Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly - S6E02 - LIVE: Unforeseen Circumstances: How Companies Are Affected By Chance

Episode Date: January 20, 2017

This episode explores what happens to brands when a completely unexpected event occurs. Most companies tightly control every aspect of a brand - but occasionally, an unforeseen circumstance rears its head. And it’s always interesting to see how the company reacts and what happens to their business as a result. We’ll look at what happened to Ford Broncos after the OJ Simpson slow-speed car chase, what happened to Red Lobster after Beyonce gave it a sexy callout in a song, and what happened to James Bond when JFK gave the books a ringing endorsement. The Podcast for this show was recorded at the first ever live performance of Under The Influence at the Hot Docs Podfest. We do a Q&A with the record after. It was fun. 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. 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.

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Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. From the Under the Influence digital box set, this episode is from Season 6, 2017. Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly. This week's podcast is a little different. We did our first ever live performance at the Hot Docs PodFest recently, and CBC recorded it.

It was our first time performing live. We made some mistakes, but we had a lot of fun. And don't go away at the end of the podcast, because we did a brief Q&A with the audience that we think you'll find interesting. Hope you enjoy it. Thank you so much for coming out to the inaugural Hot Docs Podcast Festival. My name is Will Dinovia. I'm the co-curator of the festival, and I am incredibly excited to welcome you all to today's special presentation

of Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. People across Canada know Terry as a man of many talents. He's the country's leading expert on the world of advertising and marketing. He's an electrifying storyteller on Canadian radio and indeed world radio, radio around the world. He's also one of the real podcasting pioneers in this country. He was one of the first major voices in Canadian radio to really recognize and understand the power of this medium to tell stories and to engage audiences in fun and exciting ways. So I think we can all agree, Terry is really, he's a renaissance man.

And in 2011, Under the Influence was named Best New Podcast by iTunes. And just last year, it was once again recognized by iTunes as one of the best podcasts of the year. So as I say, we are in the presence of a renaissance man here today. But there's one thing that Terry has not yet had the chance to do over the course of this long and illustrious career, and that's present a live recording of Under the Influence.

And it's for that reason that we are so incredibly excited and honored to have the opportunity to present him here today on our stage as part of our first ever Hot Docs podcast festival and to give you folks the opportunity to peer behind the curtain and see what goes into the production of every one of his unforgettable episodes. So ladies and gentlemen, I want to ask you all to join me in giving a warm welcome to one of our great Canadian storytellers, a podcasting powerhouse, Mr. Terry O'Reilly. Thank you, everybody. Thank you so, so much for coming out today and supporting us. We love that. We're scared to death.

So, and you have every right to be. So here's what we're going to do today. We're going to do the show live. We've never done it before, as you just heard Will say. We might make mistakes, but we're just going to roll through them. We have the wonderful Under the Influence band in front of us who have never been together on stage before. I have some wonderful voiceover folks. Come on up, guys. Tony Daniels, Angela Bottas with me. And you all know Keith Ullman.

Okay, so here's how it's going to go. We're going to do a new show for you today called Unforeseen Circumstances. It's a show about what happens to companies and brands when something unexpected out in the world impacts their brand and how they deal with it. After the show, stay put for five minutes because we're just going to rearrange the stage and then we're going to have a really fun Q&A with you. We're going to bring up all the team and you get to ask us whatever you want to ask us about the show. So we look forward to that. Okay? And if any one of us falls off this stage, just kindly pick us up, up the stairs. We'd appreciate that. Okay, here we go. You're not you when you're hungry.

You're a good ham with all things. You're under the influence with Terry O'Reilly. Of all the superheroes in the comic book universe, one stands out from them all. Faster than a speeding bullet. More powerful than a locomotive. Able to leap tall buildings at a single bound. Look, up in the sky, it's a bird. It's a plane.

It's Superman. Superman was created back in the 30s by Toronto-born illustrator Joe Shuster, cousin of comedian Frank Shuster of Wayne and Shuster fame, by the way, and Cleveland writer Jerry Siegel. The first comic book to feature Superman was Action Comics No. 1, which sold for 10 cents in June of 1938. The cover showed Superman holding a car above his head, red cape flying in the wind.

One year later, Superman comics were a massive hit, selling over 800,000 copies per issue. Of the 200,000 copies of the very first 1938 issue, it is believed that only 100 survive today. And one of Superman's biggest fans once owned the most pristine copy, actor Nicolas Cage. Believe it or not, Cage was actually supposed to play Superman in a film directed by Tim Burton, but the deal fell through. It's fair to say that Cage is a Superman superfan. He even named one of his sons Kal-El, Superman's birth name on his home planet of Krypton. Cage is such a fanatic that he purchased what is considered the finest copy of Action Comics number one in the world, graded at 9.5 on a scale of 1 to 10. He paid $150,000 for it in 1997. Cage kept Action Comics No. 1 in a

locked bulletproof display case in his Beverly Hills home. But one day, Cage discovered it was missing. The world's most desirable comic book had been stolen. He called the LAPD and its art theft unit responded. It was an odd case for them because they had never investigated a missing comic book before. They dusted for fingerprints but had no leads. Comic book dealers across the nation were notified and instructed to report anyone trying to sell the valuable comic. Then, 11 years passed. In those intervening years, another Action Comics No. 1, graded 8 on the scale, sold for a cool $1 million. Then, the strangest thing happened.

An auctioneer in L.A. was approached by someone looking to sell a pristine Action Comics No. 1. The seller bought storage units and sold the contents for a living, like on the TV show Storage Wars. He had found the comic in one of the units he had purchased and wanted to sell it for $1 million. The LAPD was quietly called in, and the comic book was confiscated.

Sure enough, it was the missing Nicolas Cage Superman issue. The comic book now belonged to the insurance company who had settled Cage's claim, but Cage wanted it back, so he paid the insurance company to regain ownership. Then, Cage put the comic up for sale. It was an interesting scenario. Here was the most pristine Superman action comics number one in existence up for sale, but it had the added mystery and allure of having been stolen for 11 years. Cage's comic sold that day for a whopping $2.1 million. As a collector myself, I can tell you that the value of an item is made up of three elements.

Its authenticity, its condition, and its history. It could be argued that at least half a million dollars of that selling price came from a completely unforeseen circumstance. Its infamous theft. In the world of marketing, it too has experienced the effect of similar unexpected circumstances. Even though companies work hard every day to increase the value of their brands, every once in a while an unexpected incident happens that suddenly increases the value of a product. These incidents might come right out of the blue, they are completely unexpected, and no one sees them coming. But when they do, it's manna from heaven. You're under the influence.

Smart marketing is like a carefully tended garden. Lots of care and feeding and watering is required in order for the brand to grow. Marketers protect their ground, do constant weeding, and are always on the lookout for invasive species. But no marketer can keep all of the world out of their garden. Stuff happens. 911, what are you reporting? This is AC. I have OJ in the car. Okay, where are you? Please, I'm coming up to 5 Freeway. Okay. Right now, we are okay, but you gotta tell the police to just back off.

He's still alive, but he's got a gun to his head. When O.J. Simpson led police on a slow-speed car chase in a white Bronco, 95 million people tuned in to watch. To put that in perspective, 95 million viewers was just short of the previous Super Bowl audience, and Super Bowl TV's, Super Bowl Sunday rather, is TV's biggest audience of the year. The car chase lasted 90 minutes and covered 75 miles in total. A.C. Cowlings, a friend and former teammate of Simpson's, was driving the white Bronco that day. Years later, by the way, the coach of the New York Knicks told Cowlings the reason

why OJ was driving so slow. He was listening to a basketball game on the radio. And the story was retold during the recent NBA broadcast. Why they were driving so slow was OJ wanted to hear the end of the game on the radio before he pulled in. And when Coach Riley told us that story, I was like mesmerized by, you know, what really goes on. Who knew? The term white Bronco entered pop culture that day back in June of 1994.

Here's what you may not know. The white Bronco didn't belong to O.J. Simpson. It belonged to driver A.C. Cowlings. O.J.'s white Bronco had been confiscated by the police as evidence in the murder case. Here's something else you might not know. Ford was thinking about discontinuing the Bronco line around the time of OJ's car chase. Two-door SUVs were falling out of fashion, and consumers were starting to prefer family-style four-door SUVs instead.

But here's the strange thing. The OJ Simpson car chase had a positive effect on Bronco sales. That year, 1994, sales of Ford Broncos surged 34%. Without doing anything out of the ordinary, Ford was suddenly selling thousands more Broncos than it did the previous year, all due to the strangest unforeseen circumstance. When the OJ Sega eventually moved into the courtroom, sales of Broncos started to stall again. Two years later, Ford decided to discontinue the line altogether.

But what's interesting is that Blue Book prices show that the value of Ford Broncos hasn't changed much in the intervening years. Given the fact it's an impractical 20-year-old SUV, that demand is particularly unique. It means consumer interest in the infamous Ford Bronco continues to this day. What steps will your energy policy take to meet our energy needs while at the same time remaining environmentally friendly and minimizing job loss for fossil power plant workers. When undecided voter Ken Bone stood up to ask that question during the last live presidential debate,

he became an overnight media sensation. It wasn't the most riveting question, but something about Ken Bone made him stand out. It was his bright red sweater. Ken Bone is an unassuming average guy from Belleville, Illinois with glasses and a small mustache. The day of the debate, he had chosen an olive colored suit, but when he was getting into the car, he split the seam of his pants wide open. So the red... Timing is everything. So the red sweater was actually plan B. But here's the unforeseen circumstance. It was an Izod red sweater. And immediately after the debate, Izod completely sold out of all its red sweaters. Every single one.

Then, Izod quickly created a video starring Ken Bone. I don't think I'm going to continue to be internet famous forever. That's not my expectation. Then we see Mrs. Bone. We keep looking at each other and go, is this really happening? It's just a sweater. Then Ken Bone delivers his message. I really do expect at the end of the election that it winds down.

And when it's over, it's over. And I'm happy to have played my role. Then the video ends saying, be heard, vote, brought to you by Izod. Nobody saw Ken Bone coming, not even Ken Bone. But it turned out to be a red-letter day for Izod. Traditionally, Super Bowl Sunday is one of the slowest days of the year at Red Lobster. Like most sit-down restaurants, sales suffer because over 100 million people stay home to watch the game. But during last year's Super Bowl, Red Lobster had an unexpected wave of customers. The seafood restaurant had no idea why people were suddenly crowding to their locations across the country.

Turns out, this unforeseen bump in business was due to a new song by none other than the Queen Bee herself, Beyoncé. When Beyoncé released the video for her new song, Formation, one day before she was to perform it on Super Bowl 50,

it was big news. The video had very explicit lyrics. At the three-minute mark, she sings, and allow me to paraphrase here, that if her lover gives her good sex, she'll treat him to a meal at Red Lobster. That's a lot of paraphrasing. Thank you for that. With that call-out, Red Lobster saw a 33% jump in sales on Super Bowl Sunday and on the following Monday. The CEO said they weren't even aware of the new Beyoncé song until they saw Red Lobster trending on Twitter, which never happens. After the Beyoncé mention, thousands poured into Red Lobster locations and thousands more jumped onto Twitter to wait for a reaction from Red Lobster. And while they waited, there were some pretty funny tweets.

One person showed a photo of himself looking in a mirror saying, Get back in there and earn that Red Lobster. Another said, I haven't been to Red Lobster in 30 years. I'm allergic to seafood, but now I kind of want to go. Still another wondered if let's go to Red Lobster would become a catchphrase for sex. Strangely enough, Red Lobster didn't respond on Twitter for almost eight hours. Close to 300,000 tweets were generated over the Beyoncé call-out and the restaurant's failure to react quickly. But in spite of the fact it was a marketing failure, it was still an in-store success.

Red Lobster enjoyed a big jump in sales that week. And it all happened because of one reason, an unexpected Beyonce bounce. It was the kind of bounce a certain ketchup would also experience. We'll be right back to our show. 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 When Heinz US made the decision to close its Leamington, Ontario plant, it was a huge blow to the area. The factory had been part of the community since 1909. It had employed nearly 1,000 residents, and close to 50% of all field tomatoes grown in Ontario had been shipped to Leamington. Not long after the closure, an Ontario business consortium called Highbury CanCo

took a lease out on the vacant plant, hired back 250 of the Heinz employees, and began processing food again. Meanwhile, with little fanfare, French's, a company best known for mustard, started selling ketchup in grocery stores. At French's, we know what we're made of, only the finest quality ingredients. Introducing new French's ketchup. No preservatives, no artificial flavors, and unlike some others, no high fructose

corn syrup. Not long after, CBC ran a story saying that Ontario tomatoes were being used for ketchup again, as the Leamington plant was making the paste for French's ketchup. Then a construction worker in Orillia came across the CBC story and wrote a Facebook post saying his family was switching to French's ketchup because it was good and because they wanted to support Leamington. That post went viral with 132,000 shares. The day after the post, that same construction worker went into a local grocery store to pick up some milk, walked past the ketchup display, and noticed that every bottle of French's was gone.

Don't even bother, a clerk told him, all our stores are sold out. Then came the next beat in the story. Word leaked that Loblaws was pulling French's ketchup from their shelves, which provoked this Facebook rant from a disgruntled shopper. Hey everybody, I just want to let you know we got some horrible news today about French's ketchup. We've been making so much progress getting them on the shelves. The bars are switching over to French's Ketchup. Everybody's switching over to French's Ketchup because of what Heinz did to Leamington, Ontario. So we make all this progress and today Loblaws

announces they're taking French's off the shelves in all their stores, all the Loblaws and any other grocery chains that they own. I'm telling you to write. I'm telling you to call Loblaws. I shop at this Loblaws here twice a week for the last 10 years. I called them today and said, we're done until you put French's back on the shelf. Let's do this, people. Proud to be Canadian. That's when social media kicked into high gear. French's ketchup became a trending hashtag. It was a patriotic backlash against Loblaws, with people demanding that

French's be put back on the shelf. An internal memo leaked saying Loblaws had delisted French's ketchup because it was eating into sales of his PC brand. But Loblaws reversed its decision, saying it was listening to its customers and restocked French's ketchup. But with all that unexpected publicity, French's now had a big problem. It had to scramble to meet a 400% increase in demand. The company's president said they had never seen anything like it, and a fully dedicated bottling plant is now being built in Toronto to meet French's growing ketchup business. A huge unexpected gain, all due to two Facebook posts. It may be hard to believe, but when Purell was first created, it was a flop.

Back in 1946, a company invented an industrial cleanser called Gojo to remove grease from the hands of auto factory workers. Then in 1989, the company developed Purell as a hand sanitizer for the restaurant industry. The product lost money for 10 years. People just didn't believe you could kill germs without soap and water. Then came this. Some disturbing news tonight about the possible spread of SARS. 14 healthcare workers at Scarborough Grace Hospital are showing symptoms of SARS. The year was 2003. SARS becomes a worldwide concern and it hit Toronto hard. Suddenly, Purell was the hottest item in town.

The Ontario Health Ministry purchased 199,000 bottles immediately and was still looking for more. Walmart said Purell sales quadrupled in just one month. Demand was so intense, the retailer restricted purchases of Purell to two per customer. Local authorities pleaded with the public not to hoard Purell, warning that stockpiling could threaten public health. Businesses, schools, and hospitals scrambled to purchase as much hand sanitizer as they could find. The demand for Purell was unprecedented. Before SARS, Purell had been relegated to the back of drugstores.

Now it was in huge displays near the cash registers. Then came H1N1 in 2009. The top story is the growing concern over the outbreak of a serious flu-like illness in Mexico. It has doctors in Ontario keeping a close eye on similar cases. The World Health Organization is waiting for lab tests to determine whether there are any links to a confirmed outbreak of swine flu in the United States. The demand for Purell was again unprecedented. Because of swine flu, people were sanitizing everything touched by human hands. Doorknobs, railings, handles, desks, tabletops. Johnson & Johnson, now the owners of Purell, were hit with so many orders that it had to issue a statement to reassure customers they were doing their best to increase production. The J&J plant was running 24-7.

Demand tripled. Purell's revenues jumped 70% in just a few weeks. Though both unforeseen and unprecedented crises, Purell never increased its prices and never used fear as a marketing opportunity. It just tried to satisfy demand. Prior to the outbreaks, most people didn't even know what Purell was. Now, due to SARS and H1N1, Purell was not only the generic name for a hand sanitizer, it's become a verb, as in, time to Purell this microphone. Novels often have unexpected events that vault them onto the bestseller lists. Yes, we have to say it. Remember, this is just a football game, no matter who wins or loses. events that vault them onto the bestseller lists. When Mark David Chapman shot John Lennon that night in 1980,

he dropped the gun, sat on the ground cross-legged, pulled a novel out of his pocket, and started reading until the police arrived. That novel was The Catcher in the Rye. On the inside cover, Chapman had written, to Holden Caulfield, from Holden Caulfield, this is my statement. When news got out that Chapman identified with the book's lead character, the 1951 novel was suddenly selling more copies than it had for decades. I remember going out to buy it that week and bookstores were sold out. It was a shocking event, rock and roll's first assassination, and it was how many of us came to know James Bond novels in the 1950s,

he enjoyed moderate success in Britain. But when he released Dr. No in 1958, it got bad reviews, and Fleming fell out of favor. Then the most unexpected thing happened. Life magazine in the U.S. ran a big article on John F. Kennedy's reading habits, listing his top 10 favorite books. Number nine on that list was From Russia With Love. With that single JFK endorsement, Fleming became the best-selling thriller author in America overnight. Kennedy was a big James Bond fan.

He had been given a copy of the first Bond novel, Casino Royale, by a friend named Marion Leiter back in 1955 when he was recovering from back pain in Newport, Rhode Island. Marion was also a friend of Ian Fleming, and Leiter's husband was the namesake of 007's American counterpoint, Felix Leiter. According to Ted Sorensen, who was special counsel to the president during the Bay of Pigs crisis, Kennedy at one point yelled out, Why couldn't this have happened to James Bond? It's also said that JFK watched an advanced screening of From Russia with Love at the White House the night before leaving for Dallas. But it was that unexpected JFK endorsement that changed the course of James Bond's history,

more so than any marketing campaign could ever have achieved. It pushed Bond novels to the top of the bestseller lists. That directly created a receptive audience for the first Bond film, Dr. No. Without that, the movie might have flopped. Without the interest created by JFK, United Artists might not have bankrolled the Bond films. It was American interest backed by American money that made Bond films possible, which means JFK was the most influential Bond fan ever. Oh, and by the way,

Ian Fleming thanked Kennedy in one of his books. It's in chapter 10 of The Spy Who Loved Me. Praising JFK as a leader with vision, James Bond says, we need more Jack Kennedys. Chapter 10 of The Spy Who Loved Me. Praising JFK as a leader with vision, James Bond says, we need more Jack Kennedys. Yep, JFK was a Bond fan, but Bond was also a Kennedy fan. Businesses are constantly marketing to increase their value.

But every once in a while, a completely unexpected circumstance occurs and a company is sent manna from heaven. Sometimes that manna is strange fruit. When O.J. Simpson took police on a slow-speed car chase in a white Bronco, who knew Bronco sales would shoot up? Sometimes that manna falls when you least expect it. When Beyonce gave Red Lobster a sexy call-out, the restaurant had no way of knowing it would be crazy busy on its slowest day of the year.

Little did Frenches know that a couple of Facebook posts would galvanize Canadians to fight for its brand. And Izod had no idea someone named Ken Bone would enter its orbit. Sometimes unexpected boosts come in dark packages. Purell had lost money for 10 years until SARS and swine flu put it on the map. It took the death of a beetle to introduce the catcher in the rye to a whole new generation. And sometimes, unforeseen circumstances can echo for decades. Just one surprise endorsement from a president launched the most lucrative movie franchise in history. That's the unpredictable thing about the marketing world. You can struggle day and

night trying to increase the value of your business. Then one day, someone sends you an unexpected gift from Russia with love. When you're under the influence. I'm Terry O'Reilly. Today, Under the Influence was recorded at the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema in downtown Toronto. Series producer, Debbie O'Reilly. Sound engineer, Keith Oman. Theme music written by Ari Posner and Ian LeFever. Performed today by Ari Posner, Ian LeFever, Warren Bray, and Joe Obersian. Research for today's show was Lama Balagi.

Over here, voiceover extraordinaire, Tony Daniels, and voice of CBC Television, Tony Daniels. And our long time under the influence announcer, Angela Bottas. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter at Terry O Influence. Thank you so much for coming out today. We'll

see you next week. This episode brought to you by 007 Aftershave hairddressing and Cologne. If you don't give your man 007, I will. Thank you so much. I'm soaking wet right now, just so you know. So here's what we're going to do. Stay put for five minutes.

We're just going to reorganize this stage. We're going to bring the whole UTI, and that's a funny acronym, right? Team up on the stage, and then we want to have a great conversation with you. Under the Influence Band. Wonderful band. So thank you again for coming out to support us. We love that.

We love to see our listeners, because creating radio can be a very isolating experience. You go into the studio, record it, and you go home. So it's so lovely to see your faces, I have to tell you. What I want to do now is introduce everybody who works on the show, because there's a lot of really hardworking people. Okay, how fast does a 27-minute show go? That's our show length. We're 27 minutes and 30 seconds every week. Yet there's probably, depending on the topic, 30 to 40 hours of research goes into that 27 minutes every week, let alone all the production, which we'll talk about in a moment. But I want to introduce first Keith Oman, our wonderful engineer.

Keith has been with us since day one. He's in charge of all the sound. He takes care of all the levels. He makes this show sound the way it does. And we try and make it a really sonically rich show. So a lot of that is Mr. Oman's work. So here we have Tony Daniels, who you met, one of the best voiceover actors in the country. Tony and I have worked together for many, many years, and he's also the voice of CBC

television. So every time you hear tonight on CBC television, that's Tony. Or a reasonable likeness. Or a reasonable likeness. Angela Bottas, our longtime Under the Influence announcer, who you hear every single week. Here's the first of our O'Reilly contingent. This is my daughter, Sydney O'Reilly, who's our social media director, takes care of all our social media. Oldest daughter, Shea O'Reilly, coming up who archives all our research. Middle daughter, Callie Rae O'Reilly, who takes care of our Sirius Satellites version of our show.

Is that you, Lama? Lama Baloghi, one of our wonderful researchers who researched this show you just heard. So resourceful, so wonderful. Two of our researchers couldn't be here today because they're out of the country, but it's James Gangle, who's also a great actor, who also researches our show, is in L.A. today. And Tanya Moore Youssef is away. She's also one of our great researchers. Here's our latest, our newest researcher, Alison Pinches, right here, who's just joined the team.

Researcher Jillian Gora. I couldn't do this show without our researchers. I want to tell you how amazing they are and how resourceful you have to be to research this show. It's not just tracking down stories, it's just to have a nose for what a great story is for this show, and the researchers make it happen. And the last O'Reilly contingent, the woman who keeps this whole train on the tracks, this is Debbie O'Reilly. So think of your questions while I talk now for a couple of seconds. And we want to, don't be shy, we want to hear anything you want to know about the show. So depending on the topic, we could have probably 20 to 30 hours myself and we put one researcher per show between the researcher and myself we probably do you know 20 to 30 hours of research maybe more depending on

the topic on record day we go into the studio and it takes us between 10 and 12 hours, would you say, Keith, to put the whole show together? 15 hours. It's amazing, isn't it? 15 hours to put together a 27-minute and 30-second show. That's how long we're in the studio on record day. We're a January to June show that most people don't really kind of grasp, I think, but we're on the air in January, and then we go to June. We're a six-month show.

So we'll be back on the air first week of January with new shows and new podcasts. So that's when you'll hear us next. CBC recorded this today, so this will be our podcast for that episode. So either the first or second week, Deb, would you say, is probably going to air? You'll hear yourself. You'll be second week.

You'll hear this very show you just heard. We had a couple of stumbles on the way in because our mics weren't on, so that's why you heard that stumble when we were doing our theme song. But that's the way a live show goes. So, and our wonderful band down here. How about these guys? So great. Thanks.

Ari Posner and Ian Lefevre, who you see down here on keyboards and guitar, wrote that wonderful theme, which is so great. It's been such a big part of our show for all these years. So, what are you thinking? When you see this show kind of... Yes? It should be called The O'Reilly Show. You said it should be called The O'Reilly Show.

I know. Well, they work for very good rates. You have to know that. And they're pretty wonderful. Yes. What is your favorite episode? What is your favorite episode? I would say this.

Here's the funny thing about researching a show. I'll, you know, decide on a theme. We'll start to do the research. I think, and I'm preparing for the show to go this way, and then the research will tell me what the show is about. The research will reveal the show to me. I was once going to do a show on marketing to gender, so marketing to women versus marketing to men. That was the show I wanted to do. And the research took me on another path altogether. And the research ended up being our episode called The Happy Homemaker, which was how the advertising industry, Madison Avenue, created the homemaker. That they created this scenario. They wanted women to stay home and

not work because they needed a stay-at-home audience to sell their cleaning products to after the war. So Madison Avenue really glorified and celebrated the homemaker. That episode to me, I've been in the industry for 35 years, was an epiphany to me to realize that that's where that came from. So that was my favorite episode.

Researchers, yours too, Deb, yeah? Researchers, what do you think? Jillian, what do you think? Thinking back to last season, my favorite episode last season was the musicals one. That one, I laughed the whole time. The industrial musicals. The industrial musical, it was hilarious.

I couldn't believe some of the things I was hearing, and I just love cringy corporate stuff. So that was actually an amazing concept that they would, on Broadway, they would do these full-fledged Broadway musicals just to a corporate audience. So John Deere tractors would hire the top composers on Broadway and write all those tunes and then get singers and dancers and do this whole show spending more money than the top Broadway musicals at the time. And that's what that show was all about, just that crazy world of industrial musicals.

Yes? My question is just, the show's very engaging and it's very different than any of the other podcasts or radio shows I listen to. And I think that's because really, at the end of the day, you're reading. You're reading the entire 27 minutes. Considering that, can you talk about narrating the show and how you managed to sound so natural all the way through? Do I?

How can I answer that? In the early days, so as you may or may not know, Mike Tandon and I, so for years at Pirate Radio and Television, which is the company I co-founded back in 1990, I would put on a radio writing seminar once a year. I'd rent a theater like this, and I would invite 200 young copywriters from the advertising business, and I would get up on a stage like this, and I would, 200 young copywriters from the advertising business and I would get up on a stage like this and I would, for seven hours, I'd stand on stage and try and teach them how to create effective radio. So script structure, 30 versus 60 seconds, drama versus humor, use of sound effects, music studio protocol, all of that stuff.

And I would go to lunch with three of my radio friends in the business, creative directors at Chum Radio. And one day we were having beers in the sun and Larry McGinnis, the creative director of my radio friends in the business, creative directors at CHUM Radio. And one day we were having beers in the sun and Larry McGinnis, the creative director of CHUM said to me, you know that radio seminar you do? And I said, yeah. He said, that would make a great radio show. And I said, who would ever run that?

And he said, CBC. And I said, the advertising-free CBC would run a show on advertising. And he said, I think they'd run that show. So we laughed and had more beer, and I went home, and I couldn't get that out of my mind. And Mike Tennant called me, who was also at that lunch, and he said, I think we should go talk to CBC about this show. And I said, okay. So we went into CBC. Mike had a connection there.

And we sat in the room with the head of CBC Radio, Chris Boyce at the time. And we pitched our show to him. And basically our pitch was this short. We said, advertising is like architecture. It is everywhere in your life. Most people hate it. They don't get it. They think it's an intrusion and it's annoying.

But advertising is this fascinating study of human nature. It's about understanding all of our motivations and behavior. And we said, Mike and I aren't academics. We're not journalists. We're working admin in the trenches, and we have access. That's the show we want to do. We thought CBC truly would say, lovely idea, not for us, but maybe we can do something else together. That would have been a great meeting.

Chris Boyce leaned back in his chair and said, we'll take it. And then Mike and I had to figure out how to do a national radio show really fast. So we decided early, I'm getting all the way back to you now, what we decided early was to do almost like a documentary, like a documentary narration without interviews. A lot of shows on CBC were interviews, so we wanted to zig a little bit than zag. We wanted to really control it because it's hard to control an interview sometimes. You can have the world leading expert in on your radio show and they're not great radio, even though they're the leading expert in the world.

So that's just our thinking. So that's how we decided to narrate. I record the show twice on record day, so that Keith and I pick out the best takes. So that's why, and we get to polish it infinitely, unlike today, right? So the narration is a great result of going back and redoing something that wasn't quite right.

So I have lots of time to try and make it as, and yeah, and Keith beating me with a stick, trying to get it right. But we have lots of time to try and make that narration work. Yes, sir. You talked about the favorite show from the past. Let's fast forward a bit. Don't you have a goldmine sitting there with Donald Trump?

Yes. A goldmine sitting there with Donald Trump. Well, time will tell how that's going to spin out. I mean, it was the craziest election in history. It was the epitome of an election, whereas it was almost all negative advertising, right? There was almost no positive advertising in that election at all. Most election advertising is negative. We've worked on a lot of federal elections at Pirate over the years, had the prime minister in our studios many times, and I can tell you that negativity is a big part of it.

But then I look at Mr. Trudeau, who really won the election with a positive campaign. That's one of the first times, I don't know if you saw, if you could feel it or notice it, of having a positive advertising campaign in an election. He was number three. He was like trailing third about three months up to the election. And then look at that wave that went through the country. So I'm sure Trump will be a lot of material going forward. Absolutely. Speaker 4 Right here. Speaker 4 Yep. Sorry. Yes. Speaker 4 In terms of brand recognition and loyalty,

what's your favorite Canadian brand and why? Speaker 4 Oh, there's a good question favorite Canadian brand and why I want to say this and I won't be popular for saying this I want to say Tim Hortons because it's so ubiquitous and it's you know when my wife and I don't know if you follow us on Instagram like we just pulled a 1969 Airstream trailer to Nova Scotia recently because I just we just bought a 1969 Airstream trailer and we plotted it with Timmy's right like where we could you know where's our next coffee when's our next pee break it was always Tim Hortons I don't love Tim Hortons

advertising and I'll say that I'm not a huge fan of it I wish it was a little a little more clever a little more interesting but you have to hand it to them they have the monopoly in the business so when I think of a Canadian I wish it was a little more clever, a little more interesting, but you have to hand it to them. They have the monopoly in the business. So when I think of a Canadian brand that says Canada and that's their platform, it's Tim Hortons without a doubt. Yeah. How are you doing with each of your episodes? You're doing your online brand, you and tell stories about these brands.

This is for the whole team. Is there any crazy feedback, positive or negative, that you've received from a brand? Has a brand ever reacted to one of our stories? Well, I would say not really, and not really in a negative way. We don't hunt advertising on our show. We're trying to explain advertising on our show. That really is the premise of the show.

How does this work? What are the decisions made in the boardrooms of advertising agencies? What are the interesting stories behind the thinking? So I'm rarely hunting, like I'm not marketplace, right? I'm not hunting for somebody doing something wrong. So as a result, they really, they never say, hey, we love this story. They really leave us alone, which is good, which is fair, right? Yeah.

Yeah. Sorry, is there questions up there? Am I missing that whole? Okay, I'm coming to you next. I want to know how one becomes a researcher for... That helps. Well, you know what? I'll let the researchers answer that. So, Jillian, how did you become a researcher for this show?

Well, Terry, and friend from the audience, I just emailed you. I was leaving my job in advertising to go work in tech, and I love advertising. I've loved it ever since I was a kid, watched ad award shows as a child, strange child. And when I told Terry that, I don't know, maybe something called to him in that, I don't know, in my email.

And he just said, yeah, we have a vacancy and invited me to fill it. She wrote me a great, great email. Lama, when I needed a researcher, I called Ryerson and I said, I need a researcher. I need your top student. Who is the smartest student you have? And Ryerson sent over Lama because Lama was like the best student they had. So that's how Lama became part of our show. Allison wrote me a great letter too.

So she wrote me a great letter saying, I love this show. I would love if you ever have a research position available. And then, you know, over time things happen. Like one of our researchers has moved to LA. So a spot opens up. So it's really enthusiastic fans of this show have really are in a large part are researchers. Hold on a second. I got to go up here. Someone had a question. Yes, sir. Good afternoon. It June when we go off the air and when we come back on the air in January? So I'm in a coma for two months. Because you know what?

It's a seven for us anyway. Because you're looking at a really small team. We are a seven-day-a-week proposition. We work seven days a week on this show, starting in probably September. Because we try and get maybe eight shows written, recorded in the can before we even hit the air in January, because we need runway, right? We need time to research shows.

We can't be being chased by the deadline. So in June, we really take a big breather. We just kind of relax and try and get our lives back together again. And then in September, the research machine starts to move again. So that's really the course. It's really 10, is it 10 months? Or one of us writes a book. So this year, that's right. So this year, instead of having downtime, I was writing a book. So that's what took all those months till September again yes one more oh sorry one more question time just flies I tell you yes ah okay a question for Sydney I'm reaching a lot of feedback from listeners. Yes. Has that influenced the choice of show topics?

And has it been a lot of different things? Basically, does the feedback from listeners that we get on social media affect the choices that we make as far as themes for the show? The best way I can answer that is if it did, we wouldn't have done the two-part porn episode that we just did recently. So we try not to let that affect anything. But yeah, we definitely listen to everybody and we value everybody's feedback. So yes and no, but mostly no.

That was a good answer. Because we took a lot of heat for those porn episodes, let me tell you. But anyway, thank you so, so much for coming out. These wonderful folks here make us all look good. Thank you. We will see you in January. Thank you, Mary. Do you wear clothes when you listen to our show?

If so, have we got a t-shirt for you. Go to terryoreilly.ca slash shop.