- Marketers need to understand that no, there is no neutral brand and music and sound experience. It's always, it's only positive or negative. It either adds to your, to your experience and your attribution to the brand, or it takes away from it.- Welcome to the BRITE Ideas Podcast, where we discuss how brands build relationships with consumers and society through innovation, technology, and marketing. BRITE Ideas is produced by the Center on Global Brand Leadership at Columbia Business School.- I'm Matthew Quint, director of the Center on Global Brand Leadership.- And I'm JP Kuehlwein. Adjunct faculty here at the School and principal at Ueber Brands Consulting.- BRITE Ideas is sponsored by Lexicon Branding, a specialized consulting firm that develops inspiring brand names and brand architectures for both the Fortune 500 and today's innovative startups and Kogan Page, An independent award-winning publisher that delivers best practices and innovative thinking from global experts across every key business subject.- Today on the BRITE Ideas Podcast, we are hosting Joel Beckerman, a composer and producer, and the founder and chief creative officer of Made Music Studio. We look forward to discussing the impacts of sounds and music on human emotion and behavior, and the business strategies around sonic branding. Welcome to the podcast today, Joel, thanks again for joining us.- Hey, Matthew and JP, thank you so much for inviting me. This is gonna be really fun.- Welcome, indeed. I'll go with the first question, which I guess is the obvious one. Music, sound and brands, not the usual connection. How did you create it? What is it in your background that led to this?- Yeah, so I, I would say I went from very long form to shorter form to shorter form to shorter form. So really started out, or I should say short form to long form. So I did a lot of commercial scoring for, for a while, quite frankly. I, I got a little tired of that'cause it sort of felt like, oh, it's a formula, you know, it's a number 42 with extra onions. And then I ended up working, I was lucky enough to work with a bunch of directors in advertising who started doing documentary films and documentary television. So I got into that and really being a science geek, that was super fun. And then I started doing something similar for brands, for entertainment brands at first. You know, sort of being one of the keepers of the HBO sonic brand and, and realized that hey, listen, sometimes you get a lot of real estate, you get 30 seconds or 60 seconds, but more, more and more it became that that real estate got shortened and shortened to the point where now certainly in, in digital, we know that you might only get five seconds or six seconds or even shorter amount of time. So it became really kind of an interesting challenge to help, you know, still tell a story beginning, middle, and an end in shorter and shorter increments to the point. Now a lot of times we're telling a story in two and a half seconds, so it's just a really interesting creative challenge.- Hmm, interesting. It seems to me that actually with a lot of the shortening, and the social media, music seems to become actually more important. I don't know if I can say again, but more important because a lot of it is about dancing and moves and music. Is that true? Is there some data? Is there some evidence, or at least do you see it this way?- Well, I, I'd love to find some data that's really interesting. I wonder what data we would see, but I can certainly say that, you know, we all know music is very shareable and that a lot of people have, you know, have personal connections to specific kinds of music and brand music. People love brands that they love. Right? It, so it's kind of, if it's a cool brand, you may want to sort of have a piece of it and be able to mock on it or share with your friends. So I think in a lot of ways music and sound does make it more shareable, snackable, you know, being able to sort of play with it, especially in audio first and audio only media. So obviously podcasts here we are, there are a lot of opportunities for music and sound and podcasts, as you said, you know, in, in, in digital streaming specifically around TikTok. TikTok just seems to be the perfect medium for music and sound in terms of really activating people's imaginations or humor or whatever it is. So yeah, I would completely agree that it's become more and more important. I,- I mean, TikTok is the perfect example because its initial version was Music.ly prior to the purchase of it, and its rebranding as TikTok. So it really was all about social sharing of music. Talk a little bit about, before we dive right back in, I think, to the business implications and the branding thing. Just your own perspectives or your thoughts on, you know, sound and music and its general connection to human emotions and human behavior.- Yeah, I mean it's, it, here's the thing. This is, as human beings something that we are wired for, it is not something we need to learn. It's innate. Music was certainly, you know, and there's, there is research to prove this, but music was certainly one of the best ways to create community back in early man, right? So there was sharing of rhythms, voice, it, it just is something that is communal and you have a certain feeling around those different communal experiences. Some of them might be pleasurable or, or just warm and some of them might be telling stories that are scary and there might be the possibility, certainly, or a lot of aboriginal civilizations right now still use this, as a storytelling element. So if we go forward hundreds of years or even thousands of years, you know, the basic uses of music in terms of telling stories and having it trigger emotion, again, we're wired for this. There also is a component of this that is absolutely cultural. There are things that are, you know, have certain specific meanings, whether it's certain kinds of melodies, certain kinds of instrumentation and, and textures and colors that have specific, very specific meanings in certain cultures. Again, 'cause they might be tied to certain kinds of experiences that people may have in a community or their family. So it, it's really both, it's, it's about being wired for it and also having these cultural connections. Also, we know that music and sound is actually, if you think about a multi, multi-sensory experience, we experience sound quicker than any other sense. So in a lot of ways that means that the sound and music is really the arbiter of all the other senses. It sort of imparts emotion to all those other senses. So again, this is not something we had to learn.- I've, I've talked to people who do visuals, who do words. Everyone seems to claim that their part, their sense is the most important one. I wanna believe that sound and music is very important. Can you tell us a little bit, do, do, do you know the aspects of music? So one is memorable, you know, intel inside kind of the other one is mood and getting somebody in the mood to shop. You are also talking about storytelling. Are you aware of any analysis of what all music or sound can do and maybe also what's the difference between sound and music?- Well, I'll start with that. So sound and music in some ways is in the ear of the beholder because a lot of people, me included, might define sound as, or let me say music as organized sound that music in general has some kind of a pitch or fundamental pitch to it. But as soon as I say that, someone will show me an example of something as well, you know, that's actually musical. So I, I would, I think the best sort of most the safest definition may maybe the, the most academic definition would be organized sound. Music is organized sound. In terms of triggering behavior, which I, I'm always fascinated by. And I mean there, there's different things that we use music and sound for. There's certainly, as you were talking about familiarity, whether it's sonic logos like Intel or McDonald's or whatever it is, you know, the whistle from, you know, Old Spice. Those are familiar tunes that you've heard over and over and over again. You know, some people for decades. But if you look at that and you also look at pop songs, it's really kind of the same thing because you might hear a pop song at first and it's like, it's okay and you hear it over and you hear it over and you hear it over and you know, maybe by the 10th listen, you're starting to think, you know, this is pretty good and before you know it, after the hundredth listen, it's your favorite song. So there's something about familiarity, there's something about the hookiness of something, there's something about sort of the compounded meaning of hearing things over and over again that create those kinds of familiar experiences that people love. So in terms of shopping there, really in, in some ways shopping is very much like a movie score that if you hear it, it's probably, you've already broken the magic, right? In terms of a shopping type experience. Look, if you're Disney and you're seeing, you know, When You Wish upon a Star, that's different. But a lot of these sort of more generic mall-type experiences, the music really, it's about evoking certain kinds of motions. As you said. There are specifics around, and there is a lot of research around this in terms of what elements of music really impact people's shopping experiences. So here are some specific things I can tell you. Slower tempos increase linger time in sales, which increases cash register. It's just, it's, there's tons of data and research that explains and helps you understand that there are also, if you move from one area of a mall or an experience to somewhere else, and there's a slight increase in tempo over time, it's called quantum entrainment, that there's a certain amount of, you know, if we can match sort of what a typical person's heart rate would be to the music and then we slow it down, there's a calming effect. If you speed it up, there's sort of a more energizing effect. So in a lot of ways that helps us shape the behavior, you know, which again is, is is definitely around specific purchase, but sometimes equally important or more important is how it makes you feel, how it meets you where you are, and maybe changes your emotional state.- Do you have, just to start a sort of made music studio philosophy or, or, or a few key points you think about with your clients and then maybe even follow up with a couple of examples of the types of clients and the types of sounds slash music you develop with them?- What I would say is, the first thing we think about is we know nothing. Our clients know their brand. We can assume that we know the brand, we can talk about how we experience the brand, but that doesn't matter because most of the time the marketers and our clients, they're thinking ahead of where we are. They're thinking about what they want the brand to become, what they see the future of the brand. So I think if we go in with any perception of we know what the brand is and we're gonna tell you what we do, huge fail. So it's really mostly about listening at the beginning. And we also do these, what we call mood board sessions where, you know, we might take a specific, you know, it's really about trying to equate language with music and sound. So, hey, these, these things are set on the brief, on the creative brief. Now we're gonna play some music that we think kind of delivers on this or around the outskirts of it. And it's really about, again, creating that commonality of language. And some of that also in addition to us learning something is to help people understand, look, this is not scary, this is maybe unfamiliar, but it really is, you know, it's almost like, don't tell us whether you think it needs to be oboes or clarinets. Tell us what you feel and what do you want to feel? Where are we falling short on what to feel on this? You know, once we create the concepts, it might be, okay, well how do these concepts flex into different territories where there might be different kinds of storytelling that's happening within the brand. So these, again, we can, all we can do is listen, create, and then listen again. And I think it's, it's so much of a collaborative process. You know, the, I think if we try to, you know, take some kind of artisté approach from this, it's definitely gonna be a fail. The only thing I would say is, the place where we try to lead is when we get to the end of the process because we have a certain innate understanding about what it's gonna sound like in the thousandth time or what it's gonna sound like in association with different touchpoints or different visuals or different experiences. That's where we ask clients to kind of let us lead a bit. Not that somebody's gonna pick something they hate, but usually what happens is there's multiple choices at the end and we might put a finger on the scale just a little bit to help make sure that the work is what we call iconic and enduring. So iconic meaning that it really doesn't sound like other things. It's very distinctive to that brand and that brand story. Super, super important and enduring is that the music and sound needs to be able to integrate in a ton of different kinds of verticals and different experiences and, and and needs to be able to evolve with the brand.- Do you do your own with your clients' experimentation on it? So adapt it, here's an ad we've got, we're sending it to a group of people to listen to or watch and there's underlying tweaks you're making to the music, to get that kind of, which, which does seem to fit best and maybe not even on a, could be both ad favorability but also emotional reaction to it, right? I mean there's choices you're gonna make as a brand on what, what are we, what are we after?- Yeah.- In our goals with this particular piece of content and the goal, the role that music slash sound would play underneath it.- Yeah, that's, we really do that with every project because again, we have to use our instincts as creative people. We have to follow our clients in terms of their knowledge of where the brand is going. But we also need to have proof that it's working, right? We need to show the ROI on it. One challenge sometimes is if you have too many people in the room from the same culture, and this is something that needs to go across cultures even globally, we may not have as clear an understanding about what these, you know, what these sounds or what this music, how it would be, you know, how it would be received in other countries. So lemme just give you another, another example and I'll come back to the research.[Yeah.] But one example for instance is when you think about, so I'll get super music geeky here for a second. It's called the pentatonic scale and has five pitches. If you create melodies with the pentatonic scale, guess what? That is something that travels globally that everyone will have, I wouldn't say identical but, but somewhat similar experiences around pentatonic scale. They certainly will feel it's for them, which is one of the biggest problems we have being a US centric, you know, most of, most of the work that that we do, and I think a lot of people do is, is perhaps a little bit US centric when it really should be global centric. So anyway, that's super important in terms of the research and the testing by the way, sometimes we'll do US testing and sometimes we'll do global testing, but we chose very carefully in terms of what kind of methodology we were going to create with our partners on this. We really were very clear after discussions with them that we wanted to work down the path of implicit association testing, which is really subconscious testing. The moment you ask people what do they think of the music, take all the results and throw out the window. The magic of music, and sound, a lot of it is what it does to you, how it affects you, how it makes you feel, the stories it tells you that are below your normal conscious level. And the moment you say, how do you like this music? All of a sudden you've made a conscious. Now a lot of times, you know, you get biases that jump in. It's like, ooh, I'm gonna seem cooler if I say I like this or does this sound or not sound like Bruce Springsteen my favorite artist?[Yeah.] So you get into that place. So it's implicit association testing where we're really focused on sort of gently pushing people under time pressure to make choices, yes, this ties with this brand or no it doesn't, but you have to do it quickly. You get away from that conscious bias. We're actually also working a lot more with different kinds of biometric types of feedback. It's a little bit experimental at the moment. I think we get good information. I don't think I'm ready to hang my hat on that totally. But I think that these biological biometric type of markers and measurements are definitely where we're going in terms of being able to understand more clearly, exactly, I, I would say the details of the nuances of people's reactions.- Do you end up needing for the work you do to tie into attitudinal and then maybe even behavioral metrics around, you know, intent to purchase and then purchase as just quick obvious examples versus the implicit association, which I love from that. What's your sort of instinctual mood reaction alongside potentially a brand? Is there a match, is there a fit there? Do you get down that track into are we actually moving the needle on the business goals that the brand wants?- Well, listen, I think the, the gold standard that we can reach is really exactly what you said, which is purchase intent. So there are different, you know, we could spend a whole hour just talking about purchase intent in terms of how we apply that and consider it. But listen, people spend a lot of time on this, they spend money on it, they need to know what the ROI is. So that's super important, you know, is it effective? Because if it's not effective at the end of the day and it's just sort of touchy feely and we feel it's right and the audiences feel it's right if it doesn't actually produce results, it's not, it, it's not worth all the time, effort, and energy. Really the gold, gold standard is to look at these things from a multisensory standpoint. If we're looking at everything from visual to sonic to scent, you know, to user user experiences, that's really when you get a good sense of the value of what you're creating and really what the ROI is. Because in general, most experiences we are having multisensory experiences except for things like podcasts. I'm gonna keep plugging your podcast, but I, I think that the vast majority of experiences we have really are multisensory and how those, how those different senses are triggered and affect and impact each other is really the key to what ROI is going to be. And I wanted to just jump back to something that JP said for a second. Obviously I also feel that sound is incredibly important to experiences. And it is, I will tell you that it's kind of interesting'cause again, I said that sound is the quickest of all sense and senses in terms of how we perceive it as a human being, but scent is actually the most powerful emotion reaction, but it's also non-specific. Different people can, can have very, very different experiences in association with scent and, and you know, so on and on. You can, you know, talk about touch, there's variance on this and we can get deeper and got another hour for that, right? But, but these multi-sensory experiences and sort of measuring these things in that way is really that that's what we need to do to be able to show effectiveness.- Do you agree that there's probably several types of sound and music that has to be worked at different times and with different intensity And I was thinking about, you're talking almost about there's the musical ID or the sound ID, which is kind of equivalent to the visual ID of a brand much more longer lasting a signature becoming a code of this brand that ideally you recognize it by, even if it's subconscious.- I, I love how you point that out. And I think the, the really important thing to think about that we think about all, all the time is... We're creating, and this sounds a little bit trite, but it, trust me, it's not I'll get there, we're creating a musical language that's specific to this brand. And a lot of times I think about it as semiotics, it's sonic semiotics. There are certain kinds of things that we're familiar with. When you see a stop sign a hundred yards away, you can tell it's a stop sign'cause there's a certain shape to it. You can see that little white outline. And we're looking again to create this music and sound semiotic so that we are telling stories together. We are, and we're familiar with those stories. Hopefully there are, there are those, again, those semiotic moments where it's like, oh well there's, I recognize that that's part of this experience. Oh, the visual. So it, it really is about language. I think of if we think about it as language, it's perhaps a little less overwhelming. And you know, look, it takes a lot of practice and it takes, I think, most of all commitment. There are a lot of brands and I think a lot of agencies that might create sonic branding that definitely are not going into it with the same level of commitment that they might into a visual system. And in the same way that you bring a commitment to the visual system and you work really hard to make sure it's the right system and the right semiotics, you need to do that in music and sound. And think about, again, from a storytelling standpoint, what are those elements that you have from a semiotic standpoint that can provide that context that again, tell that same story. I think that's, if, if we go back to stories, it's always about stories, right? Human beings, stories, beginnings, middle, end. If those stories are there, if we're clear about the communication, the rest of this over time -- not in the first week, not in the first month, not in the first six, six months -- but these things overall start to make sense as a, as a cohesive communication.- We all experience brands in various channels and environments. Sometimes there's sounds that are quote unquote original, right, connected to the brand design. And then there are other things where brands are using familiar songs from culture. How do you, Joel, in terms of this language you're creating, what role do you at Made Music Studio play in choice making? We want an original composed thing for this, or god you should pick this Beatles tune for that. How do you balance those types of clearly different known music, new music elements?- Yeah, so really what it is, is, you know, there's no magic to this. We do a creative brief. At the end of the day, the creative brief should shape the owned assets that we create, the branded music and also be a guide in terms of the on-brand music. Now, whether it's popular music or library music or whatever it is, that becomes really an executional choice for the people who are doing that larger piece of creative. If they're following the sonic brief that we create, we know there's going to be consistency where there needs to be consistency and hopefully there's a nice big large dimension sandbox to play in. So we're trying to find both of those things. Where are we leaving room for the creativity and, and the stories that need to be told and where are we providing just enough guardrails to have it all make sense to, to customers over time?- How do you slash the client and the other vendors work? Where is there working together or is it similar with you kind of set up guardrails and now you leave it to the client and the other, you know, service providers for the other senses to manage how they work together, how they're paired?- Yeah, it look, you know, I think as part of the sonic brief or the delivery style guide that we create, we're looking to create examples that are, look, these are useful examples. Hey, we know that the brand is involved in these different kinds of, you know, five different categories of storytelling. Here are some examples that you can look at and check out and match it against the words. And it's like, oh, I kind of get it. I understand what it is. And then, you know, so we are creating, you know, sometimes we'll create the soundtrack for a a first campaign utilizing this work. I think probably that's useful, but perhaps the most useful thing is for people to be able to see examples. How do you know in terms of, look, here's, here's one way or two ways, or five ways that this might be able to be used. And then, you know, again, it it's about, you know, it's about the brand managers to be able to make sure that they set it up in a way there's proper, proper brand governance with this. In terms of music and sound, we're brought in a lot of times to consult. But, you know, look, as brands now create anywhere between a thousand and 30,000 pieces of content each year, there's nobody who can sit and look over everyone's shoulder.- So you have to teach basically that social media content manager that in-store merchandiser also in charge of what music is being piped in. That creative director who's doing the longer and more expensive maybe campaigns. Do you do that? Is that part of what you're doing?- You know, again, there's no one size fits all on on any of this. I I would say in general, the agencies of record or main advertising agencies generally are really good with music. You know, it doesn't, doesn't take much to help bring them, you know, on board. But usually more often than not, we're really collaborating with those agencies. You know, there again, there are things that they know about the brand'cause they're deeper into the brand. They may be five years into the brand that we collaborate on and work with together. I think the, the, the guidance happens more in digital. The guidance happens more in experience. The guidance happens more in overhead music and in stores. The guidance happens more on, believe it or not, call centers, which is one of the... People forget about call centers. It is one of the biggest footprints that a brand has in terms of connection with their customers.- Of course, you're on hold for two hours, so you get to listen to a lot of music,- But if we have the right music, you feel like you're only on hold for an hour.- Exactly. You're disappointed when they pick up because the music stops. You are actually talking about music. I mean, you, you, you brought some clips I think, and since this is a podcast, we have the unique opportunity to actually listen to them. Do you wanna, do you wanna play some things and tell us what they mean strategically and in terms of consumer behaviors?- I thought you'd never ask Li listen, this is, you know, this is where rubber meets the road. And I, again, I think there are, I'm playing all successful examples. I would say there are many, many, many, probably dozens and dozens of examples that are not as successful. Generally it's 'cause they're not specific for the brand. They're, I think we've counted 15 brands right now that use some variation on a doorbell. Somehow they think that that, you know, perhaps is unique. I mean it's, it, it, but I think more, you know, even it's very difficult to own a doorbell sound. It's very tactical. We can tell you we're dropping off packages or we're gonna take care of you. But these are things that you need to be care of, you know, careful of. There are probably about 20 or 25 brands that right, you know, right now who are using chimey kinds of sounds. There are, you know, dozens of brands that are using little piano melodies. And the piano melodies are not distinctive from one to another. However, the ones I'm gonna play you here are distinctive. And I think they're all distinctive in that they do tell a brand story and that brand story really is a perfect fit for the brand. So what I would say is, here's an example, which is Netflix. So what works about that is it's certainly an intention getter at the beginning. If you are in the kitchen making a ham sandwich and you hear that, it's like, oh hey honey, put it on pause, I'll be in it in a second. There's really a, a sense that you're going to have an experience. Hey, I've heard this a whole bunch of times. It gets me excited for the next experience.'cause I'm, I remember, and I'm connected to all those amazing experiences I had in the past.- Is something as simple as this, can it be trademarked?- There are only a handful of audio trademarks in the world. One of them is the NBC chimes. I can't off the top of my head tell you what the others are, but you know, there might be six, I probably should have them memorized by now. But trademarks are very, very high. Audio trademarks are a very, very high burden to clear because there is so much music and sound in the world and it's difficult to be able to parse that. So, you know, however, brands can copyright music and sound and often do and hopefully do because it's an owned asset.- I hear the Netflix and of course then there's the dialogue that went around of, well, they just ripped off Law and Order, which has a very similar bubummm kind of sound to it. Right? It's interesting that I hear, you know, when Netflix first did that, my brain went and heard Law and Order. To your point of the copywriting challenges in all this, right? It's, it's, there are often these reflections we have among sounds that remind us of similar, you know, tonal variations, tempo variations, et cetera.- And there are thousands of pop songs that have been written with the same five chords.- Yeah, exactly.- So in very similar melodies, but the way they're performed, the lyrics, there are so many things that make them distinctive that you can't put on a piece of paper and be able to give it to the government to get it trademarked. So I love something, some of the examples I'm gonna play right now are ones that, that they just kind of have, it's, they exist like they're a tree. It's always existed and there's a consistency and a commitment to using these over and over and over and over again. I'm sure you know which one that is. Not that I'm gonna to put you on the spot, Matthew, but- Old Spice.- Old Spice. So, you know, there have been some comic commercials where people have put in fake, you know, lyrics. It's, it's been something that's also been done on TikTok. People they play with it, and there's a tremendous consistency. I don't know that I've ever seen an Old Spice commercial that didn't have that whistle because, you know, again, there's a commitment to building that brand equity. It's a piece of brand equity as much as the Scrimshaw logo, as much as the shape of the packaging or the color. That brand equity builds and builds and builds over time, which makes a brand famous. So here another example of one that I love, again, the tremendous commitment to it. So JP, it's yours.- Yes, yes. You know, you wanna make me ha hungry when I heard that McDonald's one, just to prove that I recognize that, of course, I also tragically remember another one that I love in foods, which was the whole, the best part of waking up is Folgers in your cup. How tragic do you agree to not be able to carry this forward? Even if you say, well it's outdated, it's et cetera. Isn't music something that's able to evolve and should be able to sustain?- Absolutely. 100%. And again, the the examples when there is commitment to it is, okay, well that's creativity. Find your creative way to reinvent this. That is consistent. That's a creative challenge for people. And, and you know, the agencies or internal departments shouldn't shy away from those. You know, I think sometimes there's a tendency to want to add your own stamp, but what if you add your, you know, add your own stamp in part by, by being able to evolve it and great music and sound of us talking about iconic and enduring again, you know, Folgers, you were talking about, hey, you know, couldn't they evolve that to make sure that it is an enduring, you know, that it is enduring? Did it have to be tossed? So a couple of other examples, again, this one again was like a tree that just seems like it's ever, you know, forever existed and certainly probably one of the most successful sonic logos. Matthew, I'll throw it to you.- My brain immediately went to Intel,- Which, which of course is correct. And you know, I think it was one of the, one of the things that's really interesting about Intel is it's an invisible brand. You never see a chip, right? It's inside the computer. It's inside the device.- I, I was gonna say it is, it's part of a much larger and incredibly successful B2B strategy of making an ingredient in quotes, visible. And like you say, they extended it beyond the visual ID beyond that little blue tag that we also all know about beyond the visuals of the chip flying into the computer that we know about into the sound. I'm not aware that the chips have a certain smell, but that might be an idea for them.- This is the fascinating thing is in some ways we're, you know, we're dating ourselves. If I was to ask, you know, a Gen Z you play that the, my podcast listeners who are Columbia Business School students right now are not, they're not gonna know what that is.- That's a missed opportunity for Intel because they, they want mindshare right there. There should be a ton of ways to be able to play with this and throw its own influencer and have them do something kooky with it. But it's a huge missed opportunity.'cause those people in Gen Z will be the buyers in the future. Are they gonna think about them or are they gonna think about a competitor?- It's a brand that has had major struggles for a variety of reasons, which has led essentially to something like that falling by the wayside because they haven't kept up the commitment. Their biggest misstep was to exactly the point we're making was Intel inside was a laptop computer slid into laptops. Their chip set wasn't something that got into the devices that we now hold and use more frequently than anything else. And so, right, the, the use case for that sonic moment fell by the wayside for that brand. And hence the younger generation isn't gonna know about it.- The brand has needs to be retooled. The identity elements in a lot of ways no longer seem to fit the brand. So to me that's, you know, the story around that brand when I listen to it, it is kind of, hey, we're here, we're not, you know, we're not scary. We're actually very welcoming. The crystalline notes that are there are certainly memorable and, and it just gives you, you know, again, just kinda gives you a sense of what they're providing to the experience, what they're providing to the technology with them being invisible. So another invisible brand I wanna play for you, and, and this is a, you know, I kept thinking, do I wanna play anything that we've created? And I, I hate to be like a, you know, a a self promoter here, but I, I guess that's part of why you do these things. It's a similar invisible brand- AT&T- At the time that we had worked on this 10, 11 years, whatever it was, it's been market for a long time. The biggest problem they had was, I love my iPhone and I hate my network because at the time they were having a lot of trouble with being able to handle what became an explosion of customers, you know, and being able to kind of catch up to the number of devices.- Yep. Me being one of them, I, I went ahead and got an iPhone 3 when I started working here at the Brand Center in 2009 for exactly, and you couldn't do it with anyone else but AT&T. Yeah.- And I just wanna flip it for a second and say there were a lot of problems with the iPhones. The iPhones weren't perfect, but because you physically held in your hand because it was tangible, you hated the network. So what we wanted to do was to remind, again, not that different from Intel inside, Hey, we're here, we're invisible, but we are making this experience possible. The experience that you're having right now. So it's very tactical in addition to being emotional and telling the story.- I was wondering all along, can music actually be harmful to a brand? I understand it can be not fitting maybe bad or not memorable, but are you aware of instances where it's kind of the, you know, Pepsi-Jenna protest ad equivalent of music?- I love- That crisis, brand crisis from music.- You know what, what's, what's interesting is it'll never be called out as a brand crisis for music. However, I think marketers need to understand that no, there is no neutral brand and music and sound experience. It's, it's only positive or negative. It either adds to your, to your experience and your attribution to the brand, or it takes away from it. So again, I, I think it in a lot of ways it, it's a, it's a very kind of evil, you know, brand reputations suck. In, in, in that it's not something that, that people would necessarily call out and say, Hey, this is a problem in research. They just wouldn't like the brand as much.- I mean, I'm thinking JP myself of, you know, minor occasions of that where it's been licensed music and the artist's philosophy doesn't seem to be a fit for that brand, right? Janis Joplin being used for Mercedes, I think it was, you know, it wasn't Volkswagen, maybe people could have jelled on that, right? With the bug and the, the bus and like, yes, somehow Janis Joplin used with it was like, people were like, she would never want her music to be connected in a commercial way like that, right? And so that's, I think JP the, the, the way that I can think of where you've quote unquote harmed the effect of the brand's marketing attempt because people create this negative connotation between the artist's choice and the brand and don't see them as a fit.- Another infamous example is Iggy Pop "Lust for Life" in association with a cruise line, not knowing really what the song is about, which essentially is around drug use. So not necessarily a, a good connection to a family cruise line. One other example, and again, this is a shameless plug for ourselves, but it really, I'm bringing it up for a specific purpose, which is there are little moments of joy you have with a brand and actually physically utilizing the brand. Like when you think about, for instance, Tostitos, if you happen to be, or any, any salsa manufacturer that you love, there's a certain kind of joy you get when you, when you open the top and you get that little kind of the, the vacuum breaks and it's just like, oh, I'm about to experience this thing that I love and it's, it's, you get a little joy out of it even before you taste it. And we had this really interesting opportunity to work with a client around Tostitos and it was, they wanted to also to their credit, have fun with it. So what we actually determined was after opening up a whole bunch of different jars, that different flavors kind of sound a little bit different, not exactly the same. So we, we actually did, there were some commercials done and actually some of the marketing folks when they were trying to get this passed to the CEO, they opened up jars and made a little melodic thing. So here's Tostitos. So literally you could take a drumstick and hit the top of these jars and there's a little crunch there at the beginning for a chip. So again, with the visual completely distinctive and just kind of captured their brand personality. So I think it's important to say that you also can use products and product sounds. A lot of times people have said, oh, you know, it's a sound effect. Well it is, unless you have a concept behind it. And I think that really is the biggest distinction between work that is iconic and enduring, and things that, again, are 25 brands who are making chime sounds or, or doorbell sounds. If there's a concept around it that tells the story that you really could only tell for this brand or certainly within category, then you're on your way to the right place. If you don't have that, if you don't have a strong story, you're kind of dead on arrival.- So would love to get your perspective, Joel on, you know, what excites you and what scares you about where AI is going. And it's particularly its ability to craft content from directly from the machine.- So let me start with what scares me, and then I can get onto the positives. But really what scares me, and it may not be what you think, is I am scared for the people, for the, the university students coming into the marketplace and creating work.'Cause nobody creates amazing, brilliant work from their first go. And the reality is that AI has almost already and certainly very shortly will eliminate the need for good enough, good enough will not do it. There is, there is a lot of good enough music, again, being made by, by students who are brilliant music and marketing students and they're just gonna get better and better and better. But what's the role for them when AI has taken over that, that job of good enough. In terms of the opportunities? I really look at this and look, maybe I'm just being naive, I might say something different three years from now, but, but to me right now, I look at AI as kind of a, an incredible mind blowing tool and certainly transformative in ways that we can't anticipate yet. To look at, you know, what was transformational a long time ago, not as transformational, but look, you know, when people started using Quark or people started using Pro Tools in audio parlance, those were transformational moments in, where technology created tools that we didn't have before. I remember when certain synthesizers first came into being, the people said, oh my God, we're never gonna hire orchestras again. When Quark you know, came along, people said, oh my God, we're never gonna be able to create print ads again because, you know, kids are gonna come outta college and they're just gonna like bang them out. And I think what we found in those examples, I think what we're gonna find right now with AI is that it's a brilliant tool. If it's used well, if it's used for what it does well, it's a brilliant tool. And what AI certainly does in the current generation is it does eliminate a lot of repetitive tasks, things that are simpler tasks. Now what, what I talk about a lot of times is it's not enough just for us to create the music or create the melody, really need to create the algorithm because the algorithm itself is what the way we think about the, the, the musical and sound language. If we can program or bring to AI applications that syntax, that grammar, it's an incredibly powerful tool if you have to create 10,000 of something and, and that we look and we look at and are seriously excited about that potential and we're kind of playing with a lot of things right now, especially having to do with scale. Where I think things may go horribly wrong if we're not careful is no guardrails, right? Right now, who knows if some of these programs, it's, it's gonna be shown that directly work is taken from something else. Our clients, we promise them contractually and morally and in every other way that we're gonna create original work for them. And we need to make sure that we are actually creating original work. Right now, ChatGPT, one of their new tools that they just released allows you to upload a piece of music and create versions and variations from that piece of music. And what I love about that is it's a controlled data set. It's music and sound that is owned by a brand having a controlled data set that is specifically owned and used only by the, the, the people who own it. That's an amazing advancement. I think that would solve a lot of issues we have around quality at scale.- I mean that my overall frustration with many of these systems is content that they've built their own now machine content on was not paid for or recognized. The way a machine is now able to craft a piece of music is based on having listened to lots of other music. That's what a human being does as well. But we still bought albums, we still paid to go to live concerts of the musicians that we appreciated and now are building on top of. And many of these machines have not done that.- Again, I'm not an attorney, I'm not a judge, I'm none of those things. However, it's very clear to me that that work has been stolen without attribution, without payment. And to create work from that is, it's thievery, right? Everything has been stolen in the world. There, there's it, it's it's open season. I asked actually a very well-known copyright attorney, how is this, how, you know, how are you gonna put the genie back in the bottle? And the reality is we're not gonna be able to put the genie back in the bottle. However, what he said was, yeah, we're just gonna have to figure out who's gonna write the checks and how much they're gonna be for.- We ask all our guests this question about what is your BRITE idea, right? This realm that you think about within your industry or broader that you wish was something that would happen in the future to help business, help society and, you know, improve things for people's lives. So want to give you an opportunity to share your BRITE idea.- Well, thanks. I wrote a book about eight years ago called The Sonic Boom. And in, you know, it's interesting, I worked with an editor who went through the whole thing in the book and she said, look, now you've earned a chapter at the end to talk about what the future should hold, what the future might be. And some of this has happened, but the vast majority of it has not happened. It's what I call sonic humanism. It's using music and sound to make people's lives richer and simpler. If you just think about what's going on in cities right now, there still is a tremendous amount of noise in cities that... Some of the cities that have looked at ways to let's say, block off traffic, sound traffic noise with a wall or have, you know, add birds to a community to look at different ways that sound, you know, and noise might be reduced. There's actually a lower crime rate in some of these areas. Unfortunately, the the data is not there to prove it yet, but there's a lot of anecdotal work that's been done, but a lot of that has been paused. But that seems like a huge way to be able to make people's lives better. I, I would say actually one of the examples is electric cars. I, I would say the vast majority of electric cars have done at least a pretty good job, if not a great job. In eliminating combustion engines, there was a lot less noise. But they realized for safety, especially for people with disabilities, you had to have it make a sound. And what's interesting is different variations of the same kind of thing. Some brands better at it in terms of differentiation than others, but those sounds, the sounds that are coming from the vehicles are generally, they sound clean, they sound like recycled, you know, power. They sound like they, they just have a, a whir or you know, whiz to it that feels like it's good for the environment and it's good for the city environment. Again, it, there are a lot of people who miss their eight or 10 cylinder engine sounds, but you know, the, the, again, there's, there's a, there's a place for everything and maybe that's on the racetrack. The other thing is healthcare. So if you go to a hospital, an emergency room is the worst place to get better in a lot of ways. And in some ways it's because of the noise and the stress reactions, the cortisol reactions that happen in a hospital room where everything is alarming all the time, even if it's not a serious problem. It, it's, you know, and why is this? It's not that the manufacturers are trying to make a great experience for patients or even be super helpful to healthcare providers. They're trying not to get sued. So the louder the better in a lot of these situations. And really, it, it's, there are some hospitals, I know Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and some other places who are working at and working with manufacturers to create better experiences for patients and still be able to provide caregivers the information they need just in time. So those are two huge areas where we can, improve people's lives just by paying attention, just by utilizing silence, which, you know, really is in the design of sound experiences, silence is our white space. And without silence, there really is no music. Without silence there really is no rest. Without silence there really is no sense of humanity and, and connection. If we're just listening to music and sound and noise all the time, especially noise, we can't control. That idea of silence is incredibly important to our experience as a human being.- Amen.- So you're, and you're teasing me up for one of my favorite quotes, the Thelonious Monk quote where he was doing an interview for the Saturday Evening Post and he was, he says, "You know, what's the loudest noise in the world, man? The loudest noise in the world is silence."- Of course, I have to ask you about your favorite brand, but let's make it a little bit more difficult. It can be the obvious choice. Don't give us Nike, or in your case, Intel inside because it has an iconic sound. Give us something that will surprise us. Please.- Oh my goodness. Those are two things that are not necessarily compatible.- There you go. -How, if I give, how about if I give you both? I'm gonna give you two. One is an obvious one, but maybe not for the obvious reason. Apple is an amazing brand, obviously because of the, not just the physical phone, you know, physical phone and the devices, but the, the, the innovation that got them there before anybody else, but also the art of the actual fonts and the experience that you have. It's just absolutely remarkably artful in every single way. And when I think about music, the way they use music in their advertising in other places, it's just as artful that they curate music so carefully and so thoughtfully. I almost think about Apple music as its own genre of music. It crosses different styles and different time, you know, timeframes and different instrumentation. They would, they would, you would listen to them and say, well, this has nothing to do with this track. Until you start hearing the consistency of that emotion and that feeling that is absolutely consistent with the innovation of the product, but also the artfulness of the way that product feels in your hand, the way you connect with it, the way you use it. If I was to pick one brand that surprises me and maybe surprises you when I think about it, it, it's, Gibson guitars are just an amazing brand. Look, they're a, they're incredible guitars in terms of how they feel and how they play. But there's something about the historical nature of Gibson. The, the instruments that they've created that were associated with different kinds of artists over time, but also just the, there's a style to the guitars that are unlike any other style. The, the, the fonts that Gibson has written in the name Gibson is just consistent. You, you get the sense that there's quality associated with this in absolutely every single detail, not just in the sound, which is incredible, but also every single aspect of that playing experience. Even, even if you find a Gibson guitar that's an old vintage guitar that's a Gibson, it, and even if it has, you know, worn away parts of the, you know, the, the, the, I wanna say shellac, I don't know if that's what it is, but even the parts, you know, the guitar, the imperfections became, you know, becomes part of the beauty of the guitar, part of the beauty, the experience. I'm not even a guitar player, I'm a keyboard player, I'm a composer, but I love the Gibson brand from that standpoint.- That makes a lot of sense. I guess that gets us full circle back to you as a musician and a brand strategist.- Listen, this was so much fun. I really appreciate, I, I appreciate talking about the subject, but also because you're both so passionate about it, it's made it extra fun.- Well, it's been a pleasure to have you on the BRITE Ideas podcast, Joel, and you know, we wish you the best in your next endeavors and in our next time connecting with you.- Bye. Please subscribe to BRITE Ideas on your favorite podcast service. We'd like to thank once again our sponsors Lexicon branding and Kogan Page. For more information about the Bright Ideas Podcast and Columbia Business School's Brand Center, please visit briteideas.co.