Gerard holds a PhD in Social Marketing from the University of Strathclyde. He has been appointed as Professor of Social Marketing at Stirling and is Director of the Institute for Social Marketing and the Cancer Research UK Centre for Tobacco Control Research. Gerard's academic career began in 1980 at the University of Strathclyde where he was appointed the first UK Professor of Social Marketing and where he founded and directed the Centre for Social Marketing. In recent years Gerard has acted as a Temporary Advisor to the World Health Organization on tobacco and alcohol marketing as well as blinding trachoma, and a Special Advisor to the House of Commons Health Select Committee during their enquiries into the tobacco and food industries. He provides regular guidance on social and critical marketing to the Scottish, UK and European Parliaments. He has also acted as an expert witness in litigation against the tobacco industry.

Gerard is interested in critical and social marketing research. The work in the former is currently focused on the marketing techniques of the tobacco, alcohol and food industries, but he would also like to do more on pharmaceutical marketing and the commercialisation/sexualisation of children by marketers. On a social marketing front, he is very interested in real world and multifaceted interventions that attempt to build brands and relationships with stakeholders and the public at large. Change4Life is a good example and he hopes to get more involved in this in the near future. 

He also has a growing interest in fair trade and international development, and thinks marketing ideas - whether social or commercial - have a great deal to offer here.

Gerard was awarded an OBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours List 2009 for his services to healthcare.