Here are my podcast subscriptions. What else should I be listening to?

My friend Cliff pointed out this cartoon from the New Yorker.   It’s very funny, but the humour comes from wondering why people buy vinyl when it is more expensive and less convenient than digital formats and streaming. Surely it makes no sense?
For me, this shows the limitations of thinking about marketing propositions in rational terms. People by and large don’t make logical choices and in the case of vinyl, as always, it’s worth thinking harder about what they really are buying. 

They might articulate that they prefer a warm sound, or they appreciate the larger artwork, but I suspect on a deeper level they’re buying into how it makes them feel and how it fits their desired self image. 

Do they long for a taste of their formative years? Or maybe it’s an oasis from an always on digital world. 

Whatever it is, vinyl continues to sell and it’s a reminder that rational thinking and rational messaging can only ever scratch the surface. 

A brilliant, readable and humbling guide to the way our brains work. And the ways they don’t.   

Don’t read this if you’ve not seen the final episode.

I’ve just finished watching the finale and what an unexpected finish. But yet it all makes perfect sense and we’d been given clues all along the way.

Don has spent the final series trying to find love and family life and been rebuffed at every turn. He gets divorced, Sterling Cooper leaves him, his dying wife rejects him and even the daughter of the woman who’s husband’s name he steals is too messed up to be family for him.

In the final episode, he only connects with his inner pain through a stranger’s dream – the tale of how an ordinary man thinks everyone else is having fun and he’s left on the fridge shelf locked away – like an unwanted product.

Don’s can’t find inner peace by chanting Om with the seekers on the clifftop, but he recognises how such moments move other people. His sudden smile is not soulful enlightenment, but for a marketing insight. It literally dawns on him, “Well this would make a great Coke ad”

He has failed at finding true happiness, so he goes back to selling it to other people.

He leaves the retreat, goes back to McCann and makes that Coca-Cola ad.

As Peggy says, he’s gone home.

Bob Dylan, speaking at Musicares

Sam Cooke said this when told he had a beautiful voice: He said, “Well that’s very kind of you, but voices ought not to be measured by how pretty they are. Instead they matter only if they convince you that they are telling the truth.”

A guy wakes up one Sunday morning to find the kitchen flooded. Water is spurting everywhere and things are getting ruined. 

He tracks down a plumber who arrives to a fraught family scene. ‘Thank god you’re here’, says the dad. 

The plumber surveys the situation, pulls a tool out of his bag and stops the burst immediately. 

‘That’s fantastic’, says the guy, ‘how much do I owe you?’

‘£100’ says the plumber. 

‘£100?’. says the dad. ‘It only took you two minutes!’

‘No’, says the plumber, ‘that took me 25 years’ 

Read My Lips – Why Politicians Speak the Way They Do – terrific podcast covering the power of words to influence. 

I particularly liked how the speech consultant improved on “hard-working families”

Pleased to see that one of the first, and still one of the best, crowdsourced twitter memes is still active