Category: Speaking Human – Original Series

We chug back in time to revisit the marketing campaigns of two legendary beverage busts to see how they go down a few decades later.

We venture into deep space to explore how today’s brands are bringing their products, services, and marketing into the cosmos.

We sense the power of Mastercard’s new haptic logo and explore how other brands can engage touch, smell, and taste to create more immersive experiences.

We promulgate and elucidate ten arcane, recondite, and enigmatic lexemes we believe warrant greater attention in the marketing realm.

We bring together the most unusual, unexpected, and unnatural brand bedfellows of the 2020s. Slap some caviar on your Pringles because worlds are about to collide!

We convene in the courtroom to adjudicate the cases of two recent commercials from big tech brands that stirred up controversy and got yanked from the airwaves.

We fight back against the powers of “big podcasting” by pouring out our thoughts about Oatly’s guerrilla marketing maneuver to protest the misleading mind control of big dairy.

We salute six decades of America’s preeminent toaster pastry by serving up some notable pieces of Pop-Tarts marketing and ranking the most iconic Pop-Tarts flavors.

We unlace ideas about the new Brooks “Let’s Run There” campaign featuring Jeremy Renner and jog through our rankings of the buzziest running shoe brands of the current moment.

We poke the potential bursting bubble of Logan Paul’s Prime drink brand to see if it pops and share a couple other products that consumers guzzled down in mass quantities then tossed aside.

We discourage everyone from listening to this episode and hearing our thoughts on the new ad for NotMayo. Just rip out your earbuds now, because you do not want to know what we have to say.

We turn our TV dials back four decades to analyze an iconic fast-food commercial featuring big fluffy buns and a spunky senior citizen asking one of the most important questions of our time.

We exclaim our questions about companies adding punctuation marks like apostrophes, periods, and exclamation points to their names and logos.

We head into overtime to huddle up on Schwarzenegger, Walken, and whether throwing famous faces into Super Bowl commercials still scores with viewers.

We apply heat to Solo Stove’s decision to ax their CEO after a viral campaign failed to ignite sales and ask the essential question “what is successful marketing?”

We drop the pieces in place to unlock how the best-selling video game of all time continues to obsess players 40 years after its creation.

We smoke out the rough and rugged legacy of the iconic Marlboro Man marketing campaign that rode the trails of pop culture for over 40 years leaving many blackened lungs behind.

We tune in to the TV show opening intros that keep our thumbs off the fast forward button and our eyeballs glued to the screen.

We vocalize our picks for the most memorable, effective, and iconic uses of celebrity voices in commercials and marketing.

We detonate our thoughts on the atomic pink meme machine that swallowed summer 2023 and share candidates for potential future Barbenheimers.

We assassinate assumptions of what bottled water should be by spotlighting a darker, canned brand disrupting the industry with some killer marketing efforts.

We think long and hard about Oscar Meyers’ decision to change the name of the Wienermobile and shake out a few other meat-based mobile marketing ideas.

Get show notes for this episode and check out past episodes of the Speaking Human podcast by visiting speakinghuman.com.

We go green and toast the top o’ the morning by dipping into our pot of marketing gold to share a notable St. Paddy’s Day creative concoction.

We rack our brains trying to google the “KN car” before turning our attention to Kia’s controversial logo redesign.

We talk with Caitlyn Gow, a student at the University of Akron, about her social media marketing class assignment and the choice to write about Discord.

We whack around a few ideas on why pickleball has become the fastest growing sport in America and if it has what it takes to make it as a major league.

We get a whiff of what the Twitterverse will look like under Elon Musk, and weigh in on whether that’s a good or bad thing for the social network’s future.

We take stock of Patagonia’s bold move for future ownership and ponder if other corporations might start to consider similar unorthodox succession plans.

We reanimate a selection of brands, startups, platforms, and apps that have gone belly up over the past 10 years.

We hazard a second look at the AutoTrader spot that put the Duke boys back behind the wheel and burn rubber with our picks for the wildest auto ads ever to hit the airwaves.

We navigate back to the year 2012 to re-examine the Mapplegate scandal and map out the most memorable brand controversies of the past 10 years.

We release our personal picks for the most memorable and repeatable catchphrases in modern advertising history.

We rise from the grave to relive the long-forgotten marketing war between DISH network and AMC, and feast on the flesh of other notable zombie-themed ads.

We peddle our thoughts on Peloton’s fork-in-the-road moment, and share a list of past fitness trends we’ve left in the dust.

We take another bite out of the campaign that we talked 10 years ago on the very first episode of this podcast and munch on a couple other more recent snack-related marketing morsels.

We salute the bold, creative, and amusing marketing efforts that awed us with their awesomeness this year and made us think about something other than viruses… if only for a few sweet fleeting moments.

We metabolize our thoughts on the metamorphosis of Facebook by answering a series of metaphorical questions about the life and times of the world’s largest social network.

We harvest our thoughts on the wild growth of plant-based foods and grill up some marketing efforts aimed at selling people on meatless meats.

We sound off on some pitch-perfect examples of “sonic branding” that are sure to be stuck inside your head long after this episode goes quiet.

We tune in to the iconic marketing campaign and subsequent promo spots that helped make MTV a pop-culture juggernaut in the 80s and 90s.

We field some big questions about the brand changeup coming to Cleveland and rank the recent history of pro sports teams that changed their names without switching cities.

We unwrap the enigma behind a puzzling new trend more brands are adopting—but we can’t tell you what it is, you have to listen to unlock the secret.

We buy into the idea that maybe “buy” is the wrong word for digital items like movies, TV shows, and music that customers may not actually own.

We consider what an alternative universe would look like if brands advertised what people really think about their products.

We invest everything we’ve got in non-fungible tokens and then try to figure out if what we own actually has any real value.

We storm our brains for ideas on what the next phase of social media might look (and sound) like.

We crash the Clubhouse to share our thoughts on the new invitation-only, voice-based social network.

We cough through a cloud of cigarette smoke as we revisit one of the most memorable anti-smoking campaigns ever made.

We scale the epic marketing campaign around the release of another major streaming service looking to join the ranks of Netflix, Hulu, and Disney Plus at the top of the mountain.

We do not pass GO as we spin, roll, and pop our thoughts on the best board game advertising of all time.

We pick players in the burgeoning marketing battle between Series X and PS5 consoles, and unlock our personal picks for the best game covers of the Xbox/Playstation era.

We quibble over whether all the quacks and quips about the failure of Quibi are well-deserved, and provide some quick reviews of the streaming platform’s bite-size content offerings.

We kick around some thoughts on Nike’s new Ben & Jerry’s-inspired footwear and share our personal picks for the ugliest sneaker designs of all time.

We reflect on recent brand announcements from Aunt Jemima & Uncle Ben’s in light of widespread protests against racism and calls for change across the USA.

We spitball—with face masks, of course—some creative ideas to take working from home to the next level now that it could be the forever future for many employees.

We isolate some of the brands and products rising up to make life a little easier during this strange stretch living in lockdown.

We pull down our protective masks to spread a few thoughts on how brands are responding to the coronavirus and the massive impact COVID-19 is having on marketing and events.

We sound off on the current state of old-school social media and loop our thoughts on a pair of modern social apps looking to make some noise.

We focus our monocles on the untimely death of Mr. Peanut and tip our top hats to the ads that made us laugh, cry, and want to buy during Super Bowl 54.

We recall how brands from the past envisioned the future, and share a couple of our own marketing visions for the 2020s.

We let our follicles run wild as we discuss the growth and evolution of Movember and brush up on some of the most memorable mustaches in ad history.

We fan out our thoughts on the name of NBC Universal’s new streaming platform and strut out our official ranking of streaming service names.

We leaf through our memories to dog-ear our favorite magazines and talk about the future of the medium moving forward.

We decode the meaning behind a handful of slang terms currently making the rounds in pop culture and social media.

We reveal the sports-based commercials that emerge victorious in our highly selective tournament to crown the ultimate athletic ad of the past three decades.

We sing the praises of a band of brands whose powerful use of popular songs in their marketing and advertising plays like sweet music to our collective ears.

We boil this year’s crop of Super Bowl commercials down to the ABCs—animals, bevs, and celebs—and tell you which brands won the big game in each of these key categories.

We leap back in time to the age of Obama, netbooks, and The Black Eyed Peas to revisit some of the most notable brands, marketing, and pop culture of 2009.

We hum with excitement as we share the 10 brands that captured our eyes, brains, hearts, tongues, and screens in 2018.

We tap into the seasonal flavor that could be the next pumpkin spice and answer three burning questions about the past, present, and future of fall marketing.

We test our knowledge of classic advertising campaigns by answering trivia questions about memorable commercials, slogans and brands that have permeated pop culture over the past several decades.

We tackle the brand status of the national football league and audible some wild ideas to rush the NFL into the future.

We unveil the winner of our summer box office challenge and honor some incredible & impossible movies that defined the blockbuster season.

We laugh, chuckle and guffaw through a stream of countless brand tweets in an effort to crown the Twitter kings of comedy.

We rack our brains coming up with creative ways to upgrade products that haven’t taken a significant step forward in far too long.

We sweat out the dog days of summer by shouting out a few key brands we strongly associate with the hot and sunny season.

We spin our thoughts on the marketing power of cover art and hit play on our favorite album covers of all time.

We look back on 100 podcast episodes and share some of our favorite centenarian brands.

We ask and answer the most important social media question of 2018—Yanny or Laurel?

We make you wonder whether you’re listening to real people or artificial intelligence as we discuss Google’s latest innovation.

We premiere our predictions for the movies that will burn up the box office in summer 2018.

We lob up our picks for top NBA team names and slam down our winners for sweetest league logos.

We snap, crackle and pop through decades of brand slogans from “Got milk?” to “Taste the rainbow” to determine which ones are the best of the best.

We guzzle down four new flavors of Diet Coke to tell you if they can beat the real thing and share our picks for favorite Coke can designs.

We give thanks for a basketful of brands that have delivered us a bounty of delicious flavors to feast on in 2017.

We phone in our thoughts on the new iPhone X and share our recommendations for some must-have iPhone apps.

We spice things up by talking about the tsunami of pumpkin spice products hitting store shelves this fall.

We gaze in wonder at the winner of our game of summer box office predictions, and share our picks for favorite fall movie trailers. This episode is like a great trailer—all of the best parts with none of the crap in between!

We rack our brains trying to remember whether Santander Bank’s short film “Beyond Money” is marketing or entertainment, and share our picks for a few other pieces of fantastic brand filmmaking.

We venture on a quest to determine the impact of Facebook’s new mission, and uncover examples of other brands with magnificent mission statements.

We chomp into Popeye’s new cookie coated chicken to determine its marketing tenderness, and share our award winners for funkiest fast food menu items.

We auction off our thoughts on eBay’s new brand campaign taking aim at Amazon, and share our bids for some of the best brand comebacks in recent memory.

We zoom past two defenders, pump fake, and fire off our list of the top five LeBron James commercials.

We prepare for the rise of the machines by discussing Marble the food delivery robot.

We forecast the five summer movies that will deliver the biggest returns at the box office, and share our picks for best movie posters of all time.

What was the brand meltdown of the month?

We reveal our top 10 forgotten 90s brands

There are a lot of great brand jingles out there… but find out our picks for the most memorable.

From Chumby or Qriocity, there’s a lot of bad tech product names out there.

We name our thoughts on the much-buzzed-about title of the new Star Wars movie and identify what makes the force strong with a company name.