243 – Customized jingles create “Earworms”: Tom interviews Mike Stewart

Episode 243 – Mike Stewart Jingles
[00:00:09] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody it's Tom here with Episode 243 of Screw the Commute podcast. This is Mike Stewart week. And that's appropriate because he's the one got me started creating quality audio over 20 years ago and he was on the other day Wednesday talking about podcasts. And he has this great service. I mean, literally, I always tease about done for you services and they should be called done to you because the people selling them are a bunch of shysters, but he's not. So he has a service where you can just get on and talk. And he does everything else for you to create a high quality podcast. So check out episode 242. But today we're going to talk about something really cool. I guarantee you never heard about it before. Nobody else on this earth is doing it like Mike is doing it or doing it at all. So I'll tell you about that in a minute. All right. Grab a copy of our automation e-book. It's at screwthecommute.com/automatefree and it allows you to just handle tons of customers and prospects way faster than you're doing now and saves your carpal tunnel syndrome from typing all day. This is amazing stuff that I've used for years and years and years to allow me to handle enormous numbers of subscribers and customers. All right. And while you're there, check out screwthecommute.com for our podcast app. And it's at screwthecommute.com/app and today we're working on a video to show you how to use all the fancy features. But we already have screen captures at that address screwthecommute.com/app to show you how to use this on the road mean if you're let's say you're listen to a podcast, you get a call well the podcast or pause itself automatically you take the call and then it'll start back up where you were soon as you end the call. So it's really all kinds of stuff like that. So you can take us with you on the road on your cell phone and tablet. Our sponsor's the Internet Marketing Training Center, Virginia, it's a distance learning school which teaches legitimate techniques to make a great living, either working for someone else or starting your own online business or both. Why not both? You can check it out at IMTCVA.org. It's the only licensed, dedicated Internet marketing school in the country. I started it because in this field you are surrounded by rip offs. I mean, you can swing a dead cat and run into somebody telling you how to get rich on the internet and they're driving a broken down Hyundai or Pinto. So I went through three years of licensing and background checks and financial checks to get the license. So we're the only one in the world that has it. So check it out at IMTCVA.org and everything we do will be in the show notes this is episode 243. So you go to screwthecommute.com/243 and there's gonna be some really cool things on this episode that you'll want to check out.

[00:03:41] Let's get to the main event. Mike Stewart is the president and founder of Stewart Internet Solutions. It's an Internet consulting agency and services company located in Nashville, Tennessee. U.S. of A. And Mike has composed countless radio jingles, television scores and produced or performed on music that was heard all over the world. He's worked with countless world famous people like the people from the Atlanta rhythm section, Alicia Bridges, Isaac Hayes. Listen to that. And he's got a gold record for an 80s hit Pac-Man Fever when he was a member of Buchner and Garcia, the band that did it and listen to this, he recorded the theme to Disney's Oscar nominated movie. Wreck It Ralph in 2012. Mike, are you ready to screw the commute again?

[00:04:41] Oh, boy. So we got a very cool topic there. We won't rehash everything they can go back and listen to Wednesday's 242. This is two forty three. Yeah. So they can listen to 242. Well so we'll do all new stuff today. So tell him about this unique marketing thing that you have developed.

[00:05:03] Well, I'd love to. You know, you talk to. My bio there, how I was involved with music for so many years, I am a musician.

[00:05:13] I am a songwriter. And the way I made a living in Atlanta for many, many years was writing advertising, music for television and radio and in television and radio and advertising. Music are my foundations of years of experience. And then about the time I met you, I was making a transition to understanding how the Internet marketing world works. And I'm just as passionate about what the Internet does, but to me, the Internet is nothing more than a modern today Radio and television. Podcasts are radio, YouTube is television, Netflix streaming. In other words, the technologies of delivery of the content have changed, but not the principles that works as many as the invention of radio, which was nineteen twenty six when they invented radio. They didn't know how to make any money with it. They just knew people would buy the little boxes and ham in their living rooms and they could deliver content. And then they said OK, if we build a big enough audience we can sell advertising. And that was the model that worked all the way up to World War 2. And then of course, it flourished after World 2 with radio and television. If the models are there. So one of the biggest models of advertising that I was involved with was what we used to call jingles and jingles are when you take a marketing message, a slogan or something, a position statement about a business and you add a melody, a memorable melody to those verbiage messages, short messages or whatever. It creates a psychological phenomenon called an earworm or a brain worm. But what it does is it enables for people to an earworm is I can't get a set of lyrics, I can't get it out of my head. Never had a song stuck in your head. And it just plays all day long. And you can't. It is involuntary.

[00:07:08] Yeah. Well, let me tell you about this, Mike. You. I don't know if you know this, but I used to do TV commercials and and do voiceovers for jingles back in 0, 30, 40 years ago. And this one can still remember to this day, I was the bartender on a Iron City light beer commercial and it was, hey, give me an icy light. And I see light.

[00:07:33] And 40 years later, a kid. You still remember. You remember the product. Yeah. You remember the melody. Yeah. Well, Google earworm and read about it.

[00:07:44] That is called The Psychological Phenomenon of Earworms. And Avatar advertisers knew that if we and in fact, one of the things we used to do to prove that it was real is that when we were pitch jingles back in the 80s, we would harm a melody. And I don't know if it was this test. You're old enough. You may remember this, but this is what we would do. We would just play a melody.

[00:08:15] Now, if you ever heard that melody before I have a worm. Hasn't grabbed me yet though. OK, I'll say one word and see if you can say the rest of Winston.

[00:08:29] This smoking a cigarette? Yeah.

[00:08:33] Winston tastes good like a cigarette should. There you go. See that? And it hasn't run since 1971. Right.

[00:08:41] Cigarette commercials were made illegal. That jingle you steal is still in plan. Never see it fades over time, but that's the power. But now I'm going to play a modern jingle and see if you can do the rest of it. All right.

[00:08:55] We are argues that that that that that. OK.

[00:08:59] Look, I can't even think right now when I was a kid, if you went up and said we are farmers, I'd say we'll do you plant corner tobacco. But because of that earworm. The world knows its insurance. That's the power of an earworm. That's you. When I play, I didn't play the whole thing for it. You just went to me. That's. They spent millions of dollars in advertising to go bump it up, up, up, up, up. I mean, that was wasted copy space in my truck.

[00:09:30] So there's all kinds of air ones. Earworms jingles are prevalent in radio. Television advertising very prevalent. Younger people don't think of it as jingles, but that's what they are. And I mean, I can actually play you some of liberty. Insurance may go. Liberty, liberty, liberty four times. And people say, I've actually had people say they hate their radio ads.

[00:09:56] They hate that jingle. But you remember when I was a kid. Liberty was what we fought for. Right. And now it means insurance. So that's the power of your words. So we've established that that is a known advertising mechanism from an auditory standpoint that's been used on radio, television for years. So now today, if podcasts are radio, if YouTube is video and if paid you video and audio advertising is possible on intertubes TV, you mirror.

[00:10:26] Yeah. Yeah. YouTube is TV. My portable. I started realizing, oh, my gosh, this is a place to use the earworm psychology. However, I discovered something else. And this let's go into this. If you've never heard the word SERP terms.

[00:10:46] Search terms are the words that people type into Google or any search engine for that matter.

[00:10:53] But mostly Google. And they stand for search engine results page. Right. So when people type phrases into Google, what comes up first is called the search term results. And we all want to be number one for generic terms, you know, Internet marketing coach, Internet school. You would you know, you would love to be number one in the world for that. And sometimes you are. But lots of times you're not number one for generic terms. But they're usually most every business is number one in the world for their unique search terms. And what I mean by that is just to give you an example. Internet Marketing Training Center forewords. Internet Marketing Training Center. If I type that in Google, you dominate. Those are the search times that if people were hearing it as an earworm. They would automatically know what to do. So we developed making jingles that say three things. Your guaranteed search term first page results. Of one line about what you do, what I call the positioning statement and a phone number. If you want to know what I want to tell you the story, how I discovered this, we know in the last episode we talk about how I have a podcast about pest control companies. And my partner Hal Coleman used to sing jingles back in the 80s for me.

[00:12:34] I had a dear friend years ago that was a master at selling jingles. He came up with the way back then it was 1980 and Winston was still prevalent on decision makers minds. So he'd go in and play that. And he was showing the power of having a jingle saying your business name, and that's how you used to sell them all the time. And so how was a young singer songwriter? And he came to my house and he used to sit on my commode with a microphone in front him because I didn't have a vote. People laughed and he sang Jangles and Larry used to go out and sell these jingles all over the southeast for buying. And we told that story at one of our workshops. Much like your bootcamp, we had a pest control, but we don't call it that. You call it. You know, we call it a bug.

[00:13:19] Should call it bug camp.

[00:13:21] It's a bug camp. Yeah.

[00:13:23] And one of our attendees is see, that's another here's another lesson. Your attendees will will wake you. Open your eyes. The things that you've forgotten about. Right. And his name is Eric Gardner. And I won't give out his search terms.

[00:13:36] E volunteer read a past. Those are his search terms. If you Google search Google and you know I dare you to do it. He dominates Google for volunteer rid of pests novel ideas from Tennessee.

[00:13:49] You mean that thing down the lake, isn't it?

[00:13:51] Yeah. He's the. In Chattanooga with the name of his business. And now nobody is searching volunteer red a pest unless they know. Right. So Eric comes up to me at breakfast the next morning and he says, I didn't know you clowns did jingles. Oh. And I did. Twenty five years ago when I had my studio. And then I got into the Internet and said, oh, to heck with that. He said, let me take some. He said, I'm in Chattanooga. And he said, there's a blogger who had his own radio and owned TV. And he he does his lawyer bit. And then everything every commercial ends with Charles Bittman is the way to go. Call 555 0000. And he says, I can't get that SOBs phone number out of my head. It was just short and sweet. Call Charles Pittman. He's the way to go. Call 5 5 2 0 0 0 0, whatever it was, you know.

[00:14:47] And I said, well, Eric, I said, that's that's that's a known strategy called an earworms is lacking any phone number out of my head. He said, I want that.

[00:14:57] I'm said, well. I said those are called SERP times and I said, I'll go home and I'll write you a jingle so you can hear what I wrote.

[00:15:05] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I'd play it on air. Give me one second here. So here's here's what we did.

[00:15:14] Hey, this is Eric Gardner with volunteer Ridha paid for out here in Chattanooga, Tennessee. We've been serving the greater Chattanooga area since 1970. And in those forty nine years of doing business, we have developed the most effective treatment strategies in the industry.

[00:15:25] We're so confident what we do. We offer a five year, one percent money back guarantee on all term treatments. That's a wrap for five full years. Do you find a term at your home will come back and retreat the entire home for free? Refund 11 percent of your money and pay you an additional $250 for your time and trouble. Nobody else in Chattanooga does that. So if you want to turn that free home, call us today at 698 7205. That's volunteerism is the highest authority in Chattanooga 698 7205.

[00:15:53] Or Google volunteer recipients 0 6 9 8 7 2 6 9 8 7 3 0 5.

[00:16:12] Right. And and then, of course, what we did, he was doing it for radio and that was his actual radio spot. But his jingle is his search comes Google. And we actually say the word Google volunteer read past. No will survive. We got a rhyme for it right now. Right. And then you say the phone number. So it's the search time.

[00:16:37] What you do. And your phone number. And and then I discovered, I said, Eric. Have you ever thought about doing YouTube advertising? They said it was that. I said, well, I said, if you ever go on YouTube and, you know, you search for a video on how to change a spark plug or whatever, you know.

[00:16:56] And then also an ad comes up. I said, that's called a pre-roll video ad. And he said, yeah. I say not to at all time. I said, well, you the whole world does that. They're on their cell phones and are looking on, you know, recipes and you know them every day.

[00:17:13] I said, well, you know, you can go into YouTube and run commercials of any length. And he said most people are going to skip them. But I said, if we preload. The YouTube video with your jingle. And even if they skip it, they still hear they hear it. We pre-load it with the front, the just the search term jingle. I'll get. So they're coming on here in a minute.

[00:17:43] The ad comes on again. This starts. It starts here, will bother to read.

[00:17:56] No. 0 6 9 8 7 2.

[00:18:05] What we found out is 90 percent of people skip the ad, but they still hear the year one.

[00:18:11] And he got it for free because they got it within 30 seconds. That thing is totally free and they got the earworms stuck in head.

[00:18:20] Right.

[00:18:20] So now they know his search terms via a jingle search term jingle and just the stats on him. He saved twenty thousand dollars on his advertising in twenty nineteen. His business is up 20 percent.

[00:18:33] Yeah. Any Internet. And he targets just Chattanooga area or whatever his service area because there's no sense playing that in Los Angeles or some.

[00:18:41] Right. Right. You can go in and do a 50 mile radius of any market right now. So. So do you have any questions on the concept here?

[00:18:49] No, it's it's brilliant, especially that one on YouTube, because as I said, your place in that earworm in many cases for free because. Absolutely. And then that person might sometime later need the service. Maybe they don't need it right then. Or they're really desperate to see the video that they were wanting to watch. So they skipped it, but they still got that stuck in their brain for free.

[00:19:13] Even even if they're not listening, we've got it down to a science.

[00:19:17] If people hear a jingle 20 times, it's in your subconscious, whether you want it or not. 20 listens. So we actually had a client call up and said, would you stop playing your jingle on my YouTube videos, which we don't care.

[00:19:33] So. So the other thing is, is that as I researched this more Spotify. Well, you can either do national worldwide or even zip code advertise on YouTube. Well, Spotify, you you can. There's over 180 million listeners that don't buy the service. So those are non-sniffable ads and you can get targeted listeners for a penny. A piece about $300 would get you about 30000 listeners. And we've been running these jingles, the arewhat, because what it is, the more people that hear, the more times they hear it. You become, you know, six months from now, call it, you know, if a pest control agency will Google volunteer rinderpest, their phone number. You know, it's it's using music and an old tried and true strategy with YouTube, Spotify. Pandora is another advertising tune in I Heart Radio. All of them will take online advertising. It's it's Internet advertising using jingles. That's what search term jingles are. I want to show you some examples. You know, Daniel home, a good friend.

[00:20:45] We tested. To get his search terms are bestsellerbuilders.com. And he doesn't want phone calls. He just wants people. So here is the best seller Builders Search Term Jingle.

[00:20:58] You sing your serp terms, you tell people what you do and one or two sentences and then you close with a closing statement, whether it's your phone number or your URL again singing your your ls this and what? Now, what is another use of this? All of our clients. They put their jingles, you know. Now a word from our sponsor. And then, you know, you have a song. You know, screw this. Just out of curiosity. I'm going to do the right now. Screw the commute.

[00:21:50] If I search those. Oh, my God, you dominate Google for those three words. That makes it OK.

[00:21:58] So all we're doing and that's really the whole thing is no, your search terms. Create a musical identity that you can have legal aspect to. The reason I moved to Nashville is because you you throw a rock in Nashville, Tom, and or somebody talented or famous, you know. And sadly, as much as I love these music people here, when it comes to marketing, they really strong.

[00:22:26] Other great artists. But not I mean, that's very typical or great or not, the great marketer.

[00:22:32] And so when you say I got paying work. You know, it's like who do you want all hungry, so. And I love being able to give paying work to these talented people because they're so talented.

[00:22:45] Like you had 50 people singing that jingle is that this is the same person with a different way out of this.

[00:22:52] Well, I'll tell you what I do. I won for twenty thirty thousand bucks for that. Did it?

[00:22:56] Oh no, no, no. It's very affordable. Very affordable. A few hundred bucks. I watched the voice to learn who lives in Nashville because about every other you know the Susan and I love watching the voice. Could she says could he's saying, no, I can't sing. Could you sing? I say, oh, my God, he's great. And Ed, so cause she's got a deaf ear on own music. But, you know, that's that's my passion. But I like going, oh, oh, OK. All right. That guy's day. I'll go find their Facebook and then I'll become friends with and then go have coffee with them and then they become a partner. So Adam Cunningham is who was singing those two jingles. Oh, yeah. Adam was came in number three on The Voice on Blake's team. And let me tell you, the voice is reality TV. You don't go on the voice to mean not that they haven't had one star come from the voice of. It's because it's real. He said it's reality television. It's great exposure. But, you know, the music business of becoming a star is a really long journey. And but those shows are so popular and people don't have their 15 minutes of fame and then they move on. So Adam is a great singer in town and so he's become a friend. And and especially, you know, the best way to make a friend is get him a gig and pay him. Right. Exactly. So so knowing the music business, knowing the jingle business and knowing the Internet, I've kind of merged all of these into what I call earworms, short term jingles. You don't we're not if you say, well, look, you know, here's what I want. I want to sing all these words and I want to sell everything in my sink. No, no, that's not what this is.

[00:24:39] If you know, if if you want to help, it's triple the price. Or if you don't, right?

[00:24:47] If you do what I saw as a thing of the gas station that says a labor sixty dollars an hour or a hundred and sixty if you worked on it first.

[00:24:58] I saw the same thing. It says an hour and three hundred an hour. If you help.

[00:25:05] I mean this works. I approve. It works.

[00:25:09] How long does it take to put together? Home to a day. That's it. Wow. Well, I mean, you think I'll say yes. I'm sitting there thinking, you know, yeah, I dominated on that Google search.

[00:25:22] What would you do? But I guarantee you, there's a hundred and eighty million people on Spotify.

[00:25:27] I've never heard of me. You know, they might have heard some of you may have heard of me, but they never heard of screw the commute and never signed up for my podcast. And for a penny apiece.

[00:25:37] I mean, that's that's like on those ads for a for YouTube you're talking about. I'm paying from two to four cents apiece, but I still don't have the earworm. You know, I got my my face worm in play.

[00:25:49] Wait a minute. Am I sensing that Tom Antion is maybe sold on this concept? Could be. It could be now. Now, can I sing it myself? No, that's that's hundred dollars went up in price. Just went up. Absolutely. It's always you give me an open cheque. You can sing anything you want, but you get no guarantees. I haven't given you an open cheque in the past. That was a different thing. I would never ask you that.

[00:26:18] Know, I don't want this podcast to get too long here today, but I got excited when I realized getting what you want. Is wonderful. And, you know, in other words, hey, I'd like Paul McCartney to sing this.

[00:26:32] Eminem doing the track. You know, I want to rap track and I want Konya w doing a rap over it. You know what? We could make that happen. But that's just ridiculous. Why would you ask for that? You know, I don't like that because that's not country I like. But I like big band music. I want to sound big. You know, I hate to equate everything to food. This is the McDonald's of jingles. You don't go to McDonald's and say, I want filet, Oscar. You know, they're gonna go, well, we don't serve that. Here's what you get. It's a burger and fries and a shake, but it works.

[00:27:05] But at work, you're not home. You're not hungry when you leave.

[00:27:08] Now, if you want, you know, Campbell, Lay, Anna, Anna and Don Perry on, then you got to pay a whole lot more money.

[00:27:15] And maybe you do if you go if you're flush with money. Good for you. OK. Great. Great. But it might not get you any better results.

[00:27:22] Let me show you another E commerce, because this works for anything. Here's some more examples.

[00:27:28] Yeah, I got some more examples here. This was a pillow company, e Commerce, a company, a friend of mine. And we did this one.

[00:27:39] Nice.

[00:27:42] You wouldn't miss Junie G.

[00:27:56] Yeah, they're gonna they're gonna beat my pillow guy and their campaign. And here's somebody than a fortune.

[00:28:02] Well, I mean, guess what? For the best night sleep in the whole wide world, go to my pillows.

[00:28:10] What exactly?

[00:28:12] Eighty. Right. We've done a song on a town which has us a song, a place. So we've done e-commerce consultants. A psychic psychic thing.

[00:28:25] If you if you type in Sedona. Psychic.

[00:28:30] Let's go to alliteration and it right there.

[00:28:32] Yeah. Sedona psychic. My client in the group is number one in the world for those two words. And she has a jingle that we put together. And I just don't have forgot I hadn't uploaded my phone. But I'll tell you, when I get with clients and explain this to them, they see it, they get it and they end. And I don't see anybody else in the world doing it. It's what it is. I'm old enough to remember jingles and radio, but I'm not un literate once. That's not the right word. I understand the internet. You're not ignorant of it. That's what I was looking for. Well, I am concerned, but, you know, I just said, my gosh, if this is radio, the principles we did 50 years ago, 40 years ago, 30 years ago, will still work because people are people and they're listening on their phones and planning served time as earworms has a long time residual effect. All right.

[00:29:25] So how do they how do they have to get started with this? What do they have to do and how do they contact you about it?

[00:29:33] Well, you can go to serpmusic.com and see the whole story. And it's got my phone number. And some people may not have a search term, you know, but generally they do. But you can go there and you can learn more about it. My phone number, the examples are there and my phone number there and how you can make it happen. And it's of course, it's a very simple process. And tell me if you call me, let me know that time you heard this podcast and that Tom referred you.

[00:29:59] Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. So so where should they go? Serpmusic.com. And that'll be in the show notes. This is episode 243. And wow, what a unique concept. And it's it's like set my wheels are spinning because anytime you can get one, two, three, four cents a visit or exposure to someone in your target market, that's crazy. Good deal. That's why I've been preaching for a long time that the in-stream ads or might call them pre-roll on YouTube or some of the best bargains out there because you can get a lot of this. I wasn't equality. or weren't, but you can get a lot of branding exposure for free. And most people will tell you that multiple it takes multiple exposures to get people to move. You know, absolutely what you want. So if you're going to get them for free and then some of them for a penny to three cents apiece. I mean, that's the way to do it nowadays. That's for sure.

[00:31:06] Well, you know, like I said, you can you can run these on Facebook video ads. You put them in your podcast. There's a website called Audio Go.com Audio Go is a Pandora. It's where you place ads, audio ads and streaming all over the world. And then Spotify has the spotty Spotify ad studio. Right. So when I and in fact, I listen to these services to see who's advertising, you know, I don't the millennials, God bless them. I have three of them. I love them with all my heart, but they don't like advertising. So they skip it and they don't like Spotify ads because they can't skip them. But the stats are 180 million people in Spotify don't buy the service. They listen to the ads. I listen to the ask to see. And it's usually tech companies that are advertising. It's never individuals.

[00:32:03] You know, it's a target. You can target, right?

[00:32:07] Oh, you can go. One hundred eighty six million ad supported listeners. People spend four and a half hours listening to this media. Twenty five. Twenty four percent higher call. This is at the audio go Web site. So the places to advertise, you don't have to get an ad agency. You can log in, create your own account and test an ad and you can get clicks from Spotify. A banner comes up. And if they tap on the banner, it goes right to your Web site. So it's even more powerful than radio advertising. But even with the YouTube pre-roll ads, we pray they skip them. We found out 30 percent of the people are watching the whole way. Well, so.

[00:32:44] No, no, no. They owe you any royalties on these ongoing or do they buying this outright or what?

[00:32:51] What's what I know is I do a lifetime license pending market, but then I also manage ads for people. You know, I've got a. Which is very simple to do. But some people don't know what to do. So I manage it. Look, you're an ad agency that basically, hey, to some degree, I can sell my laptop on the boat, manage all this.

[00:33:13] Oh, just because you're about to come in. You're loading manager.

[00:33:18] So. So any right. Yeah. Mr. Antion, please give me a call after this podcast. Let's discuss your program.

[00:33:25] Yeah. Tom Antion. Call him right away. Screw the commute today. We might work on those anyway. That's the concept you have. Any other question? Because I not going to talk. Yeah.

[00:33:40] That's good. So serpmusic.com. Everybody check it out. We're really I'm really gonna blow this up because this can.

[00:33:47] This is probably the most unique concept in the two hundred and forty episodes I've done in Screw the Commute because nobody is talking about this. Nobody has your background going back to created. You probably have created hundreds or even thousands of jingles over the years.

[00:34:06] And I'll remind them again, because I forgot yesterday is the opening and closing music on this podcast. Mike created from scratch. Absolutely. Yes. So this is a great concept. Thanks, Mike, for bringing this to us. This is Mike Stewart week at the Screw the Commute.

[00:34:26] Beautiful. I'm going to call Konya and see if he wants to give me a freebie. And maybe Mariah Carey wants to do. I doubt it. Would take Adam any day. All right, man, thanks so much.

[00:34:41] Let's talk again, soon. Love you, brother.

[00:34:44] All right. Catch you later everybody.

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