In this episode, Jack Ferguson hosts Leigh Anne Cappello, former VP of Marketing for Play-Doh and one of the leaders during its 50th anniversary period, to discuss how scent, memory, and brand DNA combined to create one of the most recognisable brands.

From the Play-Doh perfume release to prescience calendars to the penetration of the brand's scent, this episode is an exploration of what it takes for a brand to stick.

In this episode Leigh Anne discusses:

• Why the Play-Doh perfume product was created
• The considerations that went into Play-Dohs 50th Anniversary
• The numbers behind Play Doh’s distinctive smell penetration
• A product that didn’t have the desired commercial impact because Brand DNA wasn't considered
• How marketers can use prescience calendars for stronger cultural relevance
• Moments of failure are often the strongest opportunities to build lasting customer relationships.
• Design Thinking and its benefits to marketers
• How Play Doh started off as an accidental innovation
• How to utilise Brand DNA and Brand Essence to improve commercial outcomes
• How large organisations can create safe spaces for real innovation (without betting the company)
• Why prototyping, learning in public, and “getting it wrong” often leads to better brand outcomes
• Her unique business model and why she operates that way

Links to Leigh Anne and Jack:

- Leigh Anne's Blog

- Leigh Anne's LinkedIn Profile

- Jack's LinkedIn Profile

- Jack's Website

Links to The Push:

- LinkedIn Page

- Website

- YouTube Page

- Instagram Page

- TikTok Page

Referenced in this Episode:

- Brand Sense by Martin Lindstrom

- Watts Wacker

- Georgina Melone

- Gary Serby

This episode explores disproportionate leverage and how it shows up when immersion is treated as critical brand building work, not a nice-to-have.

Rather than chasing deliverables or premature answers, your hosts examine immersion as a diagnostic imperative, the strength required to defend it, and the consequences of bypassing it.

This episode is co-hosted by Brand Strategist Jack Ferguson and Brand Identity Designer Tutai Marongere.

In this episode, you’ll hear:

• Why Tutai deliberately told a client the work would take “as long as it takes”
  
  
• How Tutai did three months of immersion without producing a single output, but then created an output that ended all debate instantly
  
  
• How Jack sees immersion as a way of articulating the unsaid
  
  
• How Tutai believes dreaming about a brand became his signal that the work was finally ready to be done
  
  
• How Tutai sketched a concept on a fogged-up shower screen as the result of immersion, not inspiration
  
  
• How Jack uses recorded customer interviews to reveal truths that transcripts and summaries consistently miss
  
  
• Why both Tutai and Jack believe that “when you know, you know” is a real diagnostic threshold, not a creative cliché
  
  
• Why both Tutai and Jack believe the brand work that lasts is always found in the details

Helpful Links:

- Find Jack on LinkedIn here

- Find Tutai on LinkedIn here

- Visit Jack’s personal website here

- Follow The Push on LinkedIn here

- Follow The Push on YouTube here

- Follow The Push on TikTok here

- Follow The Push on Instagram here

- Visit The Push website here

Christmas is often thought of as a seasonal moment.

In reality, it’s one of the strongest examples of brand heritage and cultural embedding ever built.

This episode analyses Christmas as a brand system. It examines how it formed, how it survived bans, wars, secularisation, and media fragmentation, and why its relevance continues to compound without central ownership, governance, or constant persuasion.

For senior marketers, this offers an opportunity to examine endurance at the system level and understand how meaning persists when channels change, attention fragments, and authority disappears.

This episode breaks down the ritualistic architecture underneath Christmas. It explores the structures that organise behaviour, repetition, and memory over time. More importantly, it shows why brands do not need to invent architecture of this magnitude themselves. They can identify, attach to, and strengthen existing cultural architectures to gain leverage, relevance, and resilience without relying on perpetual novelty or escalating spend.

This episode was hosted by Brand Strategist Jack Ferguson.

In this episode, Jack discusses:

• A clearer way to think about brand heritage as a system, not a story or origin myth
• How Coca-Cola strengthened Christmas’ ritualistic architecture for sustained commercial advantage
• How changing rituals in the West create new points of cultural leverage for brands
• The language and structure that recognises and explains cultural embedding
• Ritualistic architecture and how it creates repetition, memory, and defence over time
• How brands can attach to existing cultural systems rather than manufacturing meaning from scratch
• Identifying where your brand could embed, even without scale, ownership, or permission

Helpful Links:

- Find Jack on LinkedIn here

- Follow The Push on LinkedIn here

- Follow The Push on YouTube here

- Follow The Push on TikTok here

- Follow The Push on Instagram here

- Visit The Push website here

- Visit Jack’s personal website here

References:

https://www.marketingweek.com/mcdonalds-bigger-than-jesus-christ/

https://yougov.co.uk/topics/consumer/explore/brand/Coca_Cola

https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/

Saturnalia

Sol Invictus

Kalends of January

Feast of Fools

Feast of the Ass

Washington Irving

Charles Dickens

Coca-Cola AI Christmas Ad

Haddon Sundblom

The Party Barrel Origin Story fo