Jack O’Brien interviews Made Music Studio president Lauren McGuire about the prevalence of sonic branding in healthcare and what goes into scoring sound bites for brands. And the premiere of Netflix’s six-part miniseries Painkiller, about Purdue Pharma’s role in the opioid epidemic, headlines our social media segment, along with items about a Connecticut doctor’s hostage ordeal and masking’s quasi return. Music by Sixème Son.
Note: The MM+M Podcast uses speech-recognition software to generate transcripts, which may contain errors. Please use the transcript as a tool but check the corresponding audio before quoting the podcast.
Hey, it’s Marc
You know those melodic snippets that we often find ourselves humming while puttering around the house or taking a walk?
Take the Home Depot theme song, for instance, which has been co-opted by scores of social media influencers for home renovation project videos, even if they feature a Lowes paint bucket.
In a nutshell, sonic branding is sound which advertisers employ as a critical touchpoint for their brand.
It’s an area of marketing that not a lot of people think about. Yet there’s a certain irony there because the sound of an ad is often what hits us first…and perhaps sticks the most.
Think Intel’s famous ‘Intel inside’ bong or the chime from NBC. In our house, the 4-note Monday Night Football theme stirs some deep male longing for fall.
Indeed, the best instances of sonic branding convey an emotional tonality of the brand thru music.
This week on the podcast, digital editor Jack O’Brien interviews Lauren McGuire, pres of Made Music Studio, about what goes into creating these 3-second soundbytes for healthcare brands, how the new audio-forward platforms have changed the game, and where she sees room for improvement in using sound for brand bldg.
Lecia’s taking a well-deserved week off. Jack, what’s new on the healthcare social media front this week?
This week, we’ll be discussing a major movie studio bringing back mask mandates for in-office workers, a Connecticut doctor alleges he was abducted after a night out at the Brooklyn Mirage and his armed captor made him spend $6,000 on a shopping spree and a review of Netflix’s Painkiller series.
Hello,
and welcome to the mmm podcast. My name is Jack O’Brien. I’m the digital editor at mmm. I’m pleased to be joined today by Lauren Maguire president of made music studio. Lauren, how are you doing today?
Good, thank you, Jack. Thanks for having me.
I really appreciate you being on the show. You’re kind of different. I would say, maybe from some of the other podcasts guests that we’ve had in terms of, you know,
We had are working for a Pharma company, you have a different role in the, you know, kind of marketing ecosystem and I kind of wanted to start the interview there. If you give us a quick background on your organization what you do and then we can get some more specific questions from there.
Yeah, absolutely. It’s actually going back to my roots to be here with you jack because actually came from Healthcare marketing. So I started in direct to professional advertising and then moved to the consumer side and did some B2B pharmaceutical advertising and at some point in that journey I was in healthcare and form of about 13 years. And then I made a hard right hand turn to made music studio, which is a global Sonic branding Studio that was about 12 years ago. And at the time made music was really focused on entertainment. So we like to say that we’re born from entertainment. When you hear the Super Bowl on NBC, that’s our work. The NBN ESPN. That’s our work. Anything from Anthony Bourdain or ESPN 3430,
But about 12 years ago, we started working in this Sonic branding space and I came with this Healthcare background, so bringing those two things together is. One of the things that I really love,
I can talk to your ear off about your involvement with, you know, some of these sports franchises that obviously I have a near and dear connection to but we’re going to focus on the healthcare marketing aspect. And for those in our audience, who may be unaware, when you talk about Sonic branding or sonic identity, what is that? Exactly? You give us a little high level overview.
Absolutely. So the way that we generally talk about it and this is what helps get your brain thinking about those Sonic branding, and all of its forms. So think about the short form Intel Inside bong, that we’re all so familiar with or the chime from NBC. That’s Sonic branding when you think about the underscore for any Home Depot commercial in combination with that very specific voiceover. That’s Sonic branding. When you think about calling into a company’s call center, that’s usually bad.
Sonic branding and something that people really haven’t thought enough about, but pretty much anywhere that sounded music plays a role in a critical touch point for your brand, we consider Sonic branding, most companies, including Healthcare companies come to us for that short form, Sonic logo, but there’s more to go that goes into it than just that little three-second sound.
Thank you. Can you tell us about what goes into that? Because I know I was talking with my producer offline about this you know it’s not just oh this we think this would sound good in the ad. Let’s put it in there, there’s a science and strategy that goes into it.
Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, this is what I think that the marriage of sort of my health care background in that biology background, what was really, what drove me to Sonic branding, to be honest? Because our brain acts really differently with sound than it does with any other input. First of all, it’s your fastest sense. So when you think about an initial brand impression, any marketing that you do, the sound is going to hit us first, yet, we generally consider it last.
When we think about the sound of a brand overall, that’s generally where we start, for example, for the Alzheimer’s Association. They have to be so many things. They have to be a patient advocate. They have to be going to Capitol Hill and lobbying for the things that matter. They have to be working with scientific organizations and saying, this is why we do deserve your dollars.
That’s so many things that a brand needs to be. So with most companies, we start with a long-form theme, you can consider it sort of your visual identity. Your visual identity is a gesture, your logo. There’s usually colors. There’s usually fonts, there’s usually a full palette from which to go, that’s how we use themes. And that’s really writing the full journey of a brand in a way that all stakeholders can hear their cells. At some portion of that Journey here themselves in that journey. And that’s generally the first piece that we create from there. We can get to a Sonic logo, we can get to a library of music. We can get to underscores and cut downs and CEO, walk, ons that make it feel like whether you’re an employee, a stakeholder or a customer. You start to have the emotional tonality of this brand through music.
I’m curious, you talked about obviously, the company starting with an entertainment Focus than being able to Pivot into Healthcare what are say the difference is between, if you were working on consumer brand or an entertainment brand as suppose to a healthcare branded terms of, you know how they want to communicate their message, you gave the example the Alzheimer’s Association, but are there in general, you know, Concepts that go into Healthcare?
There are and I think you know, every every Healthcare client has been different. Just like every brand is different. Almost every Healthcare client is different but there are a little bit of themes that we see in for a lot of our Healthcare clients. So for example, some of them have a really wide array of products that they want to be thinking about an example of this is Abbott, for example, who came to us and said, like we’d really like a Sonic logo because we have so many products out there.
And nobody knows that they’re from at it. When you think about their diabetes technology to ensure, or PediaSure, all of these different ways that they show up, but those products are very different. So for that brand, it was like, we’re going to need a Sonic identity, but it’s going to need to be a little bit expressive. We’re going to have one version that’s heavy into science. It feels very sciency and one that’s into caring and really underlines the care that we bring to these products because we’ve got such a range of products, generally that those sort of nuances, it was what goes into Healthcare. When you think about most healthcare companies want to be perceived as both technologically forward, and very human forward and caring forward. And that’s tricky to achieve and sound in music. So, either getting to one sound that says, both or more frequently, getting to versions and variations where it’s familiar. The Casual listener, may not even know that they’re different, but they do have a slightly different tonality and emotional. Takeaway to them.
I’m glad you brought up that point about that balancing act because I talk to, you know, marketing and Healthcare leaders, all the time. They talk about the difficulty being like, you know, we have all the scientific research that goes into what we do. But we also want to see, human not robotics to the people that were obviously appealing to on that level. When you look at the landscape out there, as it relates to sound, what do you think? It’s maybe the most misunderstood aspect as it relates to marketing is, there are people that just don’t get it or don’t get the full scope of what you’re talking about.
When it comes to that, you know, I we’ve been doing this for 12 years now and in the beginning you had to explain so much about Sonic branding. I spent so much time, just talking about what it is and giving examples and it’s actually moved really far. I think, is our mediums have gotten more differentiated. So if we’re thinking about digital videos, we’re thinking about radio, we’re thinking about all of these different touch points and some of them are really audio forward. Sonic branding that understanding has has become a lot, a lot more prevalent.
What is interesting is talking about how it’s not that simple. So I know that like if you’re just like, give me the two seconds at the end of an ad, we get that a lot.
In large organizations of which most healthcare companies are, it is it can be a really long process to try and get two seconds of sound approved as the brand sound. So really thinking more holistically about this. In terms of, let’s get to a long-form piece, we will actually get to outcomes faster if you think about your brand through Sound and Music and long form, and then get to that Sonic logo. And I think that that’s the other thing that people don’t really understand is how Going through the exercise of thinking about your brand, through Sound and Music.
Can really be like a team building activity or even something that changes, how you think about your brand or get you to more pointed language about your brand. And this happens to us over and over, because you’re used to sitting in your room with a marketing team and talking about language and words and attributes and even visuals. But when you think about Sound and Music, it didn’t another part of your brain, that’s doing the thinking. So how having a a brand and marketing conversation through sound, really brings up a lot of different like feelings. We people have more nuanced conversations about their brand that can actually move forward. A lot of aspects of branding just from thinking through this lens and the work that gets done to get to us on a logo. Doesn’t just grade that Sonic logo. It affects underscores. You know how direction for the sound of a brand, you know, how direction for the voice of your brand? It can really cut down on some of these things that a lot of Brands find challenging because without a Merger guidelines Music and Sound can be very, very subjective.
I’m really curious too because you talk about it launching about, you know, over a decade ago and obviously the media consumption landscape was so different back then. I mean streaming was technically a thing but Netflix certainly wasn’t what it is. Now, same thing with Spotify, you name it in addition to all the other things that proliferated a proliferated that Disney pluses of the world, tiktok certainly wasn’t the thing. How has that changed in terms of your business operations and all the clients that you’re catering to in terms of their expectations?
Yeah, I would say, it’s all about scope and scale. So, when we started in this business, people are like, broadcast, advertising broadcast, advertising broadcast advertising. And I really only heard from clients who had the budgets to be doing broadcast advertising. Now, B2B companies company to have a lot of employees and are thinking about how they can be messaging to them better or building, a better sense of company and brand to employees really galvanizing. A group of people, they’re thinking about Sonic branding,
A streaming audio and tiktok have been revolutionary for us like just to cut to it. Because when you think about how quickly, for example, you see a tiktok and a brand has the minute to make an impression and their business with influencers. There’s only so much that you can control as a brand and if you can control that music and get those attribution and recall points through music, you are making really big strides on that platform. If you think about, I mentioned Home Depot earlier, when I go on tiktok, I happen to get a lot of Home Improvement tiktoks, most influencers will pick up the Home. Depot theme, and put it in the background of them doing their home, renovations even when they’re using a Lowe’s paint bucket.
That’s all brand impression. You know what I mean? That Home Depot is not paying for but they invested through their sonic identity. These audio forward platforms. Have really changed the game. So that’s been really critical. And then streaming audio and podcasts are really significant. You have a lot of these companies who are like, we have, made our money through podcasts advertising. So even when you’re doing host reads, what are the Sonic cues that can go fit in really organically with those host trees that help get you recognized, and connect your products from one podcast to another podcast, in a way that consumers will start to hear.
It’s so funny to hear, you talk about the Home Depot thing, because I see that to your point and videos that are highlighting Home Improvement projects. But even just ones where it’s like, say a dad getting his family to the airport hours beforehand. And you hear that little distant and you immediately think like, wow, that has nothing to do with Home Depot, but somehow they have slide themselves into a video that has thousands if not millions of views and that still has that ripple effect. Even if I’m not immediately going to be a consumer, it’s something that thinking about.
Yeah. It’s it’s Sneaky branding and this works in healthcare. I mean, for there was times that I’ve heard multiple times the Ozark song being sung on the street by strangers.
These things that really get stuck in your head in a different way. But when else are you going to get a product like that being talked about by strangers in the street or referenced? And it’s it’s music and sound that really does that.
And it’s interesting here, you bring that up too because I remember when I first heard that I was like, oh I know I’ve heard that song a million times, the original version but I’ve never once they put I was epic to it. I was like, oh, that was just somebody just came up with that and it was so brilliant, but then it sticks in your head. I can barely go back to the. Oh, oh, it’s magic. Because I’m immediately thinking like, oh, oh, it was epic just the way that I’ve heard it, so frequently.
Yeah, shout out to called Health who I think was the agency behind that but that that thing was, I had people reference that to me all the time.
And I’m sure it doesn’t get old now now and you know, it helps build business but I think these are the things that really when you think when you’re trying to think differently about breakthrough, sound can really play a role in that?
I have to ask you, we’ve talked a lot about obviously the successes as it relates to being able to, you know, use sound to your advantage in terms of brand building and awareness of consumers is there anywhere where you see room for improvement or maybe where we’ve hit the tip of the iceberg. We have a really explored that yet.
So the number one way that we see companies and not be successful in Sonic branding is that it’s hard to get started in proliferate. You have to be really, really dedicated to it. So I see a lot of brands do kind of fall starts and stops where they get something they get to are once maybe twice. Or I see it in a couple digital ads and then it never becomes a reality. I can tell you, that is a number one Focus for us. If people are going to do this, it has to get to Air and then you have to continue to use it. It takes some time for something to something, like, Sound and Music has an impact after 12 to 18 months.
So I think that that’s, that is something I see very frequently and something that we’re really trying to help people overcome as they think about the value of Sonic branding and I would say the other thing that we have just hit the tip of the iceberg. In my opinion, is streaming audio, I hear a lot of not great radio ads and streaming audio ads. I know that when I was in advertising radio and audio was the last thing to happen, and you try to convert a television commercial into an audio commercial. I feel like it’s only been over the last two years or so that I hear, I mean it’s a huge platform. So many people are listening whether it’s terrestrial or streaming audio.
Creating audio ads designed for audio. I think is going to continue to become more and more prevalent in our industry. And I’m starting to hear it. I hear really great ads for PNG, for example and they’re a lead and you know, research and understanding. So they’re thinking about their audio ads through the lens of Audio Only. I think everybody should be considering that differently.
Awesome. Well Lauren I really appreciate you being on here to share these best practices and obviously where the industry is succeeding and maybe has room for improvement. I want to end the interview with kind of an out-of-the-box question but it’s just something that came to mind. When we confirm this interview? What’s your favorite sound or do you have a preferred sound?
Oh, okay. So this I’ve been maybe it’s just my own experience. We had this thing called the song. When we started doing research we wanted to test sound subconsciously because sound usually like I don’t want anyone to see an ad and say like that was a great Sonic logo. We want to say I love that brand or I really want to figure out what that product is so we test subconsciously and when we started to do this, we tested natural sounds.
The top tested sound that we’ve never been able to beat or work on HBO is closed but we’ve never been able to beat. It is the sound of it’s a very it’s a specific baby laughter.
And we’ve never been able to top it and I got to tell you that like my daughter’s when she laughs a lot. And as soon as she was born, I heard like her distinct laugh. I was like, this is it for me like this is probably this is the sound that is going to get me every time. So I would say that’s like without a doubt, my favorite sound and there’s some science behind that too.
That’s so interesting. It’s actually like you said there is that science backing it up. So yeah, the least favorite sound is a pain scream which also makes sense.
Okay, I was gonna win perspective.
I would figure it would either be that or Nails on a chalkboard. So number two.
Okay. So yeah. They’re all the bottom of the list there.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, Lauren again, really appreciate your insights and being on the show and certainly, as I watch TV or listen, anything going forward, I’m going to be revisiting this conversation, so really appreciate you being on.
Awesome, thank you, Jack. Thanks for having me.
And this is the part of the broadcast when we welcome Jack O’Brien to tell us what’s trending on healthcare social media.
COVID-19, while no longer the national emergency that disrupted life in a litany of ways for about three years, is still very much a thing.
A slight summer wave thanks largely to the Eris subvariant has led to an uptick in cases nationwide, particularly in metropolitan areas like New York and Los Angeles.
To that end, the film studio Lionsgate has brought back a mask mandate for nearly half of the company’s employees at its flagship office at 2700 Colorado Ave. in Santa Monica.
Deadline reported that a Lionsgate executive announced the return of the masks in an internal email this week.
“Employees must wear a medical grade face covering (surgical mask, KN95 or N95) when indoors except when alone in an office with the door closed, actively eating, actively drinking at their desk or workstation, or if they are the only individual present in a large open workspace,” the executive wrote said in an email.
The outlet reported that all Lionsgate employees are required to perform a daily self-screening prior to coming to the office and must notify company leadership and stay home if exhibiting any symptoms or have traveled internationally in the past 10 days. Lionsgate also is conducting contact tracing and providing at-home COVID test kits upon request.
So mark this kind of feels like a one step forward, two steps back situation, obviously, a good portion of the population is vaccinated, the emergency phase of the covid pandemic is over. But, you know, we’re seeing an uptick in cases, I’m unfortunately recording this remotely and not in the studio with you because of a close contact that I have with a covid case. So it seems like one of those things where it’s not as bad as it was two years ago, it wasn’t as dire but we’re still living in this kind of, you know, to pardon the cliche, New Normal.
Yeah, right, I know you’re hungry down there for good reason and hope Alexandra’s feeling better, but you know, none of us are happy to hear that. This new variant is triggering these masks mandates. Again, this Harris variant as you mentioned is a sort of a relative of Omicron. And while it’s circulating it sounds like the CDC is sort of recommending that people in high-risk groups, wear the masks or caregivers and specifically a 95 which are now readily available, which they aren’t of the earlier on in the early days of the pandemic and we see some corporations like this one, which are pretty aggressive in the public safety area doing that as well, you know, just to remind her like you say that this covid virus is endemic now, it’s probably what they, you know, Public Health experts, excuse me of, it’s just going to be kind of like every time this this time of year we’re probably going to see an uptick as people come back from their summer vacations. You know after they’ve gathered and it’s going to become just as common as the flu and other virus viruses.
So yeah it’s interesting to hear you talk about the timing of it. Obviously we’ve heard a lot of Public Health experts pointing to the fall where there’s going to be a potential rise in RSV cases, the flu covid that kind of tripledemic that they’ve warned about but then there’s all. So the dynamic where companies and Specialty large corporations are trying to get their workers to go back into the office and trying to get that return to the office protocol back in place. Don’t necessarily know that this helps the cause by any stretch, but as you noted, it’s all. So less than we’ve seen in past years. I think the CDC had said that this Spike was the smallest that we’ve seen. Since the pandemic began back in 2020. We’ve obviously seen these summer spikes with Delta and the like, but now it’ll be interesting to see how much this really affects everything. And obviously we have the role out the expected, rollout should say.
Of some of these updated covid-19 booster shots in the fall that seemingly from the data are effective against the subvariant. Again, it remains to be seen whether or not how quickly those will get rolled out and how many people are actually going to take those booster shots. I know the lagging uptick their uptake. There has been a concern for public health officials.
Yeah, and we saw some of the health care stocks, like Nova vac Spike, because of their coverage of this variant, but that’s another story.
This next story is a wild one but is also under dispute, so keep that in mind.
Michael Bautista, a 32-year-old doctor from Norwalk, Connecticut, claims he was kidnapped outside of a troubled Brooklyn nightclub and forced to spend more than $6,000 by his captor.
On July 22, Bautista attended a show at Brooklyn Mirage, a concert venue that has been linked to two deadly disappearances in recent months, with two 27-year-old New York men recently discovered floating in nearby Newtown Creek.
Bautista alleges that he was subsequently taken hostage by a Bronx man going by the name “Tony G’s,” who was possibly armed and threatened to shoot him if he “tried anything funny,” according to the New York Post.
The doctor claimed Tony G’s, also known as Anthony Benjamin, forced him to spend thousands that night on pizza, smoothies, a strip club visit, a Foot Locker trip and a stop at the barbershop.
It was only after Bautista convinced Benjamin and a friend to drive him back to Norwalk Hospital, claiming that he was on call that weekend, that the ordeal ended. Local police arrested Benjamin and the other man while they were still in the facility parking lot, the incident report said.
Despite a request by the bail commissioner to have Benjamin’s bail set at $250,000, the judge allowed him to be released without bail, but ordered him to not have contact with the victim.
It’s important to note that a prosecutor said police did not have “any other independent corroboration” to confirm what Bautista claimed, court records show. The Norwalk Hour also pointed out that Norwalk police are working with the New York Police Department to investigate the doctor’s allegations.
Nuvance Health, which owns Norwalk Hospital, declined to comment to The Hour, noting that police are still investigating the incident.
Again, not something that I think we would typically talk about on the show, but there is a healthcare angle. And unfortunately, there’s been a number of, you know, disturbing instances over at Brooklyn Mirage. If anything, I would hope that our listeners, keep that in mind when they decide to go out for a night on the town that there are some dangerous spots. And there are people that are, maybe not always acting in your best interest when you interact with them. Yeah.
He’s like a script from the movie Goodfellas or something, doesn’t it?
It’s crazy, isn’t it?
Yeah, just an odd story. You know, I guess it’s kind of a local one that was written up in this
Connecticut news site. But yeah, as you say just happens to have a medical angle and a good. Reminder. If you see something, say something,
Two years after Hulu’s Dopesick examined the devastating effects of the ongoing opioid epidemic in America, Netflix is taking a stab at it.
Painkiller, a six-part miniseries, premiered on Netflix last week, focusing on Purdue Pharma’s role in the multi-decade opioid epidemic. It stars Matthew Broderick as Richard Sackler, the company’s former president and chairman.
The series follows several plotlines, including the inception of OxyContin, Purdue Pharma’s aggressive marketing of the opioid to consumers and healthcare professionals (HCP) in the 1990s, the impact of addiction on families, efforts by law enforcement to stem the tide of the epidemic and the drugmaker’s efforts to avoid publicly taking responsibility for fueling the crisis.
The series is based on the book Pain Killer: An Empire of Deceit and the Origin of America’s Opioid Epidemic by Barry Meier as well as The New Yorker article “The Family That Built the Empire of Pain” by Patrick Radden Keefe.
Since its premiere, Painkiller has received middling reviews from critics and audiences, according to Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic. Variety called it a “melodramatic and convoluted assessment of the opioid crisis,” while other outlets have referred to Dopesick as the better series.
Still, it has been one of Netflix’s top shows for August and prompted a renewed focus on the causes of the opioid crisis and its damaging effects on families across the country.
Notably, at the start of each episode of Painkiller, a parent who has lost their child to the opioid epidemic reads a disclaimer that while some elements have been fictionalized, their own pain is real.
“This program is based on real events, however certain characters, names, incidents, locations and dialogue has been fictionalized for dramatic purposes,” the parents read.
The general public, which often has a love-hate relationship with pharma, has remained intrigued in recent years by stories focusing on industry malfeasance and greed.
In a scene early on in the series, a fictionalized federal investigator played by Uzo Aduba says the “big money in healthcare is in sales, marketing and lies.”
Public interest in healthcare’s bad actors remains high whether it applies to shows centering on Purdue Pharma and the Sacklers, the rise and fall of Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes, or documenting the legal tribulations of ‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli.
While some of the content in these shows and movies can be sensationalized and take artistic liberties, it ultimately draws public attention to a crisis going on three decades in America that can at times feel hopeless.
And Mark, I want to throw. You’ve been covering the industry for years and years and you’ve seen, you know, the various waves and manifestations of the opioid epidemic. It is interesting to see that we have yet another series or another piece of media out there kind of diving into specifically Purdue’s role. But obviously how the opioid epidemic has changed the way that we view Health Care in America.
And, you know, looking at some of the social media chatter about the series, like you said, some people say dope. Sick is the better one, but when be surprised, he was a Dubai, you know, nominated and possibly winning an Emmy for her performance. Apparently, it was a pretty she did. Pretty phenomenal job.
I will say she was the strongest part of it. I think that there were plenty things that lacked. But she was by far the the heart and soul of the show.
Yeah. But you know in terms of the larger point, you know in terms of reigniting the controversy including a the misbranding of Oxycontin. And you know what, what can be said that hasn’t been said already about, you know, the the fact that it’s obviously a cautionary tale about exaggerating the efficacy of any you know drug related product overstating, its efficacy without mentioning the side effect information. In this case obviously, the highly addictive nature of the product. Had a relatively that had a surgery, just like a routine general surgery. And as the family members giving updates, it was all about, you know, she doesn’t have to go on the oxy or she knows she’s coming off the oxy, you know, it’s like it’s in everybody’s Consciousness now, you know, after whether it’s been dope sick or series, you know, like this new series like this one or the, you know, the very public, you know, trials and tribulations of the Sackler family and and the other, you know, cautionary aspect of it is, is just the tragedy. Like you point out that the, you know, the opioid,
Tragedy is very sad, you know, chapter in our nation’s history that continues and it’s a it can at times feel hopeless, but hopefully the money coming from the settlement. We’ll go to the communities that need it, the most and will come out of this.
Yeah, I hope that, you know, for, I know our audience is obviously all too familiar with the opioid crisis, and the effects that it’s had on public health and everything. But I think for the Casual viewer, maybe the Layman out there. That’s not as familiar with the industry. Obviously, as we are and members of our audience, I hope that is eye-opening in that way because it really does delve into the aspects of addiction that maybe are still stigmatized or not fully understood and the money aspect that you talked about too. They really go into that towards the end. Where the farmer, I mean, Purdue farmer really looks at settling and saying, you know, we can basically pay off the problem, but there is a very dramatic scene involving a ghost of the Sackler family. Confronting Richard Sackler talking about, it’s not about money. At the end of the day, it’s about Legacy and perception. And how that
Settling with States or the federal government basically, you know, compromises their legacy in that light. So it’s interesting, it’s obviously not a perfect series. Again, dopest it got so many better reviews and as somebody that sat there over the course of one day and watched six episodes, didn’t come away entirely impressed but I would still recommend it for our audience and obviously a lot of people are watching it too. It’s still one of Netflix’s biggest shows this month and that’s stacked up against the likes of, you know, quarterback and all these other football programs they have there. So good on them for shining a light. And, you know, we’ll see, we’ll see what else comes down the pike.
Right? And I love your point about, you know, how, you know, Hollywood sees High entertainment value. In these healthcare related stories, like the sacklers Elizabeth Holmes of theranos, perhaps, you know, farmer Bros next up, you know, for his own original content, series on your favorite streaming Channel, but it brings it back to the public Consciousness to the extent that people in our industry are not familiar with it. It’s another way to get familiar with this and I’m just as surprised as anybody that
The family, you know, allowed seem to allow its you know Legacy to be tarnished in this way. You know, despite the very you know public chance they had to kind of you know apologize and redeem themselves and yet they chose not to do that a couple of years ago. And so anyway, it’s a very unfortunate chapter and in the history of this industry, but for people who, you know, want to a good primer on it, primer on it. This is probably good way to just do so, so thanks for bringing that up, Jack.
Yeah, if you’re stuck at home, quarantine like, I am, you can burn off, six hours, right there, watching it. So, let that be my recommendation to listeners.
There you go. Entertainment record from Jack.
Exactly.
That’s it for this week. The mmm podcast is produced by Bill Fitzpatrick, Gordon failure, lesbian Shack, and Jack O’Brien. Our theme music is by cesium sohn, rate review and follow every episode wherever you listen to podcasts new episodes out of your week, and be sure to check out our website and the top news stories and farmer marketing.
