Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly - Hiding in Plain Sight: The Surprising Influence of Marketing

Episode Date: June 17, 2023

 So many things in our world are influenced by marketing. This week, we look at various aspects of our lives influenced by marketing. – but you wouldn’t know it. It’s marketing hiding in plain sight. Like the concept of jaywalking – born of marketing. How marketing created the 10,000-steps-a-day health goal. And how marketing was the inspiration for one of the most popular TV series that everyone is talking about right now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly. As you may know, we've been producing a lot of bonus episodes while under the influences on hiatus. They're called the Beatleology Interviews, where I talk to people who knew the Beatles, work with them, love them, and the authors who write about them. Well, the Beatleology Interviews have become a hit, so we are spinning it out to be a standalone podcast series. You've already heard conversations with people like actors Mark Hamill, Malcolm McDowell, and Beatles confidant Astrid Kershaw. But coming up, I talk to May Pang, who dated John Lennon in the mid-70s. I talk to double fantasy guitarist Earl Slick, Apple Records creative director John Kosh. I'll be talking to Jan Hayworth,

who designed the Sgt. Pepper album cover. Very cool. And I'll talk to singer Dion, who is one of only five people still alive who were on the Sgt. Pepper cover. And two of those people were Beatles. The stories they tell are amazing. So thank you for making this series such a success. And please, do me a favor, follow the Beatleology interviews on your podcast app. You don't even have to be a huge Beatles fan, you just have to love storytelling.

Subscribe now, and don't miss a single beat. This is an apostrophe podcast production. Your teeth look whiter than no nose You're not you when you're hungry You're a good hand with all teeth You're under the influence with Terry O'Reilly. Nearly 500,000 people milled beneath the famous St. Louis Gateway Arch on the 5th of July in 1982. It was the VP Fair, attendance was free, and the headline act was Elton John. With that many people in a non-stadium space, getting Elton to the stage was going to be very, very difficult. The local police had to figure out a way,

not just to get Elton to the event. They had to figure out how to get him through the crowd to the backstage area without setting off mass hysteria. And parting half a million people was a feat not even Moses could pull off. That's when Lieutenant James Hackett came up with a surprising idea. Hackett was the chief of field operations for the event.

His idea was bold and unusual, and it had never been done before. It also carried a high degree of risk because Hackett's idea was to hide Elton in plain sight. His plan had two elements. The first was to use a black limousine with tinted windows as a decoy. That limo would wind its way through the massive crowd, draw the rapt attention of the audience, and, by doing so,

allow the second stage of the plan to unfold. First, Lieutenant Hackett picked Elton John up at his hotel one hour before the show was to begin. They walked right through the hotel lobby, and not one person recognized Elton. Then, they both hopped into a marked police car. Just before they arrived at the event, 24 police officers, some with German Shepherds, some on horseback, pushed the fans back from the black limousine as it crept its way through the thick crowd.

All eyes and cameras were glued to the limo. But Elton wasn't in it. Meanwhile, Hackett's police car arrived at the scene. Elton John got out and proceeded to walk right through the crowd to the backstage area, because he was surrounded by policemen. But here's the ingenious part. Elton was dressed as a cop, too.

It was a brilliant idea. Just a bunch of cops walking toward the stage. Now, that idea could have gone sideways very quickly if someone had spotted Elton in the police uniform. But as Lieutenant Hackett later said, not one living human being paid any attention to him. And that's why nobody recognized him walking through the hotel either. Elton just walked right through the lobby and right through the crowd, dressed as a policeman.

He just hid in plain sight. Often, the world of marketing hides in plain sight. Many of the things we take for granted every day have their surprising roots in marketing. Some of the entrenched legal regulations we all live with are not government initiatives, but marketing initiatives. And even one of the most popular and awarded television series of the last 70 years

actually began life as an advertising campaign. But you wouldn't know it because the marketing industry was hiding in plain sight. You're under the influence. As someone who has spent my entire career in the advertising business, I can still be surprised at the reach and depth of that influence. Take jaywalking. In most cities, there are crosswalks. Some towns don't ticket jaywalkers

and some cities, like Los Angeles, gives out thousands of jaywalking citations. Those fines can go up to $250. Most of us assume jaywalking is illegal. And while there is no jaywalking law at the federal level in Canada, many municipalities do have bylaws. So we take for granted that jaywalking has always been a government initiative. But not so. It was a marketing initiative. But not so. It was a marketing initiative. One hundred years ago, streets were pedestrian spaces, filled with people, children, vendors selling their goods, and horse-drawn carts. People strolled streets anywhere they wanted,

any time they wanted, and never watched out for vehicles, mostly because there weren't many. But as car ownership began to increase, so did car fatalities. It was mostly children and the elderly who were disproportionately killed, not drivers. The public's response was outrage. Memorials were erected for children killed in traffic accidents. Newspapers reported accidents in full, gory detail.

Drivers were blamed. Cartoons were created that demonized cars. Courts overwhelmingly charged drivers with manslaughter, almost regardless of the circumstances. In 1923, anti-car activists tried to get a law passed that would require all car manufacturers to limit automobile engines to a top speed of 25 miles per hour. Cars were labeled killing machines.

That thought panicked car makers. So auto industry groups sprang into action. As Vox Media reports, the auto industry began influencing the way news coverage of car accidents was covered. In the U.S., the National Automobile Chamber of Commerce established a free wire service for newspapers. Reporters could send in a basic report about an accident and, in return, get a complete free article ready to print, which largely shifted the blame to pedestrians. This is when the term jaywalking appeared. In the 1920s,

the word jay meant a hick or a country bumpkin, someone from the sticks who didn't understand city life. Crossing the road outside of crosswalks was framed as, quote, stupid behavior.

And the term jaywalking was soon part of the vernacular, jay and walking being two separate words. Then a strategy of shame was adopted. Auto groups lobbied policemen to shout at jaywalkers and even carried jaywalking women back to the curb. Parades featured clowns jaywalking and getting bumped by Model T cars.

Posters shaming jaywalkers were distributed around the country. Soon, the word jaywalking transitioned into one word. And from that day forward, the concept of jaywalking has remained lodged in our minds and legal system. And the concept of who rules the roads became entrenched. Jaywalking wasn't created to protect pedestrians.

It was a marketing idea created to protect the emerging car industry. Here's a surprising tidbit about turkeys. I was once hired to direct commercials for Butterball turkeys. It was coming up to Thanksgiving, and Butterball always advertises heavily leading up to the big day and then ramps up again for Christmas. As I was working on the ads, the Butterball people told me an amazing thing. I had heard of the Butterball turkey hotline, but I had no idea how serious it was. It all began in 1981.

Butterball set up a phone line manned by six home economists. It was simply a marketing idea to position Butterball set up a phone line manned by six home economists. It was simply a marketing idea to position Butterball as the brand that could help your turkey trauma. It was meant to be a fun idea that Butterball could create commercials around. I mean, how many turkey questions can there possibly be from the public? As it turns out, the answer was 11,000. Yep, those poor six home economists were overwhelmed with 11,000 callers that first season. All they had at their disposal were small three-ring binders as reference material. Suddenly, Butterball had to take it seriously.

Since then, each year between Thanksgiving and Christmas, 50 Butterball operators talk nervous cooks through their turkey preparations. And even with the Google available, the Butterball hotline still answers 100,000 questions via phone, text, email, or live chat sessions every season. Turkey operators now need at least a four-year degree in a food-related field. Some are registered dietitians, others are ex-chefs and food stylists. All new recruits have to spend time at Butterball University for a training course, and everyone is required to take an advanced refresher course at the start of each season. As the Butterball website says,

let's talk turkey, and lists a 1-800-Butterball phone number. Butterballers are taught to be cheery, solution-oriented, and non-judgmental. As one veteran butterball operator says, people can be just paralyzed with turkey fear. The most common questions are about thawing a turkey. People ask if they can thaw a turkey in the dishwasher

or under an electric blanket. One man wanted to know if he could throw a wrapped turkey into the bathtub with his kids. One newlywed called in a panic from inside a closet, afraid her new mother-in-law would discover she didn't know how to roast a turkey. A man called worried his turkey wouldn't thaw in time.

The Butterball expert asked what state the turkey was in now. He replied, Florida. It's comedy gold and branding brilliance. The Butterball turkey hotline is still going strong, and Butterball is still one of the only branded turkeys on the market. As the New York Times said, In this day and age of automated everything, it's still comforting to hear a live voice give you a little turkey therapy.

Hey, have you ever heard of an enteral bang? It's a punctuation mark. Specifically, it's a question mark superimposed over an exclamation mark. It was invented by an advertising agency in 1962. The enteral bang was created to signal both a questioning and surprise tone at the end of a sentence. It was made to replace the question mark followed by an exclamation mark in advertising print ads. The term interrobang is a combination of the word interro, meaning interrogation point, which is the technical name for a question mark, and bang, which was slang for the exclamation mark.

The Interrobang was added to the Americano typeface font way back in 1966, and the Remington Typewriter Company actually added it to keyboards in 1968. The popularity of the Interrobang slowly ebbed over time and was finally taken off typewriter keyboards in the mid-80s. But I say it's time for a comeback because it seems half the things

we comment on in life right now require a big mix of questioning and surprise. Well, here's the good news. The Interrobang still exists on your computer keyboards. On a Mac, just hit Command-Control-Spacebar

and search Interrobang, spelled I-N-T-E-R-R-O-BANG. And bang, there it is. On Word, just hit Insert, Symbols, and search Interrobang. Then create a keyboard shortcut. Who knew?

Insert in Tarot Bang here. Hey, ever wonder how that Netflix button got onto your TV remote control? Back in 2011, Netflix had 16 million subscribers. That's when it made a pitch to TV makers. It wanted manufacturers to add a red Netflix button to their TV remotes. Not only was it great branding, it would allow viewers to easily access the Netflix app with one simple button. So a partnership was created with TV manufacturers including Panasonic, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, Toshiba, and Roku. Netflix would pay them

one dollar for every TV sold. It was a win-win scenario. Netflix would not only enjoy permanent branding in living rooms across the nation,

the button would also prompt people to subscribe to Netflix. In return, television manufacturers would get millions of dollars in payments from the streaming app. There was a lot of opposition to the Netflix button in the early days. Verve.com called it an advertisement masquerading as a product. Others wondered if it violated net neutrality regulations.

And it didn't take long for other companies to get in on the act. These days, you can see a myriad of branded one-click buttons on your remote. In some cases, the streaming services will share subscriber revenue with electronics companies. In other cases, it's the flat rate per TV sold. But in all cases, it's a marketing revenue generator. When it comes to health, the 10,000 steps per day regime has become as entrenched as jaywalking in our society. But surprisingly, 10,000 steps isn't really based on science. It was based on marketing.

To capitalize on the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, a Japanese company called Yamasa created the world's first wearable step counter called the Manpo Kai, which translated to 10,000 step meter. There was no science behind that number. The average Japanese person took about 3,500 steps a day, so the Yamasa company simply chose 10,000 arbitrarily. It just seemed like a reasonable number of steps to take every day to stay healthy and decrease the risk of coronary artery disease. Eventually, the World Health Organization, the American Heart Foundation, and many other health groups simply adopted the 10,000 step rule as a daily health recommendation. Again, there doesn't seem to be any real health guidance to back that number up. Many studies find that people who take 10,000 steps a day are healthier

than folks who take 3,000 or less steps a day, but what isn't known is, would 7,500 steps do the same job? And the arbitrary 10,000 number doesn't take intensity into account. Does a person who takes 10,000 steps puttering around the house get as much health benefit as someone who walks briskly for the same number of steps? 10,000 was a nice round number that struck a nice marketing note, and it's hung around now for nearly 60 years. When the Moody Blues were starting out, They were hoping to be sponsored by a local brewery in their hometown of Birmingham, England. The Mitchells and Butlers Brewery there owned numerous live music clubs. So the band figured they could attract a sponsorship and some gigs by naming themselves after the M&B Brewery.

So they called themselves the MB5. But that marketing sponsorship never materialized. Now here they were, with the letters MB painted on their bass drum, and no brewery footing the bills. So to salvage the situation, the band retained the initials and decided to call themselves the Moody Blues. By the way, when the Moody Blues recorded Nights in White Satin, the record company, surprisingly, hated the song.

They said nobody could dance to it. But as composer Justin Hayward said, they forgot that people could make love to it. One of the most popular TV shows that ended its three-season run recently was Ted Lasso. It's the amusing story of an American football coach relocating to England

to manage a British soccer team. He is grieving a recent divorce, knows nothing about soccer and next to nothing about life in the UK, but as it turns out, Ted Lasso is a remarkable leader. Over the three seasons, he inspires the lowly AFC Richmond team to climb from the bottom to the top of the standings. What many people don't know is that the Lasso character originated in an advertising campaign. Back in 2013, NBC was the first network to bring an entire season of the English Premier Soccer League to American viewers.

It had paid $250 million for the streaming rights. An advertising agency called the Brooklyn Brothers was hired by NBC to create a series of ads to promote the sport. They had no luck interesting a list of celebrity soccer fans to be in the commercials, including John Oliver, Seth Meyers, and Ricky Gervais. Then, a casting director suggested Jason Sudeikis from Saturday Night Live. As the ad agency scrolled through the SNL archives, they stumbled upon one character Sudeikis had played, that of a Southern football coach constantly apologizing for his team's

bad behavior. Then an idea hit them. Wouldn't it be funny if this American coach was put in charge of an English soccer team? It would be a fish-out-of-water character. And through his ignorance of soccer, or football as the Brits call it, the commercials could explain the sport to viewers. So a script was written with the ad agency in collaboration with Jason Sudeikis and a team of comedy writers, including Brendan Hunt,

who would go on to play the character of Coach Beard. The Ted Lasso in these early commercials was a little less gentle than the Ted Lasso we all came to know and love. And he's coaching Tottenham Hotspur, not AFC Richmond. But the basic idea was there. So was the look. Sweaters, sneakers, and that famous mustache. In the commercials, Ted starts learning about British soccer the hard way.

The first ad attracted over 10 million views in the first couple of days. My name's Ted Lasso. I'm the new head coach for Tottenham Spurs. I've been brought over here to, you know, implement my coaching style. A team I coach, they're going to play hard for all four quarters, okay? Two halves. What's that? Two halves. Okay, halves. They're going to play hard for two four quarters, okay? Two halves. What's that? Two halves. Okay, halves.

They're going to play hard for two halves. Who's orange shoes there? Gareth Bale. That's Gareth Bale. Where he's from? He's from England? Wales. Wales?

Wait, that's another country? Yes and no. How many countries are in this country? Four. Premier League is on NBC and the NBC Sports Network, live on TV, online, or on the go. It was clear to everyone this idea was a winner. After a few days of practice, players gave me a nickname. It started small,

but now they'll chant it at me every now and then. It's pretty nice. What's the nickname? Lanker. Do you know what it means? I think it just means great. Like a nice guy. Like, you know, kind heart. There was endless material, and it was getting funnier and funnier. Well, today should be an absolute cracker of a game, Seb.

We've got two teams here who are desperate for three points to avoid relegation. What are you looking forward to? Well, I'm looking forward to the definition of relegation. Let's talk a little bit about your time in London, in North London at Tottenham. How long exactly were you there? About six and a half hours. And I don't know how that translates to British time. Did they think they could turn it into an award-winning TV series?

Actually, they did. But they had no idea how long it would take. For seven years, Jason Sudeikis and his team tried to sell the Ted Lasso idea to networks. Nobody bit. Finally, in 2020, Apple took a chance on the show. It's remarkable that it took that long when you think of how successful it would become. Ted Lasso has won 76 awards as of this writing. It was the most nominated first-year comedy series in Emmy history and is one of only eight series in 74 years to win the Outstanding Comedy Series Emmy two years in a row. And it

still took seven years of patience and perseverance to get it made, proving the one thing Ted Lasso always preached, you gotta believe. I find it endlessly fascinating how many things in our lives have their roots in marketing. That many of the things we take for granted either began as a marketing idea or were simply adopted as a result of marketing and advertising. Who knew jaywalking was an initiative championed by the auto industry, not city council? Interrobang. Who knew the Butterball Hotline talks 100,000 nervous cooks off the ledge every year? Interrobang.

And who knew the interrobang still exists on computer keyboards? Scratch our world with your fingernail, and it won't be long before you find marketing. Sometimes it influences the names of famous bands, like the Moody Blues. Sometimes it works its way onto our TV remotes. Sometimes a marketing idea convinces the world to walk 10,000 steps a day.

And sometimes, just sometimes, a marketing idea can become Ted Lasso. But it's all marketing hiding in plain sight when you're under the influence. I'm Terry O'Reilly. This episode was recorded in the Terrastream Airstream Mobile Recording Studio. Producer, Debbie O'Reilly. Sound Engineer, Jeff Devine. Under the influence theme by Ari Posner and Ian Lefevre.

Tunes provided by APM Music. Follow me on social at Terry O Influence. This is Season 12. If you liked this episode, you might also like our sister podcast titled We Regret to Inform You, the Rejection Podcast. It tells stories about people

who overcome massive career rejection and succeed by never giving up. You'll find it wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also find our podcasts on the new Apostrophe YouTube channel. And if you think there are too many ads in a show about advertising in Tarot Bang and Tarot Bang, you can now listen to our podcasts ad-free on Amazon Music. See you next time.

Fun fact! Elton John's husband, David Furnish, used to work in the advertising business in Toronto. Then he met Sir Elton. The rest is history.