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Kevin Allen helps leaders and sales teams win buy-in through pitching, branding, and emotionally intelligent leadership. The creator of Mastercard’s Priceless campaign, he is a Wall Street Journal bestselling author whose ideas have featured in Harvard Business Review.
Dr Kevin Allen, PhD, is the advertising leader behind Mastercard’s Priceless campaign and author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller The Hidden Agenda. He speaks and trains on pitching, branding, and emotionally intelligent leadership, showing leaders how to win buy-in.
As a growth officer at McCann Erickson, Kevin pitched and won Mastercard’s Priceless, a campaign now known worldwide. He has written for Harvard Business Review, appeared on BBC Radio 4, and spoken or trained for Google, Oracle, Cannes Lions, and the Harvard Graduate School of Design. As founder and CEO of E.I. Games, he creates award-winning online emotional intelligence learning games. He is also an adjunct professor at Florida Atlantic University and lectures at Columbia University and Harvard.
Kevin’s work starts from a simple observation: clients, colleagues, and audiences rarely state what they really want. Drawing on the psychological insight behind Priceless, he shows sales teams and leaders how to uncover that hidden agenda and build pitches around it. His books, including Emotify! and The Case of the Missing Cutlery, carry this approach into leadership development. Through E.I. Games, he turns the same thinking into game-based learning programmes used by HR, learning and development teams, and universities.
Audiences leave with a storytelling framework drawn from the Priceless pitch that any team can use to win bigger deals. They also gain practical ways to read a room, build trust, and secure lasting agreement, plus a clearer sense of how leaders’ everyday language shapes the culture around them.
For sales kickoffs, leadership programmes, and marketing events, Kevin brings an insider’s account of one of advertising’s best-known pitches and turns it into methods teams can use the next morning.
Topics, sessions and talks
Most deals, partnerships, and internal decisions turn on something nobody says out loud. Drawing on the psychological insight behind Mastercard's Priceless campaign, Kevin Allen shows how to read what clients, audiences, and counterparts truly want before they voice it, and how to shape a proposal around that need. Built on the method in his Wall Street Journal bestseller, the session leaves teams with a repeatable way to earn buy-in, extend their influence, and turn agreement into lasting commitment.
Kevin Allen tells the inside story of how his team at McCann Erickson pitched and won Mastercard's Priceless account, from the first insight to the campaign the world now knows. He then breaks the win down into a storytelling framework drawn from iconic campaigns and applies it to sales, new business, and organisational growth. Teams come away with a clear structure for building pitches that connect emotionally, stand out from competitors, and win bigger deals.
Kevin Allen translates the emotional intelligence behind Priceless into a practical leadership playbook. Drawing on his experience helping build a global brand and his book The Case of the Missing Cutlery, he explores how leaders build trust, read a room, and use language that gives teams permission to do their best work. Managers and rising leaders leave with specific habits for inspiring people, strengthening culture, and getting more from the teams they already have.
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frequently asked questions
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Kevin Allen builds his talks around the inside story of the Mastercard Priceless pitch, breaking it down into frameworks teams can apply and mixing practitioner detail with humour that keeps the room engaged.
Kevin Allen specialises in pitching and winning new business, uncovering the hidden agenda behind buying decisions, and emotionally intelligent leadership. He was the pitchman behind Mastercard's Priceless campaign and is the author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller The Hidden Agenda.
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