Lead Balloon - Public Relations, Marketing and Strategic Communications Stories

Lead Balloon - Public Relations, Marketing and Strategic Communications Stories

Compelling tales from the world of public relations, marketing and branding, told by the well-meaning communications professionals who lived them. On Lead Balloon, professional communicators share tales of the do-or-die situations that defined their creative careers—how they planned for the unexpected, how they navigated high-profile crises, and what they learned in the process. With immersive storytelling and a wry sense of humor, host Dusty Weis revisits epic PR disasters, intense communications scenarios, professional inflection points and notable campaigns we all remember, and usually finds a reason to chuckle. Because sometimes, there are important lessons to be learned from someone else's worst day. And sometimes, it's just more convenient than group therapy. Lead Balloon is an award-winning program for strategic communicators and content creators, named by Adweek as "Marketing Podcast of the Year," nominated for a Webby award and nominated for "Best Business Podcast" in the Podcast Academy awards. Tune in monthly for new episodes. Visit podcampmedia.com/leadballoon to learn more.

Episodes

58. The Mystery of the I-94 Sales & Marketing Tip of the Week Billboard, with Ken Hoffman & Kyle Brown

April 29, 2025 • 35 mins
There is a weird, enigmatic old billboard along the interstate in Wisconsin promoting a "Sales & Marketing Tip of the Week." Without any branding or context, this weathered sign invites thousands of motorists daily to call a mysterious phone number. And that has been driving Dusty CRAZY because, frankly, nothing about this billboard makes any sense in 2025. So we're going to SOLVE A MARKETING MYSTERY, folks! Together with our...
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57. Why Have Streaming Services Put So Many Ads In Our Shows? with Film Critic Matt Zoller Seitz

March 26, 2025 • 36 mins
After more than a decade of living in an entertainment golden age... Filled with more and better options, with less advertising, than ever before in human history... Are the good times over? Almost every major streaming service has recently begun inserting advertising into its programming. And it's NOT your imagination... the ads really are more disruptive and obnoxious than traditional television commercials. So what's d...
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56. What Happens at American Airlines After a Plane Crash: Behind the Scenes with Former Spokeswoman Jennifer R. Hudson

February 19, 2025 • 39 mins
Three weeks after accepting a new role as an American Airlines spokeswoman in 1995, Jennifer R. Hudson was paged out of bed in the middle of the night. The worst had happened. Flight 965 had disappeared in the mountains of Colombia, and Jennifer needed to report to the scene of the crash to coordinate the company's public relations response. Unnerved and uncertain, she had to push aside her doubts and power through what would becom...
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55. Liquid Death Spoofs the Pepsi Harrier Jet Giveaway, with Andy Pearson & Jeff Beer

January 22, 2025 • 42 mins
At the height of the Cola Wars in the mid-90's, Pepsi committed one of the most notorious PR and marketing fiascos of all-time. An eye-catching spot promised brand fans that, if they saved up 7 million Pepsi Points, they could win a Harrier fighter jet. However, no one at Pepsi or their ad agency ever expected anyone to try to claim that prize. And when Washington business school student John Leonard did, they faced a multi-year le...
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54. The Election of the Podcast? 2024 Presidential Campaign PR Focuses on Podcasts & Social Media

December 18, 2024 • 36 mins
Earned media has long been the holy grail of public relations. For decades, getting your client's message in the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal has been the gold standard by which PR agencies are judged. But as we march further into this age of new media, those public opinion gatekeepers in the traditional media are losing their dominance of the American attention span. And as evidenced by this year's presidential campai...
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53. Alex Jones’s Infowars Being Purchased by the Onion and Sandy Hook Families, with Onion CMO Leila Brillson

November 26, 2024 • 31 mins
Alex Jones, founder of the extremist conspiracy-theory-peddling digital brand Infowars, has proved again and again that there is no lie he will not embrace and no moral line he will not cross. For his own, personal benefit, he has victimized the grieving parents of children who were killed in school shootings. He has deliberately stoked fear among his followers in order to sell them snake oil. He has promoted insane conspiracy theo...
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52. FEMA Public Affairs Team Still Carries Scars from Hurricane Ike Assignment, with Molly McPherson & Mike Moore

November 1, 2024 • 46 mins
The videos and stories we’ve seen and heard from Hurricanes Helene and Milton over the last month have been truly horrific. They're an important reminder that the rescue and recovery crews who rush into these disaster zones are invaluable... ...as is the work of public affairs crews and reporters who document the aftermath of these storms. They’re giving the outside world a window in to the carnage, making clear the need for aid, a...
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51. The Legend of Dukakis in a Tank: White House Comms Pros Talk Presidential Optics, with Josh King and Kevin Sullivan

October 2, 2024 • 49 mins
The image of 1988 Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis riding in a tank has become synonymous with abject public relations failure. For marketers and PR practitioners, it serves as an enduring reminder of the power that our mistakes have to burn down powerful people and institutions in one moment of lapsed judgment. And in the spirit of the upcoming election, in this episode we'll explore what led up to the catastrophe...
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BONUS: Literally, the Grammar-Nerdiest Conversation You'll Ever Hear, with Dr. Valerie Fridland

January 17, 2024 • 15 mins
Sociolinguist Dr. Valerie Fridland says we need to relax about the changing nature of language. In her book, "Like, Literally Dude: Arguing for the Good in Bad English," she notes that language has always evolved. Every generation adds its own spin, and the English language is almost unrecognizable from what was spoken centuries ago. And for the most part, we agree. But Dusty thinks there's a *figurative* line in the sand that shou...
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50. Grumpy Cat, the Sound of Freedom, Watergate and More: A Look Back and a Look at What's Next

December 27, 2023 • 53 mins
When you're working with high-profile people in fields like PR, marketing and branding, things are always changing. History gets uncovered. New information comes to light that changes everything. And sometimes an opportunity comes along to learn just a little bit more about a topic of interest. So in this episode, we're revisiting three separate tales from Lead Balloon’s four-year run to dig deeper, uncovering some new "holy crap" ...
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49. How I Almost Got Fired in My 1st Week in PR, and the Important Life Lessons I Learned

November 29, 2023 • 48 mins
At the end of his first week working in public relations, Lead Balloon host Dusty Weis did something so dumb, he could have been fired on the spot. During a meeting with one of his new bosses, prominent Milwaukee politician Jim Bohl, Dusty made a bad assumption and recklessly insulted Jim to his face. Dusty wasn't fired, and the pair went on to work well together at City Hall for five years. But they never again spoke about what wa...
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48. A UAP PR Campaign: Mainstreaming the Conversation About Unexplained Anomalous Phenomena, with Lt. Ryan Graves

November 1, 2023 • 47 mins
UFOs have traditionally been more of a pop culture phenomenon than an actual science. But with the recent declassification of Navy gun camera footage that shows unexplained craft seeming to defy the laws of flight and physics, there's a growing movement among the aviation, military and science communities. They insist it's vital to destigmatize the conversation around Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, or UAPs, which is the preferre...
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47. Sliding into DMs on the Dating App Hinge, with NextGen America's Kristi Johnston

October 3, 2023 • 32 mins
Let's be honest: political groups don't have a great success rate when it comes to their strategic communication tactics. Every election cycle, American voters are bombarded with mailers, emails and text messages that mostly just get trashed or deleted. And when a Political Action Committee like NextGen America is charged with reaching out to younger voters, they face an even more substantial task in motivating the perennially unde...
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46. Why Are Wireless Emergency Alerts on Your Phone So Terrible? A Strategic Communication Conundrum

September 6, 2023 • 43 mins
On January 18, 2018, the entire State of Hawaii received an ear piercing alert on their cell phones. "BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL." Those with a keen memory will recall that the Aloha State was NOT, in fact, wiped off the map by a missile strike. It was a false alarm. But what it revealed about the Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) system should concern every strategic commun...
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45. Replaced by Chat GPT: Are Creative and Copywriting Jobs Threatened by Artificial Intelligence?

August 1, 2023 • 37 mins
The robot revolution has arrived. And they're coming for your marketing or content creation job. The advent of generative artificial intelligence chatbots—most notably tools like Chat GPT and Midjourney—is poised to revolutionize creative industries. These tools use deep learning technology to generate new content based on prompts from human users. But will this be the end of creativity as we know it, or a new implement to help cre...
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44. How a Real Life Ad Agency Inspired the Robin Williams CBS Sitcom, "The Crazy Ones"

July 5, 2023 • 50 mins
Every professional communicator has had a day that seems like it came straight out of a TV sitcom. For Rob Davis and John R. Montgomery, working at the Chicago ad firm Leo Burnett in the early 2000’s, it was a regular occurrence. In fact, the stories from their time there were so singular, that when they shot a pilot and pitched it to Hollywood, it was picked up and run as a CBS sitcom starring Robin Williams and Sarah Michelle Gel...
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43. Brands Don't Have the Rizz: Appropriating Gen Z Slang Is Falling Flat in Social Media Marketing

June 1, 2023 • 42 mins
"How do you do, fellow marketers? We think it would be pretty 'on fleek' if you would stop trying to use slang terms to make yourself more relatable to young people." Certainly, brands swooping in and trying to leverage youth culture to drive sales is nothing new. But as bad as it was in the 80’s, 90’s, and early 2000’s, the advent of social media marketing made it 1000 times worse. The internet never forgets, and whether it's the ...
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BONUS: Covid is—Air Quotes—Over. What That Means for Strategic Communicators, with former HHS Spokesman Bill Pierce

May 11, 2023 • 28 mins
Communicating during and about the Covid-19 pandemic is a topic we've discussed several times on this show, including in our most recent episode. And, as of today, May 11, 2023, the Department of Health and Human Services coronavirus Public Health Emergency is expiring. But just because Covid is "over" doesn’t mean we won’t still have to discuss it as strategic communicators. And so in this bonus episode, we bring back someone who ...
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42. OkCupid Stays On Target During the Covid Pandemic: PR Messaging and Online Dating Apps

May 2, 2023 • 51 mins
When the unstoppable force of online dating met the immovable object of global pandemic social distancing, there was no road map for what would come next.  Michael Kaye is the director of brand and communications for the online dating app OkCupid. And, in the early days of the Covid lockdown, he and his team faced decisions that weighed on no less than the continued existence of the company. After all, what is a stay-at-home order ...
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41. Deepfakes: How Communicators Must Prepare Now for this Imminent Reputation Threat

April 4, 2023 • 49 mins
It is now only a matter of time until someone attacks your reputation with a deepfake, according to the experts. So-called deepfake technology, which can synthesize audio and video of things that never happened, has arrived en masse. And, while these tools for generating potential disinformation were previously only available to trained experts and big institutions, recent advances in artificial intelligence technology mean that AN...
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