Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly - S3E21 - 21st Century Brands

Episode Date: May 25, 2014

This week, we look at 21st Century Brands. Only 14 years into a new era, and it's astounding to look at all the new brands and categories that have changed our world. 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. BetMGM, authorized gaming partner of the NBA, has your back all season long. From tip-off to the final buzzer, you're always taken care of with the sportsbook Born in Vegas. That's a feeling you can only get with BetMGM.

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about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. From the Under the Influence digital box set, this episode

is from Season 3, 2014. You're not you when you're hungry. You're in good hands with us. You're under the influence with Terry O'Reilly. In 1962, a new Hanna-Barbera cartoon premiered. It was called The Jetsons, and it was about a space-age family who lived in the 21st century. Meet George Jetson. His boy, Al Wright, daughter Judy, Jane his wife. No doubt inspired by John Glenn's first orbit of the Earth seven months earlier in February of 1962, the Jetsons lived in Orbit City in the year 2062.

George Jetson was employed at Spacely Space Sprockets, where he worked an RUDI computer. His boss, Cosmo Spacely, started his company, according to the cartoon's backstory, and I kid you not, in Newfoundland, where it prospered until massive surface pollution necessitated a move to elevated platforms in space. The series had lots of interesting futuristic devices that marveled us back in the 60s. In episode one, we see wife Jane doing exercises in front of a flat-screen 3D television. In another episode, we see George Jetson reading the newspaper on a screen.

Can anyone say tablet? In another, Boss Spacely tells George to fix something called a computer virus. Everyone on the show uses video chat, foreshadowing Skype and FaceTime. There is a robot vacuum cleaner, foretelling the 2002 arrival of the iRobot Roomba vacuum. There was also a tanning bed used in an episode, a product that wasn't introduced to North America until 1979. And while flying space cars have yet to land in our lives, the Jetsons show had moving sidewalks like we now have in airports,

treadmills that didn't hit the consumer market until 1969, and they had a repairman who had a piece of technology called Mac. The program was ahead of its time in more ways than one, as it was the first television series to be broadcast in color on the ABC network, at a time when only 3% of the public had color television sets. Many people are surprised to learn that Jetsons only lasted one season, with just 24 episodes. While it was revived briefly in the 80s, it was the original 1962-63 season that has made the term Jetsons synonymous with the future to this day.

And here we are in the 21st century already. While it's still early days, the amount of change this century has brought to our lives is staggering. The digital era has seen the creation of new sectors, new companies, new media, and new brands. These sea changes mean marketers and their advertising agencies have had to learn a new language, navigate new mediums, and then learn to interact with their customers in completely new and unprecedented ways. And when you take the time to take stock, the list of 21st century brands is remarkable. You're under the influence. This century is a teenager. It is in that awkward, pimply, too young to drive,

too old to play with toys, a bit young to date, slightly rebellious growth spurt stage. Yet, if you look at what the 21st century has achieved already, it's staggering. Recently, at a conference, Google co-founder Larry Page said

he believed his company, and the broader tech industry at large, has only achieved less than 1% of what is possible in the digital age. Quite the statement, all things considered. While it's hard to pinpoint the exact date the modern Internet came into being, it's safe to say it was sometime in the mid-1980s. It took 22 years to get the first 2 billion people online it will take less than 5 to get the next 2 billion and most of those will arrive via mobile phones which brings us to the first product on our list of 21st century brands. Think about how many ways

smartphones have changed your life. In your hand is not just a phone, but an email device, a texting tool, an internet browser, a camera, a video camera, a photo library,

an entire music collection, a calendar, a clock, a calculator, a weather forecast, a flashlight, and an address book and that doesn't even begin to include the features apps bring you that small thin

smartphone we all take for granted now is nothing short of mind-boggling now let's take a moment to remember how long these game changers have been in our possession in North america the first convergent blackberry phone hit the market back in 2003 it offered push email mobile phone text messaging internet faxing and web browsing that means the crackberry the first smartphone that most of us got our hands on is only 11 years old. But if you prefer the Apple iPhone, the one-button smartphone breakthrough, it was introduced in 2007, making it a spanking 7 years old.

It's hard to believe that it's that recent an addition to our lives, considering how many iPhone models you've probably owned already. It also swallowed up the iPod, which is only 13 years old, allowing people to have thousands of songs on their phones without needing two devices. The ubiquity of mobile phones has caused many ramifications. For starters, phone booths are rapidly disappearing. The first phone booth popped up in the 1880s, then peaked around 1995 with just under 3 million booths dotting North America.

Today, there are less than 500,000 and falling. Which begs the question, what is poor Superman to do? AT&T in the States has asked FCC permission to stop allowing people to sign up for landlines. According to one report, over 50% of American households either didn't have a landline or didn't use one in 2012. In Canada, 83% of homes still have a landline, but by the end of 2014, 26% of Canadian households will have cut their cord. Yes, landlines are slowly going the way of the telephone booth. Sorry, soup. But I do have a Superman app.

With the emergence of smartphones came apps. App stores, as we know them, started appearing around 2002 when Linux introduced Click and Run. But the first big hit was the Apple App Store. It has been with us since 2008, making it a sprightly six years old. Beginning with 500 apps, it offers over 850,000 today. Apple announced its 50 billionth app download in May of 2013.

The Android market, now known as Google Play, also began offering apps in 2008, and BlackBerry's app world began the following year. There is an app for almost anything now, and marketers have had to learn how to develop apps for their brands, many of which allow you to purchase products right on your phone, like Amazon and eBay. Or if you want to find the closest Tim Hortons location,

you can just Timmy Me. The top app category? Games, by a long shot. 74% of Apple's App Store revenues, 61% of Amazon's, and over 90% of Google Play revenues are from game apps. All other categories like entertainment, photos, and social networking are way behind in single-digit territory. By the way, 350,000 apps are made specifically for tablets. Tablet computers first made headway around 2005 when Nokia introduced its 770 model,

calling it an Internet tablet. An Android-based tablet appeared in 2009, but it was the Apple iPad that made tablets go mainstream in 2010, making your iPad a bright-eyed four-year-old. 330,000 iPads were sold on the first day. One month later, sales hit a million. By 2015, tablet computers like the iPad, the Samsung Galaxy, and the Android tablet will outsell PCs for the first time ever.

How far we've come in just a few short years. Tablet computing also created another 21st century invention, the e-reader. The Sony reader first went on sale in North America in 2006. It introduced a new word to our vocabulary, e-books, and allowed people to download hundreds of titles onto a single slim tablet. The next year, Amazon released the Kindle. It allowed shoppers to download up to 200 books without a traditional computer

onto a device that only weighed 10 ounces. In 2010, the Kobo was launched. Kobo is an anagram of the word book, and it was priced $100 less than the Kindle. But Amazon responded by dramatically lowering its price. That year, the Kindle accounted for almost 60% of all e-readers sold. And in 2011, Amazon stated it was selling 115 Kindle e-books for every 100 paperbacks. It was a breakthrough for readers,

a stone in the shoe of booksellers everywhere, and a thorny problem for newspaper and magazine companies to monetize. E-reader sales peaked in 2011, with sales dipping 28% in 2012, as lighter tablets have started to replace them. But what a revolution we've experienced in just seven years. And we'll be right back. In case nobody's told you, weight loss goes beyond the old just eat less and move more

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Start your visit today at Felix.ca. That's F-E-L-I-X.ca. If you're enjoying this episode, why not dip into our archives, available wherever you download your pods. Go to terryoreilly.ca for a master episode list. nine years old in those short years it has amassed over a billion users over four billion videos are viewed every day and over 100 hours a video are uploaded to YouTube every minute it became a new medium for marketers with viral videos turning into a familiar request in many advertising strategies

total amount spent by advertisers on YouTube last year? $5.6 billion. Not bad pocket change for a nine-year-old. Happy birthday to Facebook. It just turned 10 years old. And in that short decade of existence, it has attracted 1.2 billion users. Facebook has also become indispensable to marketers. 16 million local business pages were created in 2013, a 100% increase over the year before.

Brands create fan pages on Facebook and constantly try to figure out how to transform likes into purchases. And by the way, over 4.5 billion likes are posted on Facebook every day. The site generated $7.9 billion in revenue last year, up 55%, and most of that came from advertisers. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to Twitter, born just eight years ago in 2006. The original name was to be Jitter, but it felt too caffeinated, so one of the founders

suggested a name that rhymed. The Twitter domain name was originally owned by a bird enthusiast, but the social media site eventually made him an offer he couldn't refuse. Back in 2006, the standard limit for a text was 160 characters. So, the founders decided to leave 15 characters for usernames, which left 145 characters free. So, they just rounded that off to 140. That restriction became PR bait, as journalists were fascinated by the mysterious 140 limitation.

By the way, a twoosh is a tweet that uses all 140 characters. And the word tweet was coined by users, not by Twitter. They just picked up on it. It initially shocked Twitter that celebrities wanted Twitter accounts, thinking that limited access was the key to celebrity. But as Twitter came to realize, celebrities loved the fact they could circumvent studios and agents

and wanted direct access to fans. Twitter also lets customers communicate directly with advertisers, putting their grievances right out there in public, allowing everyone to see how the company replies. As of this writing,

Twitter has over 645 million users sending out 58 million tweets a day. Many of those are from advertisers sending out promoted tweets by targeting keywords, gender, interests, geography, and even devices. And 90% of Twitter's revenues come from those advertisers.

Happy birthday, friend. Happy birthday to Instagram. It's three and a half years old. It was purchased by Facebook for one billion dollars when Instagram was only

two years old. Happy birthday to the PVR, or DVR if you prefer. It just turned 13 years old in Canada and kicked the VCR into the trash bin of ancient history. This 21st century innovation has become an advertiser's worst nightmare as ad avoidance technology allows people to zoom through commercials at lightning speeds.

The road to power is paved with hypocrisy and casualties. I need to prove what the Vice President is capable of. I know you'll do whatever you think is best. In February of 2013, Netflix introduced us to a new word, binge viewing.

It released its first original TV series called House of Cards, and in a highly unusual move, Netflix released the entire 13-episode season all at once. Many viewers took that opportunity to binge-view the entire season in just a few days. Netflix and other streaming services have altered the media universe in many other unforeseen ways. First, large quantities of TV and movie content became available to viewers at the click of a button, which was way cheaper

than buying a DVD box set. Viewers didn't need a cable or satellite subscription for Netflix. They just needed an internet connection. Netflix affected the way writers and producers

created programs, too. The shows could now have a different rhythm, as there were no commercial breaks. Binge viewing meant there didn't have to be a big cliffhanger teaser to keep people interested over the course of a week. And the shows didn't have to be approved with the advertisers' sens world in TV, as new methods of media consumption are pulling viewers from network TV and from movie theaters, too. I felt a great disturbance in the force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in

terror and were suddenly silenced. You are correct, Obi-Wan. According to the LA Times, 100 million fewer people went to the movies last year, falling to a 16-year low. Some analysts even predict that movie-going will go the way of Broadway and become an increasingly marquee premium event experience only. Other staples of the 20th century are also quietly disappearing. Fading away are video rental stores, fold-out maps, encyclopedias, and yellow-page phone books.

Even the battery business is struggling because so many of our 21st century devices are now rechargeable. And 2011 marked the year when manufacturers stopped offering cassette players as an option in cars. Another standard feature cars don't have anymore is ashtrays, which brings us to our next 21st century product, e-cigarettes. Negative, one. I'm tired of being a walking ashtray. Negative, two. I'm tired of feeling guilty every time

I want to light up. I'm Stephen Dorff. I've been a smoker for 20 years and I just found the smarter alternative. Blue e-cigs. Blue lets me enjoy smoking without it affecting the people around me. Because it's vapor, not tobacco smoke.

First marketed in mall kiosks in 2006, e-cigarettes are now advertised on television. It's an interesting development, as each of the big three tobacco companies now have e-cigarette brands like Claret, Blue, and Enjoy, marking the first return of big tobacco to the airwaves since its ban in 1971. E-cigarettes have created a lot of controversy since their arrival, as debate rages over whether they are a smoking cessation product or a gateway back to smoking.

Speaking of sparking one up, a new commercial hit YouTube in March. It showed a shady guy trying to sell sushi in back alleys, but it wasn't really a sushi ad. You wouldn't buy your sushi from this guy, so why would you buy your marijuana from him? MarijuanaDoctors.com is the only service that connects patients with real doctors for medical marijuana recommendations. While it was turned down from running on network television, it may not be long before we see this brand new category hit the airwaves. And lastly, speaking of television, let's talk about reality TV in the 21st century.

Specifically, the reality show that broke all viewing records, Duck Dynasty. Meet the Robertson clan. They turned duck calls into a multi-million dollar empire. But running a family business is tough when the family just wants to run wild. The show, which runs on A&E, is based on the Robertson family of Louisiana, who manufacture a duck call made out of cedar that made them millionaires.

Season 1 debuted in spring of 2012 and attracted 1.8 million viewers. Season 2 attracted 3.7 million. The Season 3 premiere jumped to 8.6 million and the Season 4 premiere was watched by an astounding 11.7 million viewers. That makes Duck Dynasty not only the most watched reality show in A&E's history, but the most-watched non-fiction program in cable TV history, attracting over $80 million in advertising dollars. Last year alone, over 1,200 Duck Dynasty-branded products generated over $400 million in revenue.

Walmart accounts for 50% of those sales and reported that their best-selling piece of apparel for men, women, and children across every category in 2012 was the Duck Dynasty T-shirt. While ratings slipped after family patriarch Phil Robertson made an anti-gay remark to GQ magazine recently, the show still pulls in millions of viewers. The heavily bearded Robertsons also put out a Christmas album

entitled Duck the Halls with the hit single Harry Christmas. The album debuted at number three on the Billboard 200, went to number one on the country charts and was the number 1 holiday album of 2013. It's a 21st century phenomenon built on the back of one of the oldest old school products around. The Duck Call. The 21st century is no slouch. When you look back on that partial list of new brands and new categories, it has been an astounding 14 years.

While it's an exciting time to be in marketing, it's also a bit of a Rubik's Cube. How does a brand sell in social media, where the emphasis is on social, not media? And it's already become quaint to say there is a second screen experience available now. Because, from my vantage point, we've already moved into a five-screen world in counting with PCs smartphones tablets TVs touchscreens in cars and coming soon to a limb near you wearables like Google Glass and smartwatches and that doesn't include the Internet of Things where your fridge will suggest recipes based on its contents, email them to you, then communicate with your

stove. It's not coming. It's here. The 21st century is an exciting, sweaty time for brands, as they get their share of aerobic exercise just trying to keep up with all the options. It's also scary, as companies tremble at the thought of tinkerers in a garage somewhere, inventing the next app that will put them

out of business. But that's the cost of doing business in the Jetson era, when you're under the influence. I'm Terry O'Reilly. I have been talking with your bathroom scale, and may we suggest a dinner tonight of salad, a glass of water, and a single low-fat cracker. If you get my drift.

Under the Influence was produced at Pirate Toronto. Sound engineer, Keith Ullman. Theme music by Ari Posner and Ian Lefevre. Series coordinator, Debbie O'Reilly. Research, James Gangle. Feel free to follow us on Twitter at Terry O'Influence. Okay, I won't beat around the bush.

I like the cut of your jib. And your jib would look even better in an Under the Influence t-shirt. You'll find them on our shop page at terryoreilly.ca slash shop. See you next week. In case nobody's told you, weight loss goes beyond the old just eat less and move more narrative. And that's where Felix comes in.

Felix is redefining weight loss for Canadians with a smarter, more personalized approach to help you crush your health goals this year. Losing weight is about more than diet and exercise. It can also be about our genetics, hormones, metabolism. Felix connects you with online licensed healthcare practitioners who understand that everybody is different and can pair your healthy lifestyle with the right support to reach your goals. Start your visit today at felix.ca. That's F-E-L-I-X dot C-A.