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What’s it like to have your dad be your boss? Well, our guest today on Marketing Legends of Kansas City can tell us. Andy Fletcher worked for his dad at Fletcher Mayo and learned a thing or two there about the marketing business, especially in the agriculture arena.

But Andy has stories to tell us as he became in his words, a nomad in the business, gaining experience and then running shops over the years from Kansas City to Atlanta to Lincoln, Nebraska.

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Chances are more than a few of you have Landa Williams to thank for a job or for an employee hire in a Kansas City agency or company. And even if you didn’t, you absolutely know a few people who did.

LandaJob is her company’s name, and she will tell us how that came about on this edition of the Marketing Legends of Kansas City. Plus, she might even give us some of those behind-the-scenes stories with everyone’s name protected of course.

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There can be no dispute that Ewing Kaufmann is one of the most impactful and influential business leaders in Kansas City history. In this episode of Kansas City Marketing legends, we hear from one of our own legends what it was like to work for Mr. K. at Marion Labs and the business lessons he learned that helped him run his own public relations firm.

Larry Wheeler experienced first-hand the growth of Marion Labs. In fact, he had something to do with that growth as we will hear. After Marion Labs, Larry will tell us about his switch to the PR agency side and talk about another KC public relations legend, Howard Boasberg.

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Bill Fromm was a born entrepreneur. He ran a dry-cleaning delivery service in college and his dream was to come back to Kansas City and start an advertising agency.

He made that dream come true and opened the doors of his agency on June 1, 1964. Today that agency is Barkley, and it is one of the leading independent agencies in the country. Along the way, he had a few other ideas for companies that he brought to life.

We will hear from Bill how he started the agency and helped launch what became a real estate giant, helped sell some expensive German beer and the story of winning the Sonic Drive-In account – a huge turning point in Barkley’s history.

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Hallmark is not just one of Kansas City’s most revered companies, but it has also contributed to the overall growth of the creative community in the city. One of the best examples of that is the partnership that developed between Whitey Kuhn and the late Dale Wittenborn. The two met while working at Hallmark and then one day they started talking about creating a creative agency. And Kuhn & Wittenborn — was born.

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Listeners to the Marketing Legends of Kansas City may find it hard to believe that there was a time when a handshake was all that was needed to create a decades long partnership between a global retailer and an ad agency in Kansas City. But that’s one story that our guest today can tell.

Bob Bernstein started his agency in 1964. The handshake he had was with none other than Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart. Bob will also give us the real story of the creation McDonalds’ Happy Meal and why that may not have been the most successful idea Bernstein-Rein had for the company with the Golden Arches.

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Kansas City has a rich and colorful history when it comes to our Marketing, Advertising and Public Relations community. We talked for a while about how to start capturing the stories. We quickly decided we did not want to write a book, so we landed on an even better idea – let’s start a podcast!

Our idea is simple. Let’s reach out to all the people who made the Kansas City marketing community what it is today. What we are today is a city of creative powerhouses of all sizes doing work not just across the metro or region, but across the nation and the world.

As we talked about doing this, we realized we have lost some of those folks, but we can find people who can tell their stories for them. And we are blessed to have so many people who put their handprints on our community who have agreed to spend an hour with us and share their part of the bigger story.

No one we speak with will refer to themselves as legendary so we will take it upon ourselves to do it for them. So welcome to the inaugural episode of the Kansas City Marketing Legends.

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