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A History of Marketing

A History of Marketing

De: Andrew Mitrak
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A podcast about the stories and strategies behind the campaigns that shaped our world. Featuring conversations with top CMOs, marketing professors, authors, historians, and business leaders.

marketinghistory.orgAndrew Mitrak Economía Mundial
Episodios
  • Waldemar Pförtsch: B2B Marketing & Ingredient Branding

    Waldemar Pförtsch: B2B Marketing & Ingredient Branding
    Aug 14 2025
    A History of Marketing / Episode 29I’ve made an oversight that needs correcting. For a podcast about marketing history, we've almost exclusively focused on consumer brands. We’ve barely touched on business-to-business marketing, even though B2B makes up a larger sector of the global economy.In marketing textbooks and industry coverage, B2C campaigns tend to grab the headlines while B2B marketers work behind the scenes. It's ironic this podcast would have the same bias, considering I've spent most of my own career in the B2B world.So today, we’re diving into the side of the industry I know best. It’s the engine that markets everything from jet engines to the datacenter chips powering the AI revolution, all the way down to the glass on your smartphone. How did B2B marketing evolve from a sales support function to a sophisticated field in its own right?To explore this history, I'm joined by one of its pioneers, Waldemar Pfoertsch. In the 1980s, Pfoertsch helped establish the first marketing department at the German industrial giant Siemens. Pfoertsch explains this was when the term "marketing" was new to the B2B world. He co-authored B2B Brand Management with Philip Kotler and is now at the forefront of what he calls “H2H” (Human-to-Human) marketing.Listen to the podcast: Spotify / Apple Podcasts / YouTube PodcastsHistory shaped Pfoertsch's career. He studied economics in a divided Cold War Berlin, worked in a socialist margarine factory in Poland, and consulted for companies in the former Eastern Bloc as they navigated a turbulent transition to capitalism.In this episode, you’ll learn:* Case Studies in Industrial Marketing: How companies like Saint-Gobain (founded 1665), Siemens (founded 1847), and IBM (founded 1911) marketed their industrial products* Ingredient Branding: The story behind "Intel Inside" and the sophisticated B2B2C strategy that can make a component more famous than the final product.* A Cold War Perspective: What working in a socialist factory revealed about the flaws of a planned economy and the power of market systems.* From “Industrial” to “B2B”: How the term B2B became, in Pfoertsch’s words, "a sexy one" compared to the older "industrial marketing."Note: A special thank you to Xiaoying Feng, a Marketing Ph.D. Candidate at Syracuse, who volunteers to review and edit transcripts for accuracy and clarity.Andrew Mitrak: Waldemar Pfoertsch, welcome to a History of Marketing.Waldemar Pfoertsch: Hi Andrew, I'm very happy to be here.Andrew Mitrak: Me too. So we have a lot to cover: B2B brand management, ingredient branding, and H2H marketing. But before we get into all of that, I want to hear about your background. When did you first become interested in marketing?Waldemar Pfoertsch: The first time I really did marketing was in 1984 when I worked at Siemens. At that time, they didn't have a marketing department; they didn't have the term "marketing." And one professor, Professor Backhaus, a B2B professor, came to Siemens and said, "Hey, you have to think of marketing."That was actually the time when marketing spilled over from the U.S. to Germany. For B2C (business-to-consumer), it came a little bit earlier, and in the early '80s, B2B marketing came to Germany. So, we established in that project the first marketing department at Siemens.Siemens is a large electrical conglomerate, and I was in strategic planning at that time. We were responsible for that project, so that was the first time marketing came to a German B2B company.Andrew Mitrak: I have to ask, just how did you set that up? How did you set up a marketing department at Siemens?Waldemar Pfoertsch: Well, Siemens is a conglomerate, similar to General Electric (GE). Actually, today it's larger than General Electric, and we always looked up to General Electric. Now we are looking down, which is not good. But nevertheless, at that time, the selling was done through sales. Marketing didn't exist. There was technology and the salespeople, and nothing in between. The knowledge was with the salespeople.And the major insight at that time was, "Hey, the knowledge is not with the company. The core knowledge is outside. We can't do the right things." Only if the salesperson tells the R&D guys can they do the better things. And then we started thinking about marketing intelligence, gathering the information from the salespeople, setting up on each of the divisions one person who was the interface between the salespeople and the R&D and the manufacturing.It's not... I mean, R&D is very important, but you also have to know how to supply. If you don't have the products ready when they are needed... So that was the magic, and it really propelled Siemens to a different layer.Shaped by Cold War Berlin and the Eastern BlocAndrew Mitrak: Stepping back, before you joined Siemens, you studied marketing and economics at what in English is called the Free University of Berlin in the 1970s. And Berlin, by the way, is one of my ...
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    39 m
  • Prof. Jonathan A.J. Wilson: Beats, Brands, and Belief - Lessons from Music & Islamic Marketing

    Prof. Jonathan A.J. Wilson: Beats, Brands, and Belief - Lessons from Music & Islamic Marketing
    Aug 7 2025
    A History of Marketing / Episode 28There are nearly two billion Muslims in the world, members of a faith with more than a thousand years of history, commerce, and culture. Global brands are increasingly vying for their attention and disposable income. So what exactly is Islamic marketing, and how does it differ from simply putting a "Halal" label on a product?To answer that question, there’s no better guide than my guest this week, Professor Jonathan A.J. Wilson. As the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Islamic Marketing and author of the book Halal Branding, he is one of the world's leading voices on this topic.Wilson’s journey is anything but conventional. Before becoming an Islamic Marketing expert, he cut his teeth in a high-pressure advertising sales environment that Wilson likens to Glengarry Glen Ross. He also side-hustled as a musician and appeared in the video game Grand Theft Auto under the rap pseudonym “Robert De Negro.”Listen to the podcast: Spotify / Apple Podcasts / YouTube PodcastsIn this episode, you’ll learn:* What Islamic Marketing Really Is: A deep dive into the ethics, history, and modern practice of faith-based marketing.* Global Case Studies: How brands like KFC and Nike succeed (and fail) at connecting with Muslim consumers.* A Lesson in Trust: What a story about buying a rug in Iran with no money reveals about a different way of doing business.* The Musician as Marketer: Why designing band flyers and getting people to a show can teach us about branding.This conversation explores how culture, faith, and personal history intersect to create a modern understanding of marketing. Now here’s my conversation with Professor Jonathan A.J. Wilson. Transcript Note: A special thank you to Xiaoying Feng, a Marketing Ph.D. Candidate at Syracuse, who volunteers to review and edit transcripts for accuracy and clarity.Andrew Mitrak: Professor Jonathan AJ Wilson, welcome to a history of marketing.Professor Jonathan AJ Wilson: Thank you very much for having me.Andrew Mitrak: So excited to have you here. I want to start off with your background. You've had an unconventional journey. You studied chemistry, you've been a musician, you were an athlete, and your personal history is pretty diverse as well. So after all this, what eventually set you on the path of marketing and branding?Professor Jonathan AJ Wilson: It's interesting because I think when you talk to people, at least back in the days who came into marketing, we all just fell into marketing.The first time that I studied marketing was at a postgraduate level when I was doing an MBA. But prior to that, I didn't know what marketing was. We had the traditional subjects like chemistry and history and stuff like that. And so, as a graduate, when I finished my MBA, I knew that there were two areas that I was interested in, which were human resource management and marketing, and they're both people-centered. And then I got a job in marketing, right? My first job was advertising sales. And I think it's that situation where someone shows an interest in you and offers to pay you money, and then suddenly you're like, "Wow, marketing's great, isn't it?" Wow, I can talk about adverts and magazines and stuff. So the first job set me off. If I didn't get a job in that, then I probably could have ended up in pharmaceuticals or something else.The Nuances of Marketing, Branding, and PRProfessor Jonathan AJ Wilson: It's one of those things where we as marketers, we know what we do, but it's still one of those things where when you're with your friends in the pub or you're having a coffee and they go, "What do you do?" And you go, "I work in marketing." And they go, "Oh, okay then." And they hear sales, right? So you sell people stuff that they don't want. And you go, "Well, it's not quite like that." Or they go, "Oh, so you're just about manipulation and mind control, making people want things that they don't want." And you go, "Well, it's not quite like that."And then, I guess, and some people might call me out on this, but then some marketing people will think marketing becomes a dirty word like sales is a bit. So they think of a sexier term and go, "Actually, I work in branding." And you go, "Oh, okay. Wow, branding sounds cool."And I'm joking about these things, but the thing that I've been interested in is whether that's in academia or in industry, there's a massive overlap between these terms. What is marketing? What is branding? What is PR? And I've enjoyed putting people on the spot and saying, "Okay, well, what is the difference between marketing as opposed to branding? Or how do you define these things?"And also, we know, for example, that if you look in a business school, branding sits within a marketing faculty, or a lot of branding academic papers are published in marketing journals. But if you look in industry, actually marketing departments and branding departments can be quite distant. And the career pathways, there are a lot of ...
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    57 m
  • Jean Kilbourne: "Killing Us Softly" & Pioneering Feminist Advertising Criticism

    Jean Kilbourne: "Killing Us Softly" & Pioneering Feminist Advertising Criticism
    Jul 31 2025
    A History of Marketing / Episode 27This week, I’m excited to share a timely conversation with author, filmmaker, and activist Jean Kilbourne. Kilbourne is recognized as the pioneer of feminist advertising criticism, and is best known for her influential documentary series, Killing Us Softly. Since its release in 1979, Killing Us Softly has been essential viewing in classrooms across the United States, draws attention to the objectification of women’s bodies, the promotion of harmful stereotypes, and the effects of advertising on the self-image of women. In past episodes of this podcast, I’ve mostly focused on the positive side of advertising. We’ve covered the history of advertising and the Creative Revolution, explored the science of persuasion, celebrated iconic spots like Apple’s "1984" Ad and classic Coca-Cola campaigns, and analyzed milestones in measuring advertising’s effectiveness. But advertising is not without its critics, and a history must cover the good alongside the bad. As a marketer myself, I think it's important to listen and learn from critics so we can avoid making the mistakes of others. There is no better guest for this conversation than Jean Kilbourne. Kilbourne has been a trailblazing force for more than 50 years, and in our interview she brings an analysis that is thought provoking, witty, and entertaining.Now, here is my conversation with Jean Kilbourne.Listen to the podcast: Spotify / Apple Podcasts / YouTube PodcastsTranscript note: I use AI to transcribe conversations. I review the output but it’s possible there are errors I missed. Parts of this transcript have been edited for clarity.Content note: I’ve included images of advertisements from “Killing Us Softly” in the transcript to illustrate the conversation. There are some ads you will likely find distasteful and potentially upsetting. If you prefer to avoid these, you can listen to the audio or watch the YouTube video instead of scrolling further.Andrew Mitrak: Jean Kilbourne, welcome to A History of Marketing.Jean Kilbourne: Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here with you.How It Started: An Awful Ad In A Medical JournalAndrew Mitrak: I want to start back in the late 1960s or so when you began cutting out and saving those first advertisements. Can you take us back to that moment? Was there a specific ad that stood out to you or what motivated you to first find an advertisement and say, "I need to preserve this"?Jean Kilbourne: I sometimes say, in 1968, I saw an ad that changed my life. And I did. But I have to go back a little bit as to why I would have been interested in this ad. I was involved in the anti-war movement, like a lot of people in my generation, and then went from that to the second wave of the women's movement. So I was already interested in feminism and all of that. I went to Wellesley College, and then I had to go to secretarial school to get a job. So my options were very limited. I was a waitress, I was a secretary, etc.So, I had a job putting ads into The Lancet, the British medical journal. Simply placing the ads into the magazine. And one of these ads was for birth control pills called Ovulen 21. It featured a smiling woman's head, and it said, "Ovulen 21 helps you remember by weekdays rather than cycle days." The gist of the ad was that women were too stupid to remember our cycle days, but we could remember the days of the week.I remember looking at this, and it wasn't the first ad I've ever seen that trivialized or stereotyped women, but there was something so atrocious about this particular ad. And I remember thinking, this is really awful, and it's not trivial. This is going into a medical journal. It's not trivial. So that was the first ad I took home, and I put it on my refrigerator with a magnet. And then I started noticing and collecting other ads.Andrew Mitrak: So you put it on your refrigerator to collect it. You didn't have a vision at the start of turning these into a slide presentation. It was just to preserve the evidence of this crime.Jean Kilbourne: That's exactly right. And of course, there wasn't even a model for doing a slide presentation on this. Sometimes people say, "Did you set out to do this?" I mean, there wasn't anybody who was sort of traveling around with slide presentations, or at least not on this topic, certainly.But I did become interested enough, and I began to see patterns in the ads. I had maybe 10 or 15 ads on the refrigerator by then, and I began to think these are related in some way, and they really are saying something about what it means to be a woman in this culture in terms of advertising and the mass media. So then I bought a… I got a camera, but I got a macro lens, I got a copy stand. This was over 50 years ago, so it was really a time when that's what you had to do. I had to teach myself how to do all that, and I turned the ads into slides. But even then, I didn't think this was something I was going to make a career out of. ...
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    48 m
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