Aaron Taylor — Senior Vice President of Marketing at ESPN

Mr. Aaron Taylor serves as Vice President of Marketing at ESPN, Inc. Mr. Taylor is responsible for overall brand strategy and leads the marketing of many of ESPN's live events, news and information programming, and related content emanating from rights agreements with league partners. He manages the development of marketing strategies and marketing communications to support ESPN Monday Night Football and ESPN's other NFL related programming as well as ESPN's coverage of the NBA, MLB, soccer, golf and tennis, among others. He also has responsibility for the marketing of many of ESPN's digital products, including WatchESPN, ESPN Fantasy, ESPN3, Grantland.com and espnW. He oversees ESPN Marketing's Social Media team, and the marketing of ESPN Films/30 for 30. At that time, his role was also expanded to assume creative and brand oversight of ESPN's marketing communications across the board to ensure that ESPN is most effectively building its brands with creative excellence. For the last 11 years, he has overseen the iconic ???This is SportsCenter??? campaign. He joined ESPN in 1999 as director of advertising and program marketing, leading the development of marketing strategies and promotional campaigns in support of several of ESPN's professional sports league partners including the NFL and NHL. He also oversaw the marketing for ESPN Original Entertainment programming from its inception in 2001 to 2006. He was promoted to vice president, marketing in October 2001 and has served in various leadership capacities within the department including vice president, brand management and vice president, sports marketing. He played an instrumental role in the development and execution of the ???Without Sports??? brand campaign that ran from 2002 to 2005 and earned a Gold Lion at Cannes for the ???Shelfball??? spots, which were part of that campaign. He also oversaw the development of ESPN's ???Season of the Fan??? campaign to support ESPN's 25th anniversary in 2004. In 2010, he played a leading role in the development of ESPN's current brand campaign, ???It's Not Crazy, It's Sports.???, for which he is responsible. Prior to joining ESPN, he was vice president, account director at the advertising agency Young & Rubicam, where he oversaw the national advertising co-op side of the KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken) business. During nearly seven years with Young & Rubicam, he also worked in account management on the Molson Breweries USA, AT&T and Johnson & Johnson accounts and contributed to new business acquisitions for the agency including DuPont, Fisher-Price and Kellogg's. Since 2011, he has been Board of Directors of PromaxBDA. Prior to business school, he worked as a deputy regional director on Al Gore's 1988 presidential campaign and later served as special assistant to then Senator Gore (D-TN) in his Washington U.S. Senate office from 1988 to 1990. He was graduated from Skidmore College in 1986 with a bachelor of arts degree in Government. In 1992, he received his MBA from the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University.