Mark Vandegrift
Welcome to the Brand Shorthand Podcast. I'm your host, Mark Vandegrift, and with me today is the Commander of Content, Lorraine Kessler. Lorraine, how are you today, this fine fall day?

Lorraine Kessler
I love it. Anytime you call me a commander, that's right up my alley.

Mark Vandegrift
Alright.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, the weather has been spectacular in this part of Ohio. I'm enjoying the heck out of it. Able to sit out back with the new puppy and light the fire pit and just really relax and enjoy.

Mark Vandegrift
Well, that's great. How's Riz doing?

Lorraine Kessler
Well, she had a little setback this morning. I don't know what's going on, so we're giving her some probiotics to, you know, those little digestive juices and small puppies. Who knows what's going on?

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah. Well, believe it or not, this is our next to last episode of season number two

Lorraine Kessler
That's great.

Mark Vandegrift
And also the big fiftieth celebration, which I see you're wearing the T-shirt today. Yeah, the "doing the IMpossible". "IM", right. Very good. Well, last time we kind of started off the podcast with some bland company slogans, if you recall. As a follow up to that, I want to play some company jingles and see how many we can get. Okay?

Lorraine Kessler
Yep.

Mark Vandegrift
So we're going to, I'm just gonna play these, play one, and you kind of go, "Ayy!", whatever the name is, with what you think it is, see if you can get it in a couple notes. You ready?

Lorraine Kessler
Yep.

"Oh, I love to be an-

Lorraine Kessler
"Oscar Meyer Weiner!"

Mark Vandegrift
I started off with a softball. That one was easy, right?

Lorraine Kessler
Wasn't it like last year or something they wanted to change "Wiener" to "Frankfurter"? And we were like, "What's going to happen to the song?" I mean, that's the whole shtick, right?

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, well they went back to it, remember? They gave up.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah. Yeah. Because this year, this year I saw these posts about the Wienermobile, not the "Frankfurter-mobile" being all around.

Mark Vandegrift
Right. Okay, here's the next one.

Gimme a break, gimme a break, break me off a piece of that-

Lorraine Kessler
"Kit-Kat Bar".

Mark Vandegrift
There you go.

Lorraine Kessler
That's my husband's favorite candy and I can't believe it took me that long to get it.

Mark Vandegrift
Oh really?

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, but I was never good at, you know, what was that game show, play this tune or whatever.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, yep, "Name That Tune". "I can name that tune, Frank, in one note."

Lorraine Kessler
"Name That Tune"... I was never good at it. Some people could.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, they could. Yeah. OK, here's a little more difficult one because it hasn't been used in a while. Ok?

Five... Five Dollar... Five Dollar Foot-long (any, any, any...)

Lorraine Kessler
Is that Subway?

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, very good.

Lorraine Kessler
Okay. I don't remember the jingle in that case. I just remember the promotion for the five foot, what is it called? The five, I messed it up, but I just remember the promotion.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, the five-dollar foot long.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, I was saying the five foot. I mean, that's a heck of a Subway.

Mark Vandegrift
The five foot-

Lorraine Kessler
The five foot Subway submarine.

Mark Vandegrift
Well, and what's interesting is Subway is really hurting right now. They're in hurt city. I see more and more of them closing locally and it's just a shock. They got away from the "fresh" idea because I think they were seeing all these other different types of fresh come into the market. I mean, the Chipotle's of the world, the Blaze Pizza where you pick your toppings. I think that was just a credential to them. Like, hey, look at the pattern everyone's following, but we're still that unique, fresh sub. Instead, I think they went to so much promotional marketing and they just lost that idea in the mind of being fresh. I don't know.

Lorraine Kessler
Well, it didn't help that Jared was "fresh" in a very different way. I mean, that really put- I mean, this is the thing we say, either you make a celebrity or if you hire a celebrity, you are always at the mercy of whatever scandal might follow that person, and his was a pretty big one.

Mark Vandegrift
Well, and what's interesting about that is Jared was a local franchisee's marketing. They started with that and all the franchisees kind of insisted that Subway pick him up nationally. And then they did so things didn't really change. They got rid of them. It still didn't change. The local franchisees said, bring them back. They brought them back and he got huge. And I don't mean that personally, like, no, he shrunk.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah. No, he got small. And they got big.

Mark Vandegrift
He got small. His reputation was huge, but then his reputation was very fresh, as you point out. So you can live and die by influencers, right? And celebrities. Well, that's exactly what happened.

Lorraine Kessler
That was a bad one. But I read too that just this past month, the corporate called one of the only all-franchisee meetings to discuss how to get out of the jam they're in, in terms of their drop in same-store sales across the board. So that's pretty drastic.

Mark Vandegrift
Yep. It is. Okay, let's do another one that might be a little, I don't know. This goes back so long that I think that this will at least be in your head. You may not be able to name the brand, but that's kind of the goal of the jingle. So hopefully this works out. Here we go.

Eight-hundred, five, eight, eight, two, three-hundred-

Lorraine Kessler
"Empire", right?

Mark Vandegrift
Yep.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, the carpet people, right? Right? Oh wow. And that was Chicago. I didn't realize they were out of Chicago. wow. Hey, that was pretty ingenious.

Mark Vandegrift
Well, yeah, you remember the company? Well, maybe if you listen to the whole jingle... and you get the phone number, so you got the response mechanism built in there. And then, of course, the jingle keeps it in your head. So, yeah. OK, let's try another one here.

Like a good neighbor-

Lorraine Kessler
"State Farm is here!"

Mark Vandegrift
"There!" "State Farm is there!" We'll forgive you since you're not musically inclined. I'm sure the lyrics don't go with it.

Lorraine Kessler
If I sang it, I probably would get it, Mark, but you have told me many times, "Please don't sing."

Mark Vandegrift
No, this is a jingle episode, so we're releasing you from the normal requirement of not singing. Ok?

Lorraine Kessler
"Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there."

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, let's see if we can get this next one. You ready? Cause this one, when I listened to it, I thought, "I don't know if I remember that", but as a kid, I always remembered it. So here it goes.

Frosted Lucky Charms... they're magically delicious!

Lorraine Kessler
Oh gosh, yeah, the little lucky charm-

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, the lucky charm one. Of course, that one's easy. It has it in there. Yep. So that was-

Lorraine Kessler
Magically delicious. That's the key line.

Mark Vandegrift
Now this one-

Lorraine Kessler
Which is loaded with tons of sugar and it puts your kid on a high for the whole day.

Mark Vandegrift
Exactly. This one might take you a little bit. Let's see.

I'm a big kid now!

Mark Vandegrift
Okay, they never say the brand in it.

Lorraine Kessler
I don't know that one.

Mark Vandegrift
Huggies, or their pull-ups.

Lorraine Kessler
Oh my gosh. Yeah. What year was that? Do we know?

Mark Vandegrift
I think probably in the nineties, if I had to, yeah-

Lorraine Kessler
Well, that's probably why.

Mark Vandegrift
If I had to recall, you wouldn't have had kids in the nineties. Your kids were past that stage, weren't they?

Lorraine Kessler
They were in their, going to their teens. So that's a whole other, you know... shtick.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, well this next one you're going to get really easily and you can sing it.

Plop-plop, fizz-fizz-

Lorraine Kessler
"Oh, what a relief it is!" Yeah, that's a great one.

Mark Vandegrift
Yep. So that's a good one.

Lorraine Kessler
And every time I take Alka-Seltzer, I think of that jingle. Because it's actually what you do with the product, right? You plop-plop, fizz-fizz, then you drink it down.

Mark Vandegrift
So anyhow, this goes to the sensory of the auditory- creating memorability in the mind.

Lorraine Kessler
Right, connection.

Mark Vandegrift
And so that's kind of our theme today is "how do you touch into senses beyond just the visual?" Because you could have the auditory like that, obviously, visually, they actually have animated logos now. There's touch, which would be haptic. So different ways to touch the senses. And I guess the question is, the more the senses are touched with a brand, with something that's unique to a brand, does the memory go up?

Lorraine Kessler
Oh, absolutely.

Mark Vandegrift
So some of these, might not be at the but the moment we start hearing "plop-plop, fizz-fizz", we don't have to go any further. We know it's Alka-Seltzer, right? So, and maybe, I don't know how much they've used that. Maybe they need to bring it back. But in this tune of marketing beyond just visual, you had sent me an article titled "Advertising as Impressionism" that discussed other ways advertising and marketing can stem beyond just what something looks like. You want to give our listening audience an overview of that and summarize what that means?

Lorraine Kessler
Well, I think what it is, is that you make an impression on the audience, understanding that we're not one dimensional. The brain isn't one dimensional. And how we recall information is very varied. For example, we remember the greatest sense that we have attached to memory is smell. Like you remember your grandmother's house and how it smelled. You remember how something cooking on the stove smelled. You might remember how rain smells, for example, and it's tied to very key memories. It's the greatest sense. So it's really about understanding that as humans, we have far more senses at work and play, the ear being probably the greatest one for the English language and certainly for recall. So what these jingles do is they make an impression that's lasting. I mean, they make an impression that is repetitive and then in its repetition enhances recall. And it's that recall that we then associate with that brand if it's unwell and over time and what have you. Making an impression, I mean, Bernbach said, you're not doing advertising to bore people, right? And the problem that we sometimes have as positionists is, the position itself is not sexy. It's not necessarily memorable. It doesn't have the cachet. It's strategic. So it could be, "We're going to be the lightest beer on the market." Well, that's not sexy in itself. How it's conveyed, how that idea is brought forward and conveyed, which is the creative's number one challenge. And they have to think about, "How am I gonna make the right impression, a lasting impression", considering all the senses that the human would use and can bring to bear to get this idea across? And sometimes it's just a slogan. And it's not just that the words matter, but "tastes great, less filling" is a rhythm, right? I mean, me who has no musical rhythm, but it does have a rhythm and has a rhythm the ear understands. So it's not just the words that make that slogan great. There's actually a musicality to it, even though it's not a jingle. And so this really is where words come alive in terms of a different dimension and to make that impression.

Mark Vandegrift
Well, my only challenge with the whole notion of it is he named it "Impressionism", which I immediately get a picture of a genre of art. so I think with our capability of going into additional senses these days, I want to call it "quantum marketing". How do you like that for a name?

Lorraine Kessler
No, I mean, I don't. And this is the thing-

Mark Vandegrift
I'm joking.

Lorraine Kessler
I don't think you mentioned that the article was from Bob Hoffman, who is a self-defined ad contrarian. And he is, and I really appreciate Bob. But when I read the article, he tends to do this, and I think he did in this, he tends to make mountains out of molehills. You might think he's Baptist. It's an old joke, by the way. But in this case, think he kind of, makes it like, he sets up a false war between, I think, having the right strategy and impressionism, and then jumping to, what was it, quantum, whatever.

Mark Vandegrift
I said quantum marketing, I was just kidding.

Lorraine Kessler
But of course advertising has to make an impression. That's its number one job. Why do it at all? Now, part of that is you can make an impression and not have a position or a premise, what's called a premise for a second, that's at all motivation to the audience. So they might remember the impression you make, but it doesn't make them buy. So I think these two things have to align, having the right position or premise that helps people make a choice for your product or service and not someone else's. Executed or expressed in the most memorable way that makes the biggest impression. So I don't see these as, you know, odds. I see these as different sides of the same coin.

Mark Vandegrift
Well, I think what he really touched on for me, pun intended, since we're talking senses here, is the more you involve all of the senses, smell, touch, etc., that the more likely there's memory to it. And I think the reason I went to quantum marketing, which I'm just kidding, but really, it is technology to a certain extent because MasterCard announced last week that they are implementing what they call a haptic logo, H-A-P-T-I-C, and it means anything to do with touch. So what that means is that when you use your phone through, Apple Wallet or Google Wallet or any third-party wallet app that has your MasterCard logged into it, your phone will vibrate a distinctive haptic vibration or what they're calling a "haptic logo". So you know how TV channels have identifying tones and we're going to talk about audio logos here soon. But because of technology now, they're able to do something that would be called a haptic logo that's a vibration that's unique to just MasterCard.

Lorraine Kessler
Sure, but let's not have technology overstep how humans behave and remember and think about things. If you could do a haptic and it didn't mean- I'm not talking about the haptic itself, what the touch is. I'm talking about if a haptic, a touch or feel a vibration or that didn't help humans remember anything or make an impression, who cares about the technology? Technology is always a servant. It's never the lead in my- it's never the master in my opinion. It's just a new way to deliver something that works. But if it didn't work to begin with, who cares that you're able to deliver it?

Mark Vandegrift
Right, right. But they are. So it was interesting because the research after the Haptic logo was created showed that people had a more positive experience because it was a confirmation that payment was made. Okay. Now, if everybody gets doing this, then are you going to know necessarily which haptic logo goes with which brand?

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, it's going to get confusing.

Mark Vandegrift
So you could get back to that issue with clutter. And he just- the inventor, Raja Rajamannar- he said his goal was to bring MasterCard into the new frontier, right? Well, what comes to my mind, and again, joking about the quantum marketing, is we're now getting into virtual reality, we're getting into augmented reality. You have the Apple gear with their headset, you have Google with their headset, you have all these headsets where people are going to start experiencing alternate, I guess, scenes and realities in which now it'll be interesting to see if branding is brought into that in a way that touches the senses in yet another new way. So my point on the technology was we really couldn't have haptic logos before in that sense that, my phone just vibrated in a certain way and it's a new sensory touch on a particular brand. Will that happen with these headsets? It'll be interesting to see. It's just that the point of all of this is how can we further make connection to the human emotion through the senses that is differentiating to a particular brand, right?

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah. Yep. Your last sentence says it all. I mean, that's absolutely it. And technology is the servant to what people are, how the mind works and how people process information. And I think that, you know, I actually think, you know, things like the McDonald's "do-do-do-do-do", right? That little- that quick little thing is genius. And so the more ways we can deliver that, who knows if they can ever deliver that in kind of a pulse rhythm that would reinforce that. So as one thing that technology has done in our industry as well as any other industry is it just puts more opportunities on the plate, more ways of reaching people through these things that we know work, sight, sound, whatever. know, it'll be really interesting if they ever can do like scent through your phone. So you can smell Lucky Charms or smell money if it's magical. Now that would be a new frontier.

Mark Vandegrift
I think that would be the new favorite scent for Christmas. I'm not sure, but...

Lorraine Kessler
Yes. And it'll go down as you buy.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, yep. Okay, so you just said "I'm loving it", right? And "do-do-do-do-do". We would classify that as probably more of a jingle because there's, "I'm loving it". So the length of the jingle probably would either classify it as a jingle or if it gets short enough, we have what are called audio logos. And this is kind of a fun experiment too for our listeners to see if they can get these, but I'm gonna play a couple for you, and you tell me if you can get these, okay? Cause they don't have any words with them. Okay? Here goes the first one.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah.

Lorraine Kessler
Okay, Intel, Intel inside.

Mark Vandegrift
Yes, very good. And that was really a genius move because what was the challenge with Intel? Why don't you tell our listeners why it was very important to develop something around that brand.

Lorraine Kessler
Well, Andrew Grove, who was in charge of Intel at the time, first made the decision to only focus on these processors, right? And that was a big change from their business.

Mark Vandegrift
Well it's because they're an ingredient inside of something larger.

Lorraine Kessler
So there's a great book, if anybody wants to read it, called "Only the Paranoid Survive" by Andrew Grove. But yeah, it's an ingredient marketing, kind of like Gore-Tex. And so how do you make that brand meaningful so that people are looking for hardware that has that particular component inside. And so it's a very unique study in ingredient marketing and it's a good case study for anybody to study who has an ingredient that wants to hold a high bar with their supply chain with the OEMs and make their brand valuable so that the OEMs feel like there's a virtuous connection in allowing that promotion to define their brand. To use- know, it makes me think in a way that began, that's a consumer pull through campaign, right? To draw you to PCs with Intel Inside. And typically that would be just a supply chain kind of business-to-business, product-to-OEM kind of thing.

So I think there's more play here than just even the advertising. A play is just even the thinking that was said that said, hey, we can do more by going to the consumer and creating demand for product that has Intel. And we're going to invest in that. And this is where CEOs have to make investment decisions. That was a very bold, I think, investment decision to invest in the advertising to create demand, create memorability, and all that. It also makes me think that I don't think we in the advertising world use these other devices enough.

Mark Vandegrift
I would agree.

Lorraine Kessler
You know, I don't think we're thinking about it. I know I wasn't thinking about it as much. So this is a really good refresher course for me. I can think of a number of brands that we represented where having this kind of sound attached to the logo- did you have a name for that? Did you call that something?

Mark Vandegrift
Audio logo. Yep.

Lorraine Kessler
An audio logo? I can go back now and say, wow, we should do an audio logo for that.

Mark Vandegrift
=Well, here's a relatively new one, even though they've been around for a while. I don't think this one was done until 2019. So let me know if you know this one, you ready?

Lorraine Kessler
Mm-hmm.

Lorraine Kessler
It sounds like the "Law & Order" TV show.

Mark Vandegrift
It's closed, but it's on TV.

Lorraine Kessler
That's Netflix, right?

Mark Vandegrift
Netflix, yep.

Lorraine Kessler
Gosh, I can't believe I missed that. I watch Netflix like daily. Hulu has one.

Mark Vandegrift
Yep. that's it. I know YouTube TV, they have theirs. So there's just a bunch of different ones. How about this one? You ready?

Lorraine Kessler
huh.

Lorraine Kessler
"Do-do-do-do-do". Mark, I'm so bad at this. I mean, I know what it is. I know what it is.

Mark Vandegrift
T-Mobile.

Lorraine Kessler
T-Mobile...

Mark Vandegrift
It's funny because, you know, some of these come real naturally, and I know you're gonna get this next one because it goes way, way back. Okay, you ready?

Lorraine Kessler
Yep.

Lorraine Kessler
yeah, MGM.

Mark Vandegrift
Yep, you got it.

Lorraine Kessler
The lion.

Mark Vandegrift
That one- yeah, that one is-

Lorraine Kessler
And I would probably would get Universal and which is more of a whole song. 20th Century Fox.

Mark Vandegrift
Okay, let's do 20th century, you ready? I got it queued up for you.

Lorraine Kessler
Oh, ok. Good.

Lorraine Kessler
(Singing to audio logo)

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, well, I think that's the additional part of it, isn't it?

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, what, did you get that recording from like the silent film there? It's a really old one.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, that is a really old one. That's when it was done on a... You could still hear the record scratches on it. Did you notice that? That was pretty cool.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, I did. Do you have Hulu? Hulu has a pretty and Max has that, you know, like static kind of thing going.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah. Well, to get into the science portion of this episode, because I know we have to draw it to a close here, the section of the brain that handles words and speech is actually different than the section of the brain that handles rhythm and music and touch. Isn't that interesting?

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, that is. Yeah.

Mark Vandegrift
So now you're hitting both sides of the brain. And that's why there studies where people with dementia or Alzheimer's won't know the names of their own children, but you play them a song they learned as kids and they can sing right along, hit every word- It's just amazing because they're stored in different spots.

Lorraine Kessler
That's interesting. Yeah, I even have to ask myself if I have children. That's what's happening.

Mark Vandegrift
Now Lorraine, you're not that old. Come on now.

Lorraine Kessler
That's why I have pictures everywhere.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah. Well, here's another one. This sounds like pseudoscience right on the surface, but physical warmth, even, coincides with social warmth. They did this study in 2009 by Lawrence Williams and John Bargh, I think it was, and they had half of the participants hold a hot cup of coffee and the other half held an iced coffee. And in the first part of the study, the participants who held the hot coffee perceived a person with them as having a warmer personality than those who held iced coffees. In the second part of the study, they found that the participants exposed to a hot therapeutic pad were more likely to choose to give a friend a gift, while participants exposed to a cold therapeutic pad were more likely to choose a gift for themselves.

Lorraine Kessler
Interesting. Wow.

Mark Vandegrift
So just being around physical warmth made people more socially warm. Going that alongside music and haptics and audio, you know, all the senses I think have pretty drastic effects on people in the sense of brands. Okay. Because it changes our intake valve. What are your thoughts on that?

Lorraine Kessler
Well, that sounds, that study- I'd have to look at that study because it sounds, it's like a lot of these studies, sometimes you have to really dig in deep to see because I'm sure if that ice cold drink had Crown Royal in it, it might be a different- it might be a different outcome, right?

Mark Vandegrift
That's true. That's true. Well, I said it could be pseudoscience on the surface.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, and I mean, I remember years ago, you know, we all know that women when they're pregnant should not drink. the more important, sorry, however, the ban on all alcohol is probably overstated. And the reason is the study they used to say that women drinking during pregnancy could lead to birth defects, whatever, ill effects. As you looked at the study, these women were heavy smokers too. So, I mean, I always caution people really look at the methodology for anything like this. Like what really was the methodology and what were the people exposed to and what other conditions were simultaneously either not filtered out or were filtered in to make sure it's a clean study. So that's my skepticism on this particular study. I want to know more about the methodology.

Mark Vandegrift
Certainly, but I think the point being is the more you can grab the emotion with branding, Whether it's a haptic or the sound, anything like that. It's interesting to incorporate into marketing. As you said, it's a good reminder, right? We don't even think jingles. A lot of times we don't think audio logos. Now we have to think haptic logos. There's the visual side of it we always think about, but things are changing significantly, so-

Lorraine Kessler
Well, yeah, look at the webs. I mean, the web medium. We have treated it for years as a two dimensional visual medium. So how many times you download a page and the logo comes up? Why isn't there an audio logo? I mean, I wouldn't use it haphazardly and, you know, I wouldn't use it for every logo under the sun. That'd be ridiculous. And that's one of the other things that happens. People just like go bonkers. But strategically, if you're thinking about what that company does and who they're trying to touch and what their position is, if it's a feel good brand, right? Like, I just think you have to be thinking, is there an opportunity here and are we missing it?

Mark Vandegrift
Well, I think that's a good place to stop today. And it that article-

Lorraine Kessler
I feel really badly that I didn't get T-Mobile because I think that's one of the better parts of their marketing. And for those who are listening, the CEO is from Canton, Ohio-

Mark Vandegrift
Yay.

Lorraine Kessler
And he's a really great guy. And I think he's done an amazing job with T-Mobile. think their marketing is really top notch. And I can't believe I missed that. But see, please, that's me. I'm just not- I'm just not good. I would never be on "Name That Song". Never.

Mark Vandegrift
That's okay, that's okay. I think we all intake things differently and that's what makes the world go round and it's a beautiful thing. It's a good reminder that when your brand is more surround sound- another pun intended- that you're likely to hit more people with engaging them with the emotion. You may not remember the audio, but I do. You name me a song right now from the 80s and I can almost tell you where I was in the 80s, right? Whether it was my junior year abroad in Germany or I was up at the local pool. I mean, I can hear a song from the 80s and almost tell you where I heard it first or where I hear it most often. Other people be into this haptic thing. Some people are into visual. That's your background. You're an artist. The visual memory that you have is much different than mine.

Lorraine Kessler
It's funny, my husband can remember every song from the 70s. He once sang them all to me on the way to Columbus, because he didn't have a radio in his TR-6. But the weird thing is he associates every song with a girl he was dating at that time. So I also learned about all his old girlfriends.

Mark Vandegrift
That's definitely a good place to stop for today. I don't want to hear anymore. So thank you listeners for listening today, literally. And if you haven't liked, subscribed or told your friends about the brand Shorthand podcast, please make sure you do that. And my new audio logo for subscription is this: "Subscribe, subscribe, subscribe!" And until next time, have an amazing day.