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It’s become a $2 billion dollar industry. And the marketing of dead celebrities not only attracts lots of big brands, but lots of controversy.

We’ll trace the use of dead celebrities in advertising, we’ll analyze “Dead Q Scores,” we’ll list the top-grossing dead celebrities, and we’ll tell some amazing stories about ads that featured Audrey Hepburn, Michael Jackson, Fred Astaire and Marilyn Monroe – and how their families felt about those commercials.

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This episode explores the arrival of real-time advertising. Over the past 100 years, advertisers could never respond to an event or opportunity in minutes. But now with the Internet and social media, advertisers can. This clip talks about two of the most talked-about instances of Real-Time Advertising with Oreo Cookies and AMC Theatres.

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Most pilots, lawyers and doctors roll their eyes at the way Hollywood depicts them, and ad people are no exception. From the 1947 movie The Hucksters, to the Rock Hudson/Doris Day film Love Come Back, to Darrin Stephens in Bewitched, to Dudley Moore in Crazy People, to the Tom Hanks movie Nothing In Common, all the way to Mad Men. 

We'll rate them all, and see where they got it right, and where they got it very, very wrong.

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This is my annual look at the brands I envy.

They may not be the hippest, or the latest, or even the coolest brands. They could be a product, a service or even a person - but I envy them for a reason. Like a famous toy that was discovered when its inventor was installing a light fixture, a television network that leads the Emmy race every year, a knife that can be identified from 30 feet away, and a person who has built an empire by breaking all the rules.

All extraordinary brands, all I envy as a marketer.

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This is the very interesting selling strategy where one product is given away for free, or at a high discount, in order to attract people to buy another more profitable product. We’ll track the earliest loss leaders of shaving blades and Jell-O recipes, all the way up to today’s printers, video games and even Kindles – all of which are loss leaders. You might be surprised to know how many loss leaders swirl all around you every day.

Advertisers know what to give away in order to profit. 

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We know you want to listen to all the ads in this show. On the off-chance you don’t, subscribe ad-free here.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

 Along with the most famous marketing blunder of all time - the Edsel - we’ll look at what caused Coke to make the mistake of changing their fabled formula, how a company went actually out of business by promising a product improvement, how a fashion house tweeted inappropriately and had an immediate PR disaster, and how a fast food company made a big mistake betting on the U.S. Olympic team.

They are all great stories. Just be glad they didn’t happen to you.

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In the history of the advertising industry, the full force of persuasion has been put behind many products turned out to be incredibly unsafe. 

Even when those products were used exactly as advertised – they created enormous hazards, physical risk, and in some cases, even death. We’ll explore how we invited Asbestos and DDT into our homes as miracle products, how certain games for children ended up posing incredible risks, and how a much-heralded drug ended up being one of the most devastating products in modern history.

In most of those cases, no one could foresee they were selling danger.

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We’re on the hunt for great companies that went out of their way to treat their customers well. From an amusement park that delivered such superior customer service that other corporations asked for lessons, to a shoe company you can order a pizza from, to a store that actually accepted a returned product they didn’t even sell just to keep their customer happy – join us as we search for companies that go the extra inch.

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