In his early-20s, Lancaster University was a ‘dreamy’ place for Mark Ritson. Some 30 years later, as an experienced brand consultant, acclaimed lecturer and award-winning columnist, it still holds a special place in his heart.

He may no longer be part of the Grizedale football team, may not be able to spend mornings in the lecture theatre and afternoons in the JCR that sat a stone’s throw from his (now demolished) room, but Mark will never forget his years on the Bailrigg campus.

He has realised more and more how special his time in Lancaster was after spending 25 years as a marketing professor around the world – at London Business School, the University of Minnesota, and Melbourne Business School, and in a visiting role at MIT Sloan and SMU. Never has he come across anywhere quite the same.

In December, Mark (BSc Marketing, 1993; PhD Marketing, 1996) returned to Lancaster to receive an Alumni Award in recognition of his substantial contribution to the field of Marketing. He found himself right back at home – even if buildings and people have changed, the feeling of being back on campus was just as it had been when he was a student.

“I keep pinching myself that it's a lot more than 30 years ago I first came here,” said Mark, who had an audience of staff, students, alumni and members of the public enraptured when he delivered his Top 10 Marketing Moments of 2022 in a special talk during his visit to Lancaster to received his Alumni Award. The talk was given in a building opened almost 25 years after he finished his PhD in LUMS. “The University has changed so much, it's double the size, there are new buildings. I see patches that I totally recognise, and I also see brand-new pieces as well.”

Mark’s memories of Lancaster are not primarily of the classroom or his PhD research – though he speaks highly of both experiences. Instead, he recalls the green baize of the pool table and the grass of the football field with great fondness, as well as the occasional pint in Grizedale’s bar.

“It was a dreamy place really,” he said. “I got to study Marketing at one of the best Marketing departments in the world. I had 10 mates who all played in the same soccer team as me, we lived right next door to our JCR, which had a bar, and I just don't think it was possible to have a better early-20s, mid-20s. It was heaven.

“I've got very young kids, but when they get a bit older, I will just tell them to come here if they can, because it was literally – I can't use the word any stronger – perfect.”

Mark’s career has not just been a success in academia. Beyond the classroom, he worked as a global brand consultant for such diverse clients as Subaru, Donna Karan, Johnson & Johnson, De Beers, Ericsson and WD40. For more than a decade, he was the in-house brand consultant for LVMH – the world's largest luxury group – working on brands like Louis Vuitton, Dom Perignon and Hennessy.

His work has been cited in a Nobel Prize acceptance speech, saw him become the first non-US winner of the Ferber Award for his doctoral thesis, and has earned him the Australian Marketing Institute’s Sir Charles McGrath Award, the highest honour for marketing in Australia. In addition, for his Marketing Week column – which he has written for more than 20 years – he has been voted Columnist of the Year five times at the PPA Press Awards, and won the British Society of Magazine Editors Business Columnist of the Year twice.

It is an illustrious career, one shaped by that start in Lancaster. Mark admits to not realising at the time how special his time at Lancaster was, and it was only in later years he recognised the impact of his time there.

“You don't realise how good Lancaster is until you're a long way away from it,” he said. “I think there's a couple of reasons for that. It's a very sort of northern, Lancastrian thing to be really good at something but not go on about it too much. Also, you just take for granted how well-organised the place is, how brilliant the buildings are, how well thought through the learning philosophy is, how selective they are about both students and professors.

“I think the great thing about Lancaster is it's so brilliantly done, but it's done in such a subtle way you don't realise how good it is until many years later when you don't find another university that's half as good. I think, again, for that reason I'm very grateful that I ended up here, and I couldn't really have asked for any more.”

You can watch Mark’s Top Marketing Moments of 2022 talk in LUMS here: https://youtu.be/pKUfnk-ySwQ