Episodios

  • Nino Carvalho: More Marketing, Less Guru

    Nino Carvalho: More Marketing, Less Guru
    May 22 2025
    A History of Marketing / Episode 18This week, I'm thrilled to welcome Nino Carvalho, a professor, author, and marketing consultant based in Portugal.I actually discovered Carvalho and his work thanks to a podcast listener who brought him to my attention via a YouTube comment. After connecting with Nino and reading translations of his publications (he primarily writes in Portuguese), he has become an inspiration for me and my exploration into marketing history.Nino stands out as one of the few marketing educators I've encountered who passionately emphasizes the importance of marketing history in his teaching.Our conversation is packed with so much material, it’s like three episodes rolled into one. I'm especially grateful for this conversation; since Nino primarily creates content in his native Portuguese, there aren't many long-form English-language discussions like this one available.Listen to the podcast: Spotify / Apple Podcasts / YouTube PodcastsWe kick things off with Nino's book, Mais Marketing, Menos Guru, which translates to “More Marketing, Less Guru.” We chat about the history of so-called "marketing gurus" and how we should critically consider their role in shaping how people think about and practice marketing.From there, journey through marketing history in the Lusosphere, the Portuguese-speaking world. We start by examining how Portugal's early commercial and trade history laid the groundwork for early forms of business schools. Then, we fast-forward to the 20th century to uncover how marketing education emerged in Brazil during the Cold War and in Portugal following the end of the Estado Novo dictatorship.Throughout our conversation, Nino shares his valuable perspective on how learning marketing history can enhance a marketer's skills and strategic abilities. He even offers me a few tips on how to make marketing history more engaging for marketing students. (Fingers crossed that I can put these to work!)This episode is a bit longer than usual, but I'm sure you'll find it interesting throughout. I certainly did.So, without further ado, here's my conversation with Nino Carvalho.Note - I use an AI tool to transcribe the audio of my conversations to text. I check the output but it’s possible there are mistakes I missed. I have lightly edited parts of this transcript for clarity.The Spark: What Inspired Nino to Teach Marketing Through a Historical LensAndrew Mitrak: Nino Carvalho, welcome to A History of Marketing.Nino Carvalho: Thank you very much, Andrew. It's a pleasure to be here.Andrew Mitrak: I'm so excited for this conversation. We have a lot to cover. I want to start with your book, which is in Portuguese, Mais Marketing, Menos Guru, or More Marketing, Less Guru. I love the title of this book. This is one of the few popular marketing books I've come across that talks about the importance of marketing history. What first ignited your passion for marketing history?Nino Carvalho: Well, I think it was like a spark that suddenly started. It sounds like a very emotional thing. I believe I was always curious about the history of things in general. When I started working with marketing and studying marketing, especially in the digital field where many new professionals and their digital gurus took things from the past and kind of reinvented the wheel themselves to have a new package and try to sell that to newbies and people who are just starting to study digital. So that, I think, took me on a journey to go deeper into what those concepts, those theories, or the practices they were talking about were all about, because it didn't sound quite reliable. So this was like a very instrumental motivation.However, during the search for those things and looking for the truth or the beginning, the origins of some concepts, I think we start discovering a lot of new things about marketing. Because marketing is so connected to society, you also start learning about society in general, other countries' histories, other cultures' histories. So, I think it's something that will either strike you straight away or not because it's very strong. And I think this motivates us to keep learning more about the past of our discipline. Of course, I also noticed that the more I learned about the past, the better my classes and my professional work as a consultant were as well. So, it was like finding my own personal Holy Grail, in a way.Defining the Guru: Marketer vs. Self-PromoterAndrew Mitrak: So we're going to talk a lot more about marketing history and everything you found, including your Holy Grail. But first, going back to the title of the book. The title is More Marketing, Less Guru. I think we've all seen marketing gurus on the internet and whatnot, but I'm wondering how you would distinguish a marketer from a guru.Nino Carvalho: Yeah, this is interesting because by studying our discipline, I found out that there will be different interpretations. For instance, what we in Portugal or in Brazil would ...
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    1 h y 13 m
  • Reflections and Lessons from the first months of ‘A History of Marketing’

    Reflections and Lessons from the first months of ‘A History of Marketing’
    May 8 2025
    A History of Marketing / Episode 17This week we're mixing up the usual format. I've been publishing this podcast for a few months now, so I thought this would be a good time to reflect on the conversations I've had so far, talk about what I've learned, and share a behind-the-scenes look at how the podcast is going. Spoiler alert: I think it's going great.I recruited my friend Scott Morris, Creative Director at Waka Seattle to interview me about the podcast.Scott is an incredibly talented documentary filmmaker who always asks thoughtful questions. He provided me with incredibly helpful advice and feedback as I put “A History of Marketing” together.I gave Scott some of the top questions I've heard from listeners, but otherwise let him drive the conversation. Now, here’s Scott Morris interviewing me.The Origins of “A History of Marketing”Scott Morris: I see this as serving as a proxy for your audience. So I'm going to ask you some questions about the podcast: how it started, how it's going, and then where it's going to go from here. So diving right in, let's go back to the beginning. A History of Marketing. Where did you get this idea? What's the origin story?Andrew Mitrak: The podcast idea came all at once, but a lot of things were percolating in the background. I released a trailer, about a three-minute intro to the podcast, and it's a pretty honest trailer. It really tells my journey from the start, and of course, it's three minutes, so it's an abbreviated journey, but it tells most of the important parts of the story.At some point, it hit me that I'm a marketer, and I've spent a dozen or more years doing this professionally, and I know very little about how it started. Meanwhile, I'm very interested in history. I read—most of the books I read are non-fiction or history books—and I feel like I have a grasp of a lot of other disciplines, the history of those disciplines. I know a little bit about psychology and economics and computer history and art history and music history, but I didn't know anything about marketing history. And that suddenly hit me as odd. And I'm like, I better go look for books on marketing history.And I really didn't find any. There are some books, and I don't mean to diminish the work that's out there, but they tend to be very academic-oriented journal articles. There's a book called The History of Marketing Thought. Or they're siloed. They're histories of advertising, of certain elements of public relations, and biographies of individual marketers or advertisers or entrepreneurs. But there wasn't anything that was like a history of marketing. And similarly, there was no podcast dedicated to it either, or even a blog really dedicated to it. There were blog posts or podcast episodes that touched on marketing history, but nothing that really dived into this particular topic.And being somebody who's interested in storytelling, interested in marketing, I thought this was a gap. And it was one of those moments where I thought, “This doesn't exist in the world, why don't I try to fill it?” And that's the start of the show.Scott Morris: In the process of building up the interviews and starting the editing process and really building what you felt like was going to be this podcast, what's been the toughest part?Andrew Mitrak: It's been surprisingly easy, all things considered. You are aware of this, most listeners probably are not, is that I have a video background. I had produced podcasts at a prior company that I was at. And so I know all the tools. I was a student in college, I was a journalist, I was a documentary filmmaker, and a lot of those skills translate pretty well to podcasting. I also am pretty good at cold emailing, and sending emails to guests was a fun little challenge. So a lot of that came easily. I'm not the best at any one of these things, but I think that I have a lot of the skills, when combined together, that make me pretty good at this so far.I'd say the thing that I disliked the most about it—that to me it's hard because it's hard to do things when you're not having as much fun—is sometimes it's things that I've signed myself up for, like doing a YouTube short. I have a lot of joy in editing the full episode. I'm in the zone when I'm in Premiere and editing everything together, and I feel good about releasing the long-form stuff. But there are things that I'm like, well, every episode, every platform seems to want these short little snippets and these bite-sized things, and let me go ahead and do those as well. And I don't find as much joy in them. I see them as a little more of a chore.So there are things like that that I'm like, it's my own doing. I could choose not to do it, but the things that don't get me excited about it, they feel the hardest to me. And also, I always edit the short last, so I've gotten the whole episode done, I've gotten it all transcribed, I've got everything published, and then I do this little short, and it seems ...
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    37 m
  • T. Bettina Cornwell: The World of Sports Endorsements and Sponsorship-Linked Marketing

    T. Bettina Cornwell: The World of Sports Endorsements and Sponsorship-Linked Marketing
    May 1 2025

    A History of Marketing / Episode 16

    Tune into any major sporting event, and corporate sponsorship saturate the screen. Colossal logos sprawl across stadium rooftops. They adorn the smallest patch on a player's jersey. From pre-game shows to post-game analysis, from breakfast cereal to beer cans, from charitable causes to gambling apps, sponsorships are inseparable from sports.

    Sports and sponsorship are so interwoven, it’s easy to think it was always this way. But it’s a relatively new phenomenon. It doesn’t happen naturally either. Behind the scenes marketers, brands, teams, and athletes navigate complex sponsorship-linked marketing arrangements that aim to benefit all parties involved.

    My guest is T. Bettina Cornwell, a leading expert on sports and sponsorship. She is the Philip H. Knight Chair and Head of the Department of Marketing at the University of Oregon's Lundquist College of Business.

    Professor Cornwell literally wrote the book on the subject. It's called Sponsorship in Marketing and the 3rd edition of it comes out today. I read an earlier edition to prepare for our interview, and I really enjoyed it. So, if you like our conversation, I recommend checking it out.

    Our discussion was an absolute blast. We cover some of the best-known successes and revealing failures in the world of sports and sponsorship.

    Now, here it is – my conversation with Bettina Cornwell.Find more: marketinghistory.org

    Hosted by Andrew Mitrak



    This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marketinghistory.org
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    31 m
  • Gabriele Carboni: The Marketing Book Endorsed by Pope Francis, Italian History, and Impact Marketing

    Gabriele Carboni: The Marketing Book Endorsed by Pope Francis, Italian History, and Impact Marketing
    Apr 24 2025
    A History of Marketing / Episode 15This is not a current events podcast, but this episode is more timely than usual.I’m joined by Gabriele Carboni, a marketer, author, consultant based in Italy. I met Carboni through Philip Kotler. Together they co-authored the book, “Enlightened Management” which is about how Impact Marketing can have a positive impact for people and the planet.Gabriele Carboni is probably the only marketer to have a book endorsed by the late Pope Francis. The Vatican issued this comment on Carboni’s book, “Civil Economy.” (Translated from Italian) “His Holiness encourages every reader, every business leader and every person of good will to take inspiration from this work, to transform every professional environment into a place of growth, not only economic but human and spiritual.“I'm publishing this episode just a few days since we learned of the passing of Pope Francis. But I recorded this conversation with Gabriele Carboni in February, when Pope Francis was alive but had been in the news due to health issues.Carboni shares some great stories about meeting Pope Francis and earning an endorsement from the Pope. He also shares about what it’s like to write a book with Phil Kotler, and speaks to the rich legacy of the Italian Renaissance, Enlightenment, and Italian Humanism. We discuss how the ideas from these eras and schools of thought influenced marketing as a field and inspired Carboni to focus on impact marketing.A Marketing Collaboration with Philip KotlerAndrew Mitrak: Gabriele Carboni, welcome to A History of Marketing.Gabriele Carboni: Hi Andrew, thank you for having me.Andrew Mitrak: So we connected via an introduction from Philip Kotler and you recently co-authored a book with Phil. So let's start the conversation there. How did you first learn about Philip Kotler and when did you first meet him?Gabriele Carboni: I was already beginning my company, which is a marketing company, obviously, digital marketing company. Digital marketing was my hobby and then we started a company with two business partners.Because, of course, I was good at building websites, I was good at creating graphics, so the operational part I had. But I needed to understand the strategy better, so I bought a copy of Marketing Management. And then I read it. And then since I'm also a journalist, I was invited to Milan in 2017. Philip Kotler was speaking there. And this is a fun story because in Italy you need to be part of an association to be a journalist. It's not just you write and you are a journalist, you need to get trained and then to be part of an order, there is the order of the journalists. So you have your press badge.So I went to the event with my badge and I said, "I am a journalist, this is my badge." Of course, I was not known as a journalist, it's not even my job. But I was there with my badge and I said, "Look, I'm a journalist, I have the badge. Can I interview Philip Kotler?" And of course they said, "Of course you cannot, because you are we don't know you, you're not in our list. So go and listen to the speech, but you're not going to meet him."Then I said, "Okay, at least I get a free event with Philip Kotler, I'm going to listen." After the event, the event was very small, it was in a university in Milan. And I saw that there was a press room. Then I went to where there was a person on the door and I said, "Look, I'm a journalist, this is my badge. I want to interview Philip Kotler." And he said, "No, you're not on the list."I took a look inside the room and I saw a pregnant woman who happened to be the press manager, and I told her that my wife, which was true, was pregnant too. So they were both at the seventh month of pregnancy. And we started talking, I tried to be nice with her and since, I don't know, we connected somehow. She said, "Okay, after everyone, if we have like 30 seconds, you can have a picture with him and this is the max I can do."It happened that at the end of everything, he was drinking a coffee, eating something. I had my occasion, I had my photo with him and then we had half an hour to speak. So I happened to be the last, but I got all the time in the world and it was very nice because I gifted him my first book, which was in Italian, but he liked the approach. I tried to explain to him an idea I had at that time which then became this card deck which actually was awarded one of the three best marketing innovations in the world in 2019 and he gave me a lot of advice. And then I asked him to write the book together and he said, "No," because, of course, he didn't know me.Andrew Mitrak: Yeah, you're pushing your luck a little bit there. You've already gotten in, you've gotten to meet him, you've gotten a half hour and right in the first meeting you've asked him to co-author a book.Gabriele Carboni: Exactly.So a year later, 2018, he came to Bologna, which is near where I live, so it was easier. Still with the journalist badge. At that time I was ...
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    41 m
  • Mark Tadajewski: Myth Busting, Mind Reading, and Rethinking Marketing's Origin Story

    Mark Tadajewski: Myth Busting, Mind Reading, and Rethinking Marketing's Origin Story
    Apr 17 2025
    A History of Marketing / Episode 14If you listened to my first podcast with Philip Kotler, you heard Phil discuss marketing emerging in the early 1900s as a form of “applied economics.” This week, my guest Mark Tadajewski shares research that casts doubt on that version of events, revealing a narrative of early marketing history that is much more complex than the traditional story and veers into surprising, supernatural territory.Mark Tadajewski is Professor of Marketing at The Open University and Editor-In-Chief of the Journal of Marketing Management. He’s a marketing historian that I admire for two reasons: First, there’s his dedication to his research. For the past two decades he’s pored over seemingly every artifact related to marketing history. When you listen to this conversation you can hear how he has an encyclopedic knowledge of the evolution of marketing thought and practice. I’m only a few months into exploring marketing history on this podcast, so speaking with Mark Tadajewski was a humbling experience.Second, there’s his bravery. Tadajewski’s research pokes holes in a narrative that’s endorsed by giants in the field of marketing. There’s considerable professional risk in second-guessing the likes of Philip Kotler. But Tadajewski is unafraid of surfacing what his research reveals, even when it links marketing’s development to fringe topics like telepathy, hypnosis, spiritualism, and other forms of psychical thinking. This podcast is called, “A History of Marketing” not “The History of Marketing.” There isn’t one single definitive story of history, so I enjoy presenting multiple perspectives of marketing’s development alongside each other through conversation.Here’s my conversation with Tadajweski:Myth Busting Conventional Marketing HistoryAndrew Mitrak: Mark Tadajewski, welcome to A History of Marketing.Mark Tadajewski: Andrew, it's nice to be here. Thank you for asking me.Andrew Mitrak: Yes, it's so great to meet with you. When I started this podcast, you were the exact type of scholar I was hoping to meet with, so I'm so glad we had this opportunity to connect. You've thought deeply about marketing's history and evolution and early beginnings and you published a great deal of research around this.Your LinkedIn profile states quote, "I challenge conventional perspectives to encourage a critical examination of marketing thought in the broader political economic environment.” And you've also been described as quote, "the foremost myth buster of marketing thought." What are some of the top myths you've busted or the non-consensus ideas you put forth? How have you sort of earned this reputation for challenging conventional perspectives?Mark Tadajewski: The myth busting thing, I think it's a result of somebody else's paper; [D.G. Brian Jones] a colleague that I worked with a lot actually in the last 20 years wrote a paper called "The Myth of the Marketing Revolution." And you see lots of similar titles to that. And so what I've done basically, whether it's the marketing concept, relationship marketing, service dominant logic, the history of motivation research, the history of marketing education generally, with all of those, I've generally looked at the literature and gone, okay, this is great.But I know from being a bit of a sad character who sat in offices at midnight, looking through the Harvard Business Review from the very first issue and going through everything, this doesn't seem quite correct. And so if I get a sense that there's an argument that I think is problematic, then I tend to start digging a little bit more.Rethinking "The Marketing Revolution": Did the Marketing Concept really start in the 1950s?There's a paper by a guy called Robert J. Keith, published in 1960 in the Journal of Marketing. It's called "The Marketing Revolution." Now Keith's core argument basically is that throughout the history of marketing, what we see is a progression. We've gone from—he's talking about the Pillsbury Company in particular, but he's generalizing his argument to business generally—So he says we've moved through a number of stages. He talks about a production era, which is roughly 1869 to about 1930. Then it's a sales era, 1930 to 1950. Then the marketing era in 1950. And that's where people usually stop. But he also mentions a couple more. He talks about marketing control, about 1958, and he talks about something later called “change.”Now, a lot of people, you know, if you open an introduction to marketing textbook, any of them pretty much, they'll say the marketing concept—this idea that the organizations should be orienting all their activities around the consumer—appears about 1950. I was like, really? You really survived in business, if you're a production-oriented company, just by producing whatever you could and hoping everybody buys it? Or through hard selling? You just sell people as many things as possible. You don't worry about ...
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    1 h y 9 m
  • Louis Stern: Marketing Channels, Power, and Conflict

    Louis Stern: Marketing Channels, Power, and Conflict
    Apr 10 2025
    A History of Marketing / Episode 13"Place" might be the most often overlooked of the four P’s in the marketing mix, but it encompasses channels and distribution. Power dynamics and conflicts between companies (and sometimes within them) shape how products reach their customers. Few have influenced our understanding of marketing channels more than Louis Stern. Lou is the John D. Gray Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Northwestern's Kellogg School and the namesake of the American Marketing Association's Louis W. Stern Award, which recognizes contributions to marketing and channels of distribution.Lou is also the author of books including Marketing Channels, Management in Marketing Channels, and Marketing Channel Strategy. Lou drove renewed interest in channels by bringing a fresh perspective. Where prior researchers saw channels as logistics and warehousing, Lou viewed them as dynamic systems governed by power and conflict. Lou brought these insights to clients of his consulting practice which included IBM, Ford, and Johnson & Johnson.Listen to the podcast: Spotify / Apple Podcasts / YouTube PodcastsThis conversation explores the evolution and strategic management of marketing channels, covering:- How channels evolved from analysis of physical places to corporate strategy- IBM’s consumer PC launch and its failed attempt at operating retail stores- Whether sales or marketing should own distribution- And much moreNow here’s my conversation with Professor Lou Stern.The Two Critical Issues of Channels: The Amassing of Power and Resolution of ConflictAndrew Mitrak: Dr. Stern, thanks so much for joining us.Lou Stern: You're welcome. Good to be here.Andrew Mitrak: Is it okay if I call you Lou?Lou Stern: You sure can.Andrew Mitrak: So, Lou, how would you describe your career in marketing to somebody you're meeting for just the first time?Lou Stern: Well, I followed a path that not a lot of people do follow. I focused on a subject called marketing channels, but I did it in a very unique way.Andrew Mitrak: Before we get to marketing channels, how did you get into marketing as a general field to begin with?Lou Stern: When I was an undergraduate, I took a course in industrial organization economics. Part of that course had two particular readings in it. One was by a professor at Harvard by the name of Joseph Palamountain, and it was called The Politics of Distribution. And it was fascinating. It dealt with the battle between automobile manufacturers and automobile dealers, and how the dealers coalesced in order to make sure that the manufacturers didn't overwhelm them.The manufacturers were in the mode of overwhelming dealers, and so the dealers felt they had to protect themselves. It also dealt with other industries in which similar battles were taking place. So that was one thing that really sparked interest.The other was by Kenneth Galbraith, a very famous economist. He wrote a book on countervailing power. The focus was on how retailers square off against manufacturers in order to be able to protect their rights, their properties, and their way of doing business. So those things combined to spark the fire.As I became interested in marketing channels and got deeper and deeper into the subject, it became obvious to me that the field was really dismal. It was dismal because it was descriptive. It was telling stories of how retailers did things, how wholesalers did things.And it was focusing on such wonderful topics as, "What's the difference between a one and two-story warehouse?" That has to spark all sorts of fervor in the hearts of men!I kept saying to myself, how can I make this field much more interesting, particularly for myself? I had no interest in going out and describing the functions of warehouses. I had an interest in having an intellectual pursuit that was something that would stimulate me, but also stimulate all kinds of young scholars coming along behind me.I discovered that two critical issues in channels were the amassing of power, which I already looked at in industrial organization economics, and the resolution of conflict because there's all sorts of conflict in channels of distribution. So that led me to all sorts of doctoral students who became interested in the subject, and the rest is kind of history.Elevating Marketing Channel StrategyAndrew Mitrak: It sounds like when you were in school, it was almost approached from a mathematical sense, but what you found was that there are all these interesting power struggles.If you look at a company, how those companies interact with other companies, there are different points in a value chain and distribution where somebody's trying to take more.Companies face all these decisions: do I work with this partner or that partner? Do I build it myself? And these are all strategic questions that companies make when it comes to their marketing channels and distribution.Lou Stern: Absolutely. And I would talk to executives about my perspective of ...
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    27 m
  • George Day: Market Driven Strategies, “Where to Play and How to Win.”

    George Day: Market Driven Strategies, “Where to Play and How to Win.”
    Apr 3 2025
    A History of Marketing / Episode 12“My philosophy about the marketing function is that it's the interface between the organization and its markets.” - George DayThis week, we’re joined by Professor George Day, a renowned author, educator, and researcher. Day is the Geoffrey T. Boise Emeritus Professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he founded the Mack Institute for Innovation Management. Day co-authored Marketing Research with David Aaker and V. Kumar, who were previous podcast guests. However, Day perhaps best known for his work on strategy. We spend most of this interview on his 1990 book, Market Driven Strategy: Processes for Creating Value. Listen to the podcast: Spotify / Apple Podcasts / YouTube PodcastsMarket Driven Strategy was a breakthrough because it shifted the focus from a company’s internal capabilities towards an outside-in, customer-centric approach. While newer strategic frameworks have emerged, you can trace many of them back to the ideas popularized by Day in this book.Now here’s my conversation with Professor George Day.Foundational Work in "Market Development"Andrew Mitrak: George, thanks so much for joining us.George Day: I'm delighted to be able to share my story and reflect on the history of marketing strategy—or what I would call strategy from a marketing perspective.Andrew Mitrak: Sounds great. Well, let's start with the early days of your story. You started as a mechanical engineer at the University of British Columbia. And in less than a decade, you were teaching MBA students at Stanford's Graduate School of Business about marketing. So how did you go from engineering to marketing?George Day: It began when I started as a junior engineer in a chemical plant, as an operating engineer. I decided that was arduous and painful, so I talked my way into the Market Development Group. I joined the Market Development Group as part of the R&D Group. They were trying to find applications for the products they were developing. We had a lot of capacity to produce hundreds of products, so my job was to find markets for them.Andrew Mitrak: A product in search of a market. That sounds like a fun, challenging line of work.George Day: I transferred to headquarters, and the day I arrived, they fired my boss. So there was a two-person Market Development Group, and I was the lead person. I had to learn a lot very fast.Talk about the blind leading the halt. I was thrust into an environment and a job which I really didn't understand, was certainly not prepared for. Because with an engineering degree, I was focused and rigorous.I think a lot of my perspectives came from the questions I asked and the inability of the senior executives of the chemical company to answer them. I decided then, to understand better the situation I was in, I'd get an MBA, and that was a really transformative experience.Andrew Mitrak: Were there any professors or mentors during that time that shaped your early views of marketing?Early Influences: David Leighton and John HowardGeorge Day: Yes, I encountered an enormously influential figure in my life, who I consider a mentor: David Leighton, who subsequently became chair of the American Marketing Association. To illustrate his capacity, he also was asked to be brought in to run the Canadian Winter Olympics, and then became the chairman and managing director of the Canadian government library, symphony, and museum.So Dave influenced me and encouraged me to go on and get a doctorate. That's when I went to Columbia. I had a Ford Foundation fellowship that I could use to pretty much talk my way into most schools. I went around and interviewed three or four schools and selected Columbia, largely because of John Howard, who was a rigorous, leading-edge scholar. He had an enormous influence on Jagdish Sheth and also on me.Andrew Mitrak: I talked to Jagdish Sheth a few weeks ago, and he spoke about his collaboration with John Howard on developing the theory of buyer behavior. What was your relationship with John Howard, and did you have a chance to collaborate with him on any of your research works?George Day: Jagdish at that time was a research assistant or associate of John Howard's, had gone to work with him, and I came in as a doctoral student into the doctoral program. It happened that I worked very closely with him and ran a big research project which we called the buyer behavior project. It was a major research collaboration with the General Foods company.So I spent a lot of time on that, and that's where I learned a lot of my research skills.The Analytical Edge: Engineering Meets MarketingAndrew Mitrak: And did you find that having this engineering background gave you a unique perspective on marketing? Were you sort of an odd person out with an engineering background, or was that more common?George Day: I think the engineering background certainly helped me because in the PhD program at that time at Columbia, there was a real ...
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    23 m
  • Giana Eckhardt: The Origins of Branding in Imperial China

    Giana Eckhardt: The Origins of Branding in Imperial China
    Mar 27 2025
    A History of Marketing / Episode 11When and where did modern branding really begin? The usual narrative suggests it started during the Industrial Revolution, when the UK and the US began mass producing goods.This week, we’re challenging that story with my guest Giana Eckhardt, Professor of Marketing at King's College London, whose research reveals sophisticated branding practices thrived in Imperial China centuries before the Industrial Revolution.Early examples of Chinese brands like the "White Rabbit" show how sophisticated targeted marketing and brand symbolism are much older than originally thought. We also explore Eckhardt’s work on The Rise of Inconspicuous Consumption and analyze how conspicuous and inconspicuous consumption have trended over the 20th and 21st centuries, with cameos from Marty McFly and Larry David.----------------Challenging the Traditional History of BrandingAndrew Mitrak: Giana Eckhardt, welcome to A History of Marketing.Giana Eckhardt: Thank you for having me, Andrew.Andrew Mitrak: So the typical narrative is that modern branding originates from the Industrial Revolution. But you have research that shows that branding practices date way back further than that, all the way back to imperial era China, more than a thousand years ago. Before we dive into this research, could you give a high-level overview of what the traditional version of this story is?Giana Eckhardt: What you'll read in every branding textbook that's used with MBA students, for example, is that yes, there are examples of the place origin of where something was from that exists in antiquity. So in other words, if you look at a vase or something that's been found in an archaeological site, it may say the name of the country or even the region from which it was from.But in terms of modern branding practices, which basically refers to the symbolic uses of brands to say something about who you are as a person and being much more identity focused, that first came into being around the Industrial Revolution. So in the 1800s and typically the UK and the US are the places that are referred to where modern branding practices originated. So this is things like brand mascots, for example. The first brand mascot is Bibendum, who represents Michelin tires.Andrew Mitrak: I didn't know he had a name.Giana Eckhardt: He does. Bibendum, yeah. So things like elements where the brand starts to become anthropomorphized. Consumers are willing to pay more for something because it has a particular name on it. All of those types of things originated around the Industrial Revolution and are typically tied to capitalism.Discovering Branding's Ancient Roots in ChinaAndrew Mitrak: So if the traditional story is that brands emerged out of the Industrial Revolution tied to capitalism, when did you start to second guess this version of events?Giana Eckhardt: I did my PhD research in China and what I was doing it on was the symbolic uses of brands in China at the time. And so I have some really, really great stories, which we can talk about some other time about how brands, which were brand new in the 90s in China like McDonald's, what they came to mean in a culture that was so different. But during the process of being over there and doing the research for my PhD in the late 90s, I started to realize that there were all of these brands that were way, way older than that. Meaning like millennia older than that. Using very sophisticated and symbolic uses of visual images or textual words that you can see in brands from basically the Song Dynasty, which is around 900 BC onwards.Andrew Mitrak: When you say you saw these and found them, how literally did you see them? Did you see them in books? Did you see them at museums? And like what was that aha moment where like, hey, this actually, this looks like branding and this predates the Industrial Revolution by millennia. What was that “aha” moment like?Giana Eckhardt: Yes, there are brands in museums actually, which you don't really see in a lot of countries outside of China. So that is definitely one place that I saw them. There have been books written on this, although in Chinese only. So we worked with some different people to help us translate a lot of what these ancient brands actually said. And also, some of the brands from that time are still around. So Tong Ren Tang, which is a pharmaceutical brand, for example, still exists now. And the white rabbit, which although not for needles, it's used for candies now, but in terms of a branding symbol from then is still used now as well. So they're still around.Early Branding Practices in Imperial ChinaAndrew Mitrak: As you came across this research, what led you to dive in and start to publish literature to correct the narrative and change the story? What drove you to this as an area of interest to keep pursuing?Giana Eckhardt: I've always been interested in Chinese culture and philosophy in general. And so I think when I realized that all ...
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