Francis J Kelly III

Fran Kelly is President and Chief Operating Officer of Arnold Worldwide, one of the leading and most innovative advertising agencies in the business. Passionate about great creative advertising campaigns and their huge value to clients, he began his career on Madison Avenue in 1978 at Young & Rubicam, working on such American brand icons as Jell-O and Johnson & Johnson.

Kelly is the co-author of The Breakaway Brand: How Great Brands Stand Out, the innovative bestseller that sets the standard for building and sustaining brands. The book features an inside look at such phenomenally successful brands as Apple, Nike, Volkswagen, JetBlue, Starbucks — and 50 more of the world’s most successful brands — providing insight about how to apply their breakaway strategies to organizations.

Kelly received his MBA from Harvard Business School in 1983 and upon graduation, he coauthored What They Really Teach You at the Harvard Business School with his wife, Heather.

From 1983 to 1988, Kelly was with Boston ad agency Humphrey Browning MacDougall. He developed successful integrated campaigns for national brands like Parker Brothers, Titleist, Digital Equipment Corp., Kinney, and Molson.

In 1989, Kelly joined one of America's most-talked-about small creative shops, Leonard Monahan, in Providence, Rhode Island, and the agency was renamed Leonard Monahan Lubars & Kelly. Over five years, Kelly helped the firm attract and win high-profile accounts while also winning prestigious regional and national creative awards. Keds, Polaroid, Lotus, Hewlett-Packard, and Spalding were among the agency's clients.

In 1994, Kelly joined Arnold Fortuna Lawner & Cabot as Chief Marketing Officer. Since then, Kelly has helped Arnold to develop its “Brand Essence” creative philosophy while helping the company grow into a nationally acclaimed agency. Arnold's billings have grown from $275 million to over $1.9 billion worldwide. Clients include Volkswagen, Royal Caribbean, Celebrity Cruises, Truth, Titleist, Talbots, Fidelity Investments, Citizens Bank, Gillette, Tyson Foods, McDonald’s and Jack Daniels.