe that you haven’t achieved…
January 2, 2018
Summiting Mt. Washington in a 488GTB to Celebrate Ferrari’s 70th Anniversary
Exploring

Summiting Mt. Washington in a 488GTB to Celebrate Ferrari’s 70th Anniversary

Thanks to MountainProject I know the exact date I first climbed Mt. Washington. It was November 20, 2004 and my friend (now world-class scientest at Yale) and I climbed up the frozen waterfall that is Pinnacle Gully before hitting 54 mile per hour gusts of wind in the alpine garden and bagging the summit. It…
October 3, 2017
Going All Out for the 2017 Distinguished Gentleman’s Ride
Exploring

Going All Out for the 2017 Distinguished Gentleman’s Ride

This is the story of how I cashed in my Delta miles for a one-way ticket to Oklahoma City to buy a used Triumph motorcycle from a rock-and-roll youth pastor and rode it 1,636 miles back to New York. It's also the story of how I brought some amazing people together to transform that dust-filled bike into a gorgeous…
September 25, 2017
MY COLLABORATION WITH ROLLS ROYCE & MIKE RUBENDALL
Marketing

MY COLLABORATION WITH ROLLS ROYCE & MIKE RUBENDALL

I remember the day I quit my day job to commit to launching Alister & Paine Magazine. It was December 3, 2008 and I was twenty-five years old. I was working at a publishing house and my boss had just tried to cut me out of a five-figure commission check. He told me I could…
August 5, 2017
1,465 Miles in a Frankfurt Flyer
Exploring

1,465 Miles in a Frankfurt Flyer

This article originally appeared in the November/December 2016 edition of the Porsche 356 Regsitry. The very first thing anyone asks when they see the Frankfurt Flyer is always, “What the heck is that thing?”. No, it’s not a kit car. No, it’s not technically a Porsche. It is something else altogether. Perhaps the best way…
December 8, 2016