The Kotler Team

Principals & Practice Leads

Tony Kotler – Managing Director

Reuben Silvers – Director, Research & Product Development

Steve Rose – Practice Lead, Automotive & Heavy Duty

Noel Ritter – Creative Lead

Tulip Shah – Asia Pacific Region

Barry Deutsch – Practice Lead, Financial Services

Faye Coggins - Practice Lead, Life Sciences

Tony Kotler –Managing Director

Tony has been with the firm for over 20 years. In his current capacity, he is responsible for developing and implementing consulting, research and training services, primarily for suppliers to the healthcare industry, as well as to the automotive and commercial vehicle industries. Throughout his tenure at Kotler Marketing Group, Tony has focused on working with client firms to better understand, measure, and communicate the value of their products, systems, and services. 

Tony has expertise in various business market management disciplines and processes, including pricing, marketing research, marketing planning, the design and development of value-based sales and marketing tools.  He has conducted training programs on value-based sales and marketing for leading business-to-business companies in a number of industries. In particular, he has considerable experience working with companies that sell into the Healthcare and Life Sciences industries, having worked with dozens of diagnostic, medical equipment, instrument, consumable, and service providers. Prior to joining Kotler Marketing Group, Tony held sales and marketing roles for a company called ValueMed, a provider of clinical decision support systems for healthcare payers and providers.

Reuben Silvers – Director, Research & Product Development

Reuben has been with Kotler Marketing Group since 2001. He leads customer research and sales tool development  projects in Kotler Marketing’s Value Services Practice. Reuben brings extensive experience in value-based sales and marketing to client projects. He has co-authored some of our most popular research reports, including “The ROI Dilemma: Selling the Value of Enterprise Software,” and recent studies of purchase decision making by hospital value-analysis committees.

Reuben also heads up Kotler Marketing Group’s sales tool development efforts. His recent value-based sales tool projects include work for Goodyear, Draeger, Teleflex, and Seimens. 

Prior to joining Kotler Marketing, Reuben was a Product Planner at the Adrenaline Group, a technology and business strategy consulting company headquartered in Washington D.C. There, he developed business and product plans for technology and services companies. At Kotler Marketing Group, he applies this experience to help technology firms translate the features and benefits of their products and services into monetary terms.

Reuben has an MBA from Stanford University and a BA from Brown University.

Steve Rose – Practice Lead, Automotive and Heavy Duty

Steve heads up Kotler Marketing’s Automotive and Heavy Duty practice. Steve is a sales and marketing practitioner with over 27 years of professional experience. Prior to joining Kotler, Steve spent the majority of his professional career at Michelin Tire. While at Michelin, Steve excelled as a leader in sales and marketing. His P&L responsibilities spanned multiple divisions such as Passenger, Truck, and Earthmover.

Steve’s division was one of the first at Michelin to re-organize and adopt market-driven concepts and management techniques. Under Steve’s leadership, Michelin’s Truck and Earthmover divisions routinely exceeded projections and still remain market share leaders today.

While at Kotler Marketing Group, Steve works closely with automotive and heavy duty parts suppliers to document and demonstrate the value of their offering.  Since joining Kotler Marketing 7 years ago, Steve has helped suppliers to resist demands for price reductions and cost-downs. His clients have been able to generate top-line growth as a result.

In his capacity as Practice Lead, Steve also conducts sales training programs designed to teach suppliers how to defend price, and has conducted nearly 150 workshops for sales and marketing teams throughout the world. Current and former clients include BASF, Valeo, Siemens, PPG, Tower Automotive, Goodyear Dunlop, Kostal, Mulimatic and Arcelor Mittal, to name a few.

 

Noel Ritter - Creative Lead

Noel Ritter has worked in advertising for 30 years and is an award winning creative director, art director, and writer. His work has been highlighted in Ad Week, Ad Age, and Brand Week. In addition, his creative effort and process has been featured on NPR’s This American Life. And among others, his work has been recognized by: The One Show, The Kelley Awards, the Caples, Print (magazine), and in MOMA.

Noel is an adjunct faculty member at VCU’s Brand Center and Robertson School of Media & Culture. 

While mining ways to bring meaningful and entertaining campaigns to life, he found a way to organize and share his creative process – the same one that delivered Abraham Lincoln and a Beaver as dream characters for the sleep aid, Rozerem, as well as the iconic GEICO Cavemen spots. The creative constructs Noel used on these campaigns are simple, repeatable, and can breathe life into brands and creative campaigns.

Tulip Shah - Asia Pacific Region

Tulip is a Senior Consultant at Kotler Marketing Group.  He is responsible for expanding and supporting the Automotive and Commercial practice in Asia Pacific countries and with private equity investors.  He brings several years of senior executive experience in the automotive sectors with international expertise in strategic planning, new business and markets development, partnership development, business consulting, marketing, sales, brand management, and engineering.  He has delivered excellence in cross-functional and multinational projects and assignments conducted in nearly two dozen countries across North America, Asia-Pacific, Europe and South America.

He has served in various executive and functional leadership posts at General Motors and Delphi. He was instrumental in the rapid expansion of Delphi Corporation’s presence in the Asia Pacific region.  He also spearheaded the re-positioning of the GM’s luxury brand Cadillac and product portfolio as a global brand and leading GM’s multi-billion dollar initiative to reduce its overall cost structure by rationalizing and de-proliferating the automotive component variations used across its vehicle portfolio.

Tulip has earned academic credentials from the Kellogg School of Management (AEP, Business), the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor (MBA, Finance), Northwestern University (MS, Chemical Engineering), and the University of Wisconsin-Madison (BS, Chemical Engineering).

Barry Deutsch – Practice Lead, Financial Services

Barry heads up Kotler Marketing’s Financial Services practice. Barry is an experienced marketing and sales strategist and practitioner with over 30 years of experience in the banking and financial services industry. His banking career included roles as head of marketing at Mellon Bank in Pittsburgh and Provident National Bank in Philadelphia.

Barry has provided sales and marketing advice and training to leading companies in the software, hardware and telecommunications industries, as well as companies in banking, finance and insurance. He has presented on value-based marketing at industry conferences such as TransPay, and is a frequent speaker at conferences of the American Bankers Association and the Bank Administration Institute (BAI). Current and former clients include British Telecom, Fidelity National Financial, Ping An Insurance, Northwestern Mutual, and American Express.

Barry holds a Bachelor of Science in Economics degree and an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School.

Faye Coggins - Practice Lead, Life Sciences

Faye Coggins has over 30 years experience in life science companies at executive level positions in both the diagnostics and biotechnology markets. She has extensive experience in management, business, marketing, sales, new product development and organizational coaching and development in life sciences companies. Ms. Coggins has held positions as VP Marketing for Fisher Biosciences LSR Division, Executive Director of Marketing, North America, QIAGEN Inc., Vice President of Marketing and Sales at Cylex, Inc. a venture based company focused on immune cell function; and Vice President of Worldwide Marketing at Life Technologies, Inc. In addition, Ms. Coggins has held several senior level business, marketing and sales positions, the last being Marketing Director of New Product Development at DuPont in its $1 Billion Medical Products Division (now Siemens).

Ms. Coggins received a B.S. in Medical Technology from East Carolina University and holds a MT(ASCP) certification. She has received executive training in Marketing from Columbia University and Strategic Planning from the Wharton School of Business. In addition Ms. Coggins served as President Elect, President, and Past President of the Clinical Laboratory Managers Association (CLMA) from 1995-2001.