30. What does a brand sound like?
Companies spend a lot of time and effort perfecting the look of their brands. But now what a brand sounds like matters just as much. We trace the history from songs to jingles to what's called sonic branding, following the creative process that led to AT&T's iconic four-note sound logo. And we'll explore what comes next: multi-sensory marketing. Can sound change how beer tastes?
Produced by Dan Bobkoff, with Amy Pedulla, Jennifer Sigl, and Sarah Wyman.
Transcript
Note: This transcript may contain errors.
DAN BOBKOFF: Can you identify a brand from a sound?
[MCDONALD'S SONIC LOGO]
SPEAKER: McDonald's.
SPEAKER: Mickey D's.
SPEAKER: McDonald's.
DB: I gathered some colleagues to test something called sonic branding. It's like logos you can hear.
[NBC SONIC LOGO]
SPEAKER: That's NBC.
DB: Some are easier to identify than others.
[T-MOBILE SONIC LOGO]
SPEAKER: Cingular? AT&T? Phones?
SPEAKER: It's definitely a cell phone company. I want to say Sprint, but I'm not convinced that's right?
SPEAKER: I was gonna say Staples.
SPEAKER: That's T- Mobile.
DB: And the really good ones make you feel something…
[20th CENTURY FOX LOGO]
SPEAKER: That is 20th Century Fox.
SPEAKER: I felt triggered as soon as the first bit of drumming happened…I saw the logo... I started craving popcorn.
DB: Companies have long spent a lot of money and effort perfecting their logos… like the Nike swoosh or Apple's… apple. But now more of them are starting to do the same thing with sound.
[NETFLIX SONIC LOGO]
SPEAKER: Netflix
SPEAKER: I was gonna guess Netflix!
SPEAKER: Netflix!
DB: These are not jingles. They're highly designed collections of sounds created to make you... buy things. So I wanted to know, how do you make one that works?
DB: Ok, just for fun, we have to play this one…
SPEAKER: Yours!
SPEAKER: Yes!
[laughs]
DB: From Business Insider and Stitcher, this is Household Name. Brands you know, stories you don't. I'm Dan Bobkoff.
Today, what does a brand sound like?
A few years ago, AT&T didn't sound like anything. Customers couldn't remember what its ads were trying to sell. And if they did remember, some didn't think much of AT&T. So it turned to a sonic branding company to create an identity.
We learned a lot goes into that process. Artisanal chocolate, bagpipes, and a whole lot of songs that don't make the cut.
Plus we'll trace the evolution from songs to jingles to sound logos… to what comes next. Can music change the way beer tastes? Scientists are working on it.
Stay with us.
ACT I
ETHEL MERMAN ARCHIVAL: PepsiCo presents, Ms. Ethel Merman!
DAN: In the beginning, companies wrote whole songs.
ETHEL MERMAN ARCHIVAL: At PepsiCo...
COLLEEN FAHEY: Probably in the '40s or '50s when they had long commercials, 60 second commercials, you could actually create a whole song for that commercial you could have choruses and you could have verses.
CHEVY AD: Performance is sweeter, nothing can beat her, life is just sweeter in a Chevy.
DB: Colleen Fahey is with the sonic branding company Sixieme Son (CZM Sewn) and wrote a book called Audio Branding. And Colleen says when television was new, ads were long.
CF: So you had enough time to say "you wonder where the yellow went, when you brush your teeth with pepsodent"
[PEPSODENT]
RICE KRISPIES AD: Snap, what a happiest sound. Snap is the happiest sound I've found...
CF: One of the great ones was Snap Crackle Pop, Rice Krispies where each of the characters got to sing something about his own sound. His snap, his crackle and, and then they did a chorus together. They had plenty of time for that. The chorus went: "snap crackle pop, Rice Krispies."
RICE KRISPIES AD: snap crackle pop, Rice Krispies!
CF: But it was a really long song. I couldn't sing the whole thing for you...
RICE KRISPIES AD: ...let's pops around, you can't stop popping when the cereal's popping. Pop makes the world go round...
DB: As the decades passed, TV ads got shorter… from whole songs, down to 60 seconds, to 30 seconds — sometimes just 15. And these songs turned into jingles — shorter snippets to help you remember the brand.
PURINA CAT CHOW: Purina Cat Chow, independent Purina Cat Chow, ch-ch-chow!
DB: The '80s — by the way — were an especially strong time for jingles… like a last gasp for the form.
STOUFFER'S PIZZA: Help yourself, help yourself, help yourself to Stouffer's Pizza! Real cheese, toppings, yes indeed...
DB: But the '80s were also a period of transition into something new. And it's partly because of what United Airlines did then. In the early part of the decade, it had its own conventional jingle...
UNITED: We get you to all the United States. You're flying the friendly skies...
DB: But by the end of the decade, United started using another piece of music.
CF: It's the one that goes doo-doo-doo-doo doo-doo-doo-doo doo-doo-doo-doo doo-doo-doo-doo.
[UNITED RHAPSODY IN BLUE]
CF: Most people would recognize that as United Airlines' audio brand.
[UNITED RHAPSODY IN BLUE]
DB: An audio brand. What United is doing with Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue goes beyond what advertisers did with songs and jingles.
CF: They use Rhapsody In Blue as a system.
DB: A system. This is what makes this different than just a simple jingle.
CF: It's a very flexible piece of music. It was not written as a symphony. The symphony came many years after the first piece of music was written and had already been used by Jazz musicians and other improvisers. So it's a piece of music that had been treated flexibly since its inception.
DB: Gershwin became United's signature. Whatever the company was doing, you'd hear some version of this music. From ads, of course, to even TV weather forecasts…
UNITED WEATHER FORECAST: This travel forecast is sponsored by United Airlines...
CF: It's also used in the corridors in Chicago Airport. There's a big corridor that links the the terminal, their United terminal, to the main building and people on moving walkways hear this music when they're going into the terminal.
DB: And then you get on the plane and there it is again.
CF: They have a safety video that's around the world…
UNITED SAFETY VIDEO: If necessary, an oxygen mask will drop from above your seat...
CF: ...and in France you hear it with a little accordion and then in... I think it's New Jersey you hear it with a jazz sound and they manipulate it so it stays fresh and it feels relevant to the destination.
DB: For United, Rhapsody in Blue isn't a song or a jingle. It's a full sonic brand.
CF: A very unified audio brand and a very strong, memorable, distinctive brand that conveys something… anticipatory and exciting about travel.
DB: A few companies have had sonic branding down for decades. Like MGM...
[MGM SONIC LOGO]
DB: ...or NBC.
[NBC SONIC LOGO]
DB: But it's only been since the '90s that this modern form of sonic branding started to take off.
CF: Probably the most famous one is Intel, which the idea of Intel Inside was communicated by a piece of music. And it goes like, thun thun thun thun thun.
[INTEL SONIC LOGO]
CF: I think you'd… also, most people would recognize that, and they've been very loyal to that piece of music.
DB: The Intel Inside sound was brilliant… a chip is something you don't see, but it's crucial to a computer, so the sound gave life to something invisible and got consumers to think about a boring computer part.
And, it's one of the first true sonic logos.
Let's get some terms out of the way here. In the modern world of audio branding, there are sonic logos and sonic brands. You can think of the sonic brand as the whole package… just like a company has its own fonts and colors. The logo is the distillation of all that… the centerpiece. Visually, it's a symbol. In audio, it's a short, memorable sound that triggers recognition like Pavlov's dog.
[BELL SOUND]
Brands want us to remember them and feel good about them.
More and more companies want sonic brands because we're increasingly interacting with brands in non-visual ways. Like talking to a smart speaker. Or maybe using Apple Pay or Google Pay instead of a physical credit card. In fact, most of the big credit card companies are developing sounds that will play when you buy something.
So, in a moment, how do you make a sonic brand that works?
That's what AT&T wanted to know.
Stay with us.
ACT II
DB: We're back.
And I've come to the offices of Man Made Music in lower Manhattan because this is one place sonic brands are born.
[DANNI ON KEYBOARD]
DANNI VENNE: That's their logo [keyboard plays]
DB: This is Danni Venne. She's the head of creative at Man Made, so she works on a lot of the music that's in the background of our lives.
DV: I just like that one… [keyboard plays]
DB: Man Made makes many of the themes you hear on TV. Like for CBS News...
[CBS NEWS]
DAN: ...or ESPN.
[ESPN]
DB: Or, sometimes they'll update iconic themes for new eras.
DV: We've done the…[logo plays] HBO theme… have you heard that before? The [logo plays]. So we've done so many versions of that. We didn't write that one, but that's kind of our bread and butter is that we take a melody and we know how to like, recontextualize it.
DB: But now it's not just TV networks calling. Brands want music. Lots of it. They want sonic logos for all sorts of reasons.
Like, take AT&T. It thought a sonic brand might help solve some problems.
AT&T came to Man Made Music in 2010. Back then, the company had been enjoying one big advantage… it was the only cell phone company in the US where you could get an iPhone. But at the time, its customers weren't too happy with AT&T.
DV: AT&T became even a bigger punching bag 'cause it was dropping all the calls.
DB: Customers who had switched to AT&T in order to get the iPhone were complaining about it online. Never mind that the problem was mostly fixed by this point. Reputations can lag reality. One customer had even made a parody video to YouTube that looks like an Apple ad with the white background and the product shots. But then the text is all things like, 'It's a revolutionary device crippled by poor service' and this one: 'with less bars in more places!'
So AT&T set out to overhaul its image… photos, slogans, fonts, ads, and sounds. This was around the time other phone companies were about to sell the iPhone. And it had another problem. Danni said that when AT&T ran expensive ads on TV, few people could remember what the ad was for.
DV: They'd see it and they say 'who was that for?' And they'd say 'I don't know Verizon? IBM? You know, MetLife?' It wouldn't… They… It would rarely get attributed to AT&T.
DB: So that's one reason AT&T ended up coming to Danni and Man Made Music.
DV: One of the first things we asked AT&T when they were in the room was, 'why are you interested in a sonic identity?'
DB: Danni needed AT&T to articulate exactly how the company wanted to be perceived. Did it want to come across as more reliable? Higher tech? Less corporate? More… likeable?
DV: If we don't understand that then we're just, you know throwing stuff at the wall. Hoping that it's going to stick. What's the problem you're trying to solve?
DB: After a lot of back and forth, AT&T came back and said… it wanted to come across as… human.
DV: At the top of the brief, a question: what is the sound of humanity? Which is… very lofty
DB: Yeah. Sounds… pretty big.
DV: Very lofty. But, the sound of humanity and that as a question with the additional language that we had in the references at least focused it in a little bit more on what that could be.
DB: If AT&T sounded human, maybe customers would trust it more. And new customers might hear the sound logo and get a better impression of AT&T. A company that sounded friendly, and likeable.
DV: Of course that can be interpreted a million different ways. But just at the very top how did… where were we shooting? The sound of humanity.
DB: So, to narrow it down, Danni asked AT&T executives some questions. Things like… 'what do you hate about your competitors?' Once all that was settled, Danni looked to culture for inspiration. And back in 2010, artisanal products were all the rage. Handmade things that look authentic, and not mass produced perfection.
DV: Things like I think Mast chocolate bars head hand wrapped chocolate, right? So, you know craftsman in some warehouse in Brooklyn, you know, making...
DB: Just like AT&T.
DV: Just like AT&T, exactly. But you know someone's in Brooklyn doing their small batch pickles or something, (laughs) right, with the handcrafted label? And like… but that that sense of like personal touch and humanity was like kind of infusing a lot of culture at the time.
DB: But even that concept was broad. Like… AT&T is artisanal chocolate? That doesn't make sense!
So, before her team started composing their own tracks, Danni played some music she had on hand—stuff they didn't compose—but they just wanted to get the client's reactions. In this case, they wanted a sense of what kind of raw, authentic humanity AT&T wanted. Like, did it want it to feel high-stakes and dramatic? Like, fireman rescues baby from a burning building humanity?
DV: This is too "heart on your sleeve…" you know, like..
DB: [laughs]
DB: Or… math genius performs complicated calculus on a chalkboard humanity?
DV: I do like this one because it feels smart. I've used this ref so many damn times, I should just kill it. It just feels right though, and it's the same Sigur Rós track from like 8 years ago that I should stop using.
DB: So, they're sitting around, listening and giving their feedback. The first track sounded too lofty and dramatic, with its sweeping crescendos and emotional strings. And the second one, the "math genius" music, was too structured and clean.
DV: And as the exploration developed, we became more focused on expressing this humanity through imperfection. So instruments and sounds that you could hear real people playing real instruments. Right? And that became the way humanity was manifested, you know? First it sounds lofty, like we're about to have something giant, you know. But it actually became a little more raw.
DB: So, with that in mind, Danni and the team finally started writing their own music for AT&T. A lot of music. And what they were trying to create is something they call an "anthem."
DV: All the anthem demos need to be thematic. They need to have a melody or something that you can sing back, or something that you can remember, some sort of hook. Right? And that hook, that melody, that theme, that becomes what eventually gets boiled down to a sonic logo.
DB: The sonic logo might be just a few notes embedded in the larger anthem, which could be anything from 20 seconds to two minutes long.
DV: But any of these demos that we start writing... and, and a big brand like AT&T… it's very conceivable that we might write up to 20 or 30 anthem demos. Not all of them see the light of day, in fact most of them don't get to the client.
DB: Danni played us some of those early tracks and explained why they didn't make the cut. Like, her first try was almost too human. It sounded too much like the theme song of a kid's TV show, or the joyful, hoppy ending of a rom com.
[OPTION ONE PLAYS]
DV: It's a really nice sound, song. It's got vocals in it. What it might not do, is it might not speak to this idea of like, serious business, right?
DB: The team's next try went too far in the other direction. The music wasn't grounded enough. The chord progressions were a little too exciting for AT&T's taste.
DV: Um, let me go to another one that did not make it.
[OPTION TWO PLAYS]
Artful fade! Yeah, like it's… it's more dramatic, right?
DB: Sounds a lot like a film score.
DV: Yeah, exactly. So trying to take this humanity things very differently there. And I mean hindsight, I can remember why that doesn't work. It's kind of… Maybe it's kind of obvious, right? It's… it wears its heart on its sleeve. It's very Lord of the Rings.
DB: A little ominous too. My call might drop...
DB: At some point, the team hit a creative block. Danni just wasn't hearing any sonic logos in these anthems.
Then one day, Danni was playing some of the drafts for her boss, Joel. And four notes caught his attention.
DV: What Joel heard, was this...
[NOTES PLAY]
DV: You hear the melody, and it's just repeat repeat repeat repeat. And that was like an interesting, iconic sort of melody.
[MUSIC PLAYS]
DV: That became eventually the sonic logo. That kind of idea. Just those four notes.
DB: And those four notes… might sound familiar.
[AT&T SONIC LOGO]
DV: Not a very linear process to get there, you know. We heard a theme that we thought was cool, we heard something that had the momentum and the optimism that felt like big business and a melody that we liked and we said, 'how do we make something that gets a lot of people on board with it being both approachable and friendly and consumer and kind of ragtag, but still feels kind of interesting and big.' But at the end of the day, the most important thing is the theme. The melody the melody the melody.
DB: Now that Danni and her team had their melody — their sonic logo — they could start thinking about other things. Like what instruments would make the track sound most "human." She went to a store in Midtown Manhattan that sold a bunch of vintage instruments. Quirky-sounding things, like clavinet... a Wurlitzer. And some others I didn't expect to hear in an AT&T logo…
DV: And I, I swear to God we recorded a bagpipe player. I'll show you that…
DB: For AT&T?
DV: Yes, they there's a bagpipe on there.
DB: (laughs) Is that an Easter egg? It's like, hidden in there somewhere?
DV: Yeah. (laughs)
DB: Danni wanted the anthem to sound real. Real people on real instruments. This is not programmed perfection in a computer.
DV: And it's interesting, when I listen to this again, you can hear… every so often I can hear a piano chord that's just a fraction late.
[MUSIC PLAYS]
DB: Is that on purpose?
DV: Just because it's played… Aaron is playing there…
DB: Man made.
DV: Yeah, exactly it was very man-made.
DB: How the anthem was recorded mattered too.
DV: You can even hear like we must have recorded these instruments together. Can you hear kind of the drums in the background?
[MUSIC PLAYS]
Kind of the way records used to be made… you're all in a room, playing together.
DB: Finally, after weeks of writing, recording, and mixing, Danni and her team had AT&T's anthem.
[AT&T ANTHEM]
DB: And tying the whole thing together were four notes. The sonic logo.
[AT&T NOTES]
DB: It took 18 months for Man Made to finish the whole AT&T sonic brand. It's become a case study for the company. Because in the end, variations on those four notes were used as ringtones, hold music, ad themes, even before the CEO got on stage at events. It was a whole system.
AT&T doesn't use its sonic brand as much these days. The company has changed a lot… it now owns DIRECTV, HBO, CNN and other media brands, and its identity is in flux. And AT&T found that many people associated those four notes with cell phones.
Danni was a musician in a band before she came to work at Man Made. And I was curious what she thinks about the music she creates for brands. Can the work she does for companies be art?
DV: I'd love it to feel like what at the end of the day what we create it belongs like in a design museum and it's like, how do we look at this from the angle of like yes, it's for commercial consumption, but there's art to it, you know there's a… there's design to it and it needs to be sort of reflected on.
DB: And now some of the team's work is becoming actual design… Like this sound that plays as a Nissan electric car accelerates.
[NISSAN]
DB: Everything is branding these days.
In a moment, can sound change the way a soda tastes? The future is multi-sensory marketing.
Stay with us.
ACT III
DB: We're back.
A big reason sonic branding works is because of repetition. The more you hear something, the more familiar it becomes, and the more you tend to like it.
And these sounds don't take long to worm into our minds. One study played a jingle alongside a product just a couple of times. And the next time participants heard that sound, they instinctively started looking for that product.
So on our journey from songs to jingles to sonic brands, that's the current science. But I called up Charles Spence because he's working on what comes next.
CHARLES SPENCE: I'm an experimental psychologist and a gastro physicist working out of Oxford University. Psychologist interested in the senses and the application of brain science to the real world.
DB: For a while now, he's worked on the subtle sounds products make that you might not even realize are engineered to create emotion. Like with Axe deodorant.
CS: We worked on the design of a new spraying sound so that it would be perceived as more efficacious.
DB: That's actually the design of the packaging is a sonic experience.
CS: That's right something that we when we think whenever we interact with or use, open, close anything really it makes a sound. It's always there in the background. Our brain picks it up and uses that to infer what's going on. What are we feeling, what's happening.
DB: Like a car door… our brains interpret sounds as signaling solid, or high quality.
[HIGH QUALITY CAR DOOR CLOSING SOUND]
DB: Or maybe tinny, and cheap.
[TINNY, CHEAP CAR DOOR CLOSING SOUND]
DB: But Charles is at the forefront of something even more complex. He's studying how one sense can affect another. And how that might change how we experience a brand and its products. Like can a sound change the way something tastes?
CS: To be able to bring out the sweet or sweetness or bitterness on the palette simply through the look of the video the shapes the colors on the video and also the instrumentation of that specially designed track.
DB: And so what you're saying, is that as I drink this beer or drink this coffee if I hear this specially designed sound it actually literally changes my sense of the taste, right?
CS: Yes. Not always, not for everyone but for many people it just changes the taste and so I've just been back from two weeks getting around Europe. Sort of demonstrating this what we call sort of sonic seasoning. Giving people… my favorite one is giving people kind of sour, sour kid sweets. And then we have the some very sweet music which is very tinkling and high-pitched specially designed from a London design student...
[SWEETNESS MUSIC]
And then we have some, the world's sourest music.
[SOUR MUSIC]
It's kind of mathematically transformed Argentinian Tango...And while people are eating one and the same sweet and sour sweet then as we change as I change the music you can sort of see their faces pucker up as I play the sour music.
DB: Charles has collected lots of music that pairs with certain tastes. Like this one, he says, is spicy.
[SPICY MUX]
DB: Charles worked with Starbucks on a piece of music that'd pair with instant coffee in the UK. He worked with Stella Artois and The Roots on this track that was supposed to go with the taste of the beer. It's called "sweet 'til the bitter end."
[STELLA ARTOIS ROOTS MUX]
CS: We've been working with a… in a chain of Belgian chocolate shops with a kind of completely mad, but brilliant chocolatier from Belgium in his chocolate shop with his amazing Belgian chocolates making his chocolates taste creamier with a kind of a creamy track that's been specially created.
DB: Or maybe, he says, sweet music could allow food companies to use less sugar. Charles says he can't yet use music to turn water into wine, but he's working on it.
A few years ago, I was in a hotel that had a signature smell. The shampoo smelled just like the lobby. And after talking with Charles, I can imagine a time soon when a brand has coordinated everything… the flavors, the scents, the sounds and music and colors… all to make you buy things and feel better about it.
Or maybe it'll all just be ASMR.
CS: These are autonomous sensory meridian response kind of a tingle you get down the back of your neck and this kind of is having a relaxing pleasurable experience. Almost a feeling triggered by sound. And we can sort of study the particular kinds of sounds. And it does seem to be sounds that work really well.
(whispers) The sounds of whispering gently or rattling of paper. There are particular sort of sounds that trigger these ASMR responses and can we incorporate things like that into sonic logos and jingles in order to kind of broaden the array of what that sonic logo can do.
DB: I don't know if I'm ready for a world with whispered ASMR sonic logos that have been designed to make my drink taste sweeter in a bottle that has been engineered to sound like refreshment. Where everyone behind me knows what credit card I have because of the sound it made at the register. But I guess we're pretty much there already aren't we?
So in the meantime, let's see if this ASMR thing works…
(whispers) Subscribe and give five stars on Apple Podcasts.
That was weird.
Anyway, as you may have heard by now, we have a Facebook group. Just search Household Name podcast on Facebook, and you can email us at householdname@insider.com. We read all the emails and comments you send our way. And here with some of our favorites are Jenni Sigl and Sarah Wyman.
SARAH WYMAN: Yeah, we've got some really good stories for you in here.
DB: Tell me!
SW: Like, one of the first emails we got was way back when KFC aired, which for those of you who haven't listened yet, is about how a Japanese businessman brought KFC to Japan by lying about its relationship with Christmas in America. And a listener named Pat wrote in to tell us about a time she and her husband were honeymooning in San Martin in 1993, and after a long day of touristing, they wanted to get some KFC… as one does. And so they found their local KFC and it had like a line of cars wrapping around the block. But that wasn't the weirdest thing. She says there were about half a dozen chickens… like, live birds, running around the parking lot. They were under the cars, all around the store, and there were people chasing them around… and she and her husband were joking in the car that the reason the food was taking so long was probably because she had to catch the chickens first! (laughs)
DB: Wait, do we actually know why there were so many chickens outside of KFC?
SW: I don't know the answer to that, but it sounds like the beginning of an amazing customer service segment!
DB: Alright, well stay tuned for someday. Alright, what's next?
JENNI SIGL: So we heard from another listener who's a professor, and he told us that he actually assigns the podcast to his social media marketing students.
SW: AAaaaaaaaAAah!
DB: That's really cool. Alright, if you're listening, stay in school.
SW: And on that note, a lot of our listeners were truly alarmed by the fact that I decided to eat a Croc based on the advice a high schooler gave me. But somebody posted a poll in our Facebook group that I thought was hilarious. He asked "Do you cook your Crocs al dente?" 19 listeners responded "this part of the story was hysterically nauseating," three of us responded "yes," and one very smart listener said "no."
DB: I wonder who that was. [laughter]
JS: I appreciated that Sarah responded "al dente."
SW: Yeah, well, it's true. Don't! Eat! Your! Crocs!
JS: So we also got a ton of feedback about our Victoria's Secret episode.
SW: Yeah, and we had some listeners who wrote in to let us know too that, back in the early 2000s, when Victoria's Secret was a rite of passage for so many young women, they didn't have that experience. Because Victoria's Secret wasn't making products that fit them.
JS: Yeah, and one listener told us that she really looks forward to the days when plus size teens will be able to buy trendy junior clothes in stores like Victoria's Secret.
SW: We also heard from a listener in our Facebook group about how many women are riding Harley-Davidsons these days, and she felt like we should have talked about that more in our episode. So, if you are a woman who loves Harley-Davidson, let us know! Write in the Facebook group, or send us an email.
DB: And then we had a lot of people who are fans of our Big Ass Fans segment, right?
JS: We did, yeah. We had quite a few people write in telling us about their experiences encountering Big Ass Fans-
SW: In the wild!
JS: In the wild, exactly. In bars, in baseball stadiums…
DB: I'm actually really glad I'm not the only person out there who has like seen that at a gym or something and wondered like 'why is that the brand name?'
JS: Yeah, a couple of people wrote in and said that when they saw the name on the fan, they thought it was a joke, and so hearing our segment it kind of confirmed…. No, this is a real company. One listener wrote in to us, her name is Dominique and she told us that there's this place in Phoenix she loves to go to… it's called The Duce. Um, it's a big warehouse that has been converted into this bar slash event space, and there's a dance floor too, and the dancefloor opens up onto this big outdoor area, and Dominique has all these great memories of dancing out there under a Big Ass Fan!
So we also heard from another listener named Aaron who lives in the Atlanta area. And he told us that a few years ago, he took a job in a warehouse, and it's in Georgia, so it's super hot, and on his first day he was getting a tour of the warehouse, and he looked up and he saw a Big Ass Fan. And he literally said out loud: 'wow! That's a big ass fan!' [laughter]
DB: So the founder was right. Like, that's where the name comes from. People just see it and they're like 'wow. That fan is a big ass fan.' And they have to call the company that.
SW: It's only been a week, but we've also heard a lot about the cool episode that came out last Wednesday. Olivia wrote in to our Facebook group to say that she really grappled with whether to get a Canada Goose jacket or not when she moved to Alaska. And now she has some mixed feelings about the company because it's so cool, right? Like she never meant to be opting into all the other things that are associated with this brand when she bought this really warm coat.
DB: So it wasn't as big of a deal when she bought it?
SW: No… It became a big deal after and she's like [crosstalk] dealing with the fallout of that.
JS: The fallout of becoming trendy.
SW: And since she is from Alaska, I should also mention that she is a Good Alaskan. She wears her Carhartt!
JS: But does she use duct tape?
SW: (laughs) We'll have to write back and ask her that.
JS: Yeah. Well, we should ask. Yeah we also heard from another listener about Carhartt. She posted in our Facebook group, her name is Theresa. And her husband is in this online forum for people in the lumber industry.
SW: Woooooooaaaaaah.
JS: Yeah. That exists.
DB: Log on! [laughter]
JS: That was a good one.
SW: And her husband saw this post in the forum where a guy was telling a story about how he'd gone to town to deliver all this wood that he'd cut, and a customer saw him wearing his Carhartt jacket, which he'd owned forever. And the customer was like 'hey, can I buy that off of you for $300?'
DB: Why?
SW: Because he really liked the way it looked!
DB: And he was stumped!
JS: Yeah, he was shocked, but the customer kept asking to buy his old ratty Carhartt jacket from him. I guess no matter how many times this guy tried to wash his, he couldn't get that worn-in look.
DB: Alright, well thank you everyone for writing in, we really enjoy hearing from you, so keep them coming.
SW: We read all of your messages, and by the way, if you thought these stories were fun and if you want to know more about what our process is like, and what our team is thinking about, we have a BRAND NEW NEWSLETTER! Coming your way super soon.
DB: Yeah, and it's called Brand New(s), and you can sign up on our website or in our show notes.
SW: We're gonna have a lot of bonus content in there, like stuff that didn't make it into the episodes and had to be cut for time. Or, updates on stories we've done in the past.
In the meantime, don't forget, you can always send us an email at householdname@insider.com, or follow me on twitter, @danbobkoff.
CREDITS
This episode was produced by me, with Sarah Wyman, Amy Pedulla, and Jennifer Sigl.
Special thanks to Joel Beckerman, the founder of Manmade Music, who wrote about the AT&T case study in his book, The Sonic Boom. Special thanks also to Tom Lowe.
Our editor is Gianna Palmer.
John DeLore and Casey Holford didn't just write this theme music, but also make our episodes sound great.
The executive producers are Chris Bannon and me.
Household Name is a production of Insider Audio.