This week's podcast explores the famous partnerships in advertising, including Nike's Phil Knight and ad agency creative director Dan Wieden, Steve Jobs and Creative Director Lee Clow, and temperamental winery owner Julio Gallo and his tough creative director Hal Riney. They also discuss the successful campaign that centered around a client who looked like a chicken.

Smart marketers use speed bumps to generate greater sales by adding friction to the selling process. The podcast explores the origins and impact of speed bumps in marketing, as well as the concept of taxes as a speed bump. It also discusses Van Halen's strategic use of the 'brown M&M's clause' and the power of checklists in preventing surgical mistakes.

Discover the rejection story of the television show Mad Men and how its creator, Matthew Weiner, overcame multiple rejections from major networks. Explore his struggles in the film industry, his determination, and his eventual success with AMC as the home for Mad Men.

This week, Under The Influence listens to the sounds of persuasion. Advertising has used sound to sell for decades. But sound can be used for more than painting pictures on radio – sound can be carefully created to persuade. The stories behind those sounds are fascinating - from the earliest recorded sound, to the first use of sound in radio commercials, to signature sounds on famous ad campaigns, to the startup sound we hear on our computers every day. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, we look at the concept of “Genericide” – when brand names become generic. Many of the pioneering brands in our world risked losing their trademarks – as courts would rule that their names had become generic. Zipper, escalator and refrigerator were all trademarks at one time. The board game Monopoly just lost its trademark recently. Now brands like Kleenex and Band-Aid are fighting to save their valuable names. And their stories are fascinating. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, Part 2 of how Madison Avenue invented… the housewife. Over 100 years ago, the advertising industry realized they had thousands of household products to sell. All they needed was a customer. So they invented the Happy Homemaker, and for the next 25 years, encouraged women to be stay-at-home moms. That strategy created the biggest business in the world: Housekeeping.The rest is advertising history. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, we look at how Madison Avenue invented… the housewife. Over 100 years ago, the advertising industry realized they had thousands of household products to sell. All they needed was a customer. So they invented the Happy Homemaker, and for the next 25 years, encouraged women to be stay-at-home moms. That strategy created the biggest business in the world: Housekeeping.The rest is advertising history. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It’s our final episode of the season already.And as always, we throw the show open to our listeners.And answer your questions.We’ll explore why jingles have disappeared, how old jingles are being used to help Alzheimer’s patients, we’ll talk about Eddie Shack and his Pop Shoppe commercials, why the biggest companies have the dullest ads and we’ll answer that burning question: What ever happened to the “follow the bouncing ball” sing-along commercials. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

 So many things in our world are influenced by marketing. This week, we look at various aspects of our lives influenced by marketing. – but you wouldn’t know it. It’s marketing hiding in plain sight. Like the concept of jaywalking – born of marketing. How marketing created the 10,000-steps-a-day health goal. And how marketing was the inspiration for one of the most popular TV series that everyone is talking about right now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week it’s our annual Bookmarks episode.I read a lot of books to research Under The Influence. But every season, there isn’t enough room to include all the great stories I find.So this episode is dedicated to those stories that didn’t fit into our regular episodes. But are so good, they are worth telling.We’ll tell an amazing story about the book Goodnight Moon.We’ll tell you why David Bowie seemed to have two different-coloured eyes.We’ll talk about why inspiration is 90% perspiration and the inside story of the historic music score from the movie Jaws. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.