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As they say, it's a wrap! Season One of Kansas City Marketing Legends is in the books. We are extremely grateful to all of you who have listened to our conversations with the legends of Season One and look forward to offering up more legends when we launch Season Two in early 2025.

This final episode of our first season gives us a chance to remember some of the high points of our first season and provide you with a glimpse of a few of our Season Two legends.

As always, a loud shout out to our sponsors, evolution Audio, Springboard Creative, The Kansas City Ad Club and Greater KC PRSA. And a big thanks to all of you who are enjoying our podcast. Enjoy this final episode of Season One of the Kansas City Marketing Legends!

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Becky Blades is the ultimate startist. Her second book is titled Start More Than You Can Finish. That certainly describes Becky to a tee.

As you will hear into this episode of Kansas City Marketing Legends, Becky not only started a lot of things, but she finished a few as well. And how well she did finish. But as you will hear, after starting her own PR Firm and then deciding to sell it, Becky was only beginning to become a true legend in Kansas City and beyond.

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So, three ad guys are sitting around in one of their homes one summer talking about how to create a new approach in the marketing business. No this is not the start of a joke. It’s exactly how the world’s largest agency was born right here in Kansas City.

Scott McCormick and his founding partners, John Valentine, and Craig Ligabel, left one firm in Kansas City and started what they hoped would be an early adaptation of a virtual agency with maybe 25 employees and lots of contractors. On this episode of Kansas City Marketing Legends, Scott will tell us why that plan didn’t quite work out the way they envisioned. Instead, that agency, VML, is a global powerhouse that turned Kansas City’s original downtown airport into their world headquarters.

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Pasquale Trozzolo, without a doubt, founded one of our city’s premier agencies. Trozzolo Communications Group is an exemplary example of a family business. It also is a company that has recognized over the years how to grow through smart acquisitions and how to keep the principals of those they acquired to stay involved.

On this episode of Kansas City Marketing Legends, Pasquale will tell us why his experience in the political arena prepared him for his career. Today Pasquale remains Executive Chairman of the agency he founded but has found some time to do a few other things as well these days.

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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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