#scott webb

“When in doubt, count!” 

My mentor Dale Pon didn’t get much public recognition for his smart, strategic and successful creative work in media promotion. I’m posting about a few projects I was lucky to work on with him.

Scott Webb sent along this advertising campaign Dale Pon created on the cusp of the 1979/80 era of WNBC Radio in New York City. Bob Pittman, Scott, and I recount our view of it below, and I’ll update as more come in from other colleagues. 

There have been countless lessons I learned from Dale Pon about promotion and marketing, but the one that has stuck with me most is...

“When in doubt, count!”

Sounds pretty boring and I thought Dale was a creative guy. Count, like “4 out of 5 dentists recommend Crest”? Really, that’s a good solution?

But Dale’s point of view was the numbers can always point you to a creative solution that can work if you use them as a jumping off point. Basically, as you’re trying to figure out a pitch, a unique selling proposition for a campaign, if you get stuck, look at the numbers. It’s an idea that so pervasive that our mutual co-worker Bob Pittman has even started a podcast on the principal called “Math & Magic.”

To me, this maxim was often how to do a lot with a little, but it didn’t become super clear to me how “counting” could lead to anything useful until I saw it in amazing action back at the beginning of our relationship in the late 1970s.

Fred Seibert:  In 1977, Dale Pon had hired me at WHN in New York City, moved me to Los Angeles and back again. He’d successfully and ____ promoted WHN into the 2nd most listened to country music station in American –remember this station was in New York, home to Frank Sinatra, not Johnny Cash– and I was his lackey,

In early 1979  Dale abandoned me. He went to a New York radio competitor, telling me that not only could I run the WHN promotion department –a job for which I had virtually no experience other than my short stint with him. (“Hey, you produced a jazz record that got a Grammy nomination, you can be good at this too.” Really?) He’d been whisked away by WNBC, a relative ratings laggard, home to Imus in the Morning, run by veteran Bob Sherman and upstart program director Bob Pittman. Sherman’s public goal? “Beat WABC!, which had been New York's #1 station for decades.”

“Oh, I need you to help me produce the TV campaign. If WHN finds out and fires you, I’ll bring you over.” 

Oh great.

Next thing I know Dale’s whipped out the latest New York Arbitron radio ratings books and hands one to me. “Go to every demographic page and circle WNBC. Let’s see what’s what.”

A half hour later I said, “You’re fucked. At best they’re #14 in the prime demos.”

“Here!” he points, “They’re #2!!” It was something like Adult men 35-49. 

I was confused. The group that advertisers wanted was Adults 18-49, maybe on a stretch Adults 25-49. What the hell?!

“We’ll note the demo in the mouse type at the bottom. No one will notice!”

No one will notice?!

Within an hour Dale had sketched out the pitch. A take off on a successful Avis Car Rental campaign.

“We’re #2, we want to be #1! WNBC Radio 66!” 

Before I knew it, Dale had WNBC putting out a call to it’s listeners to send in  Polaroids of any twins who listened for a potential casting in commercials.

Huh, twins? “We’re #2.” Twins. OK, he’s got a creative idea. 

Soon enough, he had me coming to an audio studio after work to moonlight the soundtracks for the campaigns. (WHN never caught on, and I stayed until I want to MTV Networks.)

“Twice as many winnas!*** Twice as many prizes!! Twice as many chances to win!!!” 

And you know? The damned thing worked like crazy. When in doubt, count. Indeed. 

***Remember, we were in New Yawk City. You know, that accent.

Bob Pittman: “...being bold; getting attention; and dominating the airwaves…” 

In addition to my time working with Dale Pon when he created ‘I Want My MTV’ for us in the very early days of MTV and when he helped me relaunch Six Flags Theme Parks, Dale was a lifelong friend and was my partner in building WNBC Radio in the late 70s.

We had completely rebuilt the programming and brought Don Imus back to WNBC from Cleveland, and Dale used the Imus return to help build the huge cume for the radio station and lead WNBC to its eventual position as number one.  WNBC went from an old, staid, second-rate New York radio station to the number one radio station through building the right  programming; Don Imus was the anchor and nighttime disc jockey Alan Beebe’s introduction of ‘WNNNNNBC’ gave the station its unique hooks. Dale took those  – and the rest is history.

Dale taught us all about having a clear and valued claim; being bold; getting attention; and dominating the airwaves with frequency.  Although he may not have won awards for his creativity, it worked time and time again and those of us who adopted his philosophies had that same kind of success in other businesses at other times.  But make no mistake about it – it was Dale’s influence that got us there.

Scott Webb: “...creativity was about problem solving and winning...” 

I got an internship working for Dale Pon two days a week at WNBC Radio during last 3 months of my senior year at Sarah Lawrence College. There were 3 other interns and mostly we made sure that content winners got their prizes and that all the promotions were administered properly. 

There were A LOT of contests and giveaways. 

I had never worked at a radio station before and I just assumed this level of promotion fervor was standard operating procedure. The station was based on the 2nd floor of 30 Rock and at the time it seemed glamorous. I was in line with David Letterman at the cafeteria and Saturday Night Life was rehearsing on the 8th floor and Tom Snyder was in the office down the hall. 

Dale’s office was the dead center of the office when you walked in the door. He ran the team like it was a barroom in the middle of a battlefield. He was loud and always barking out orders. It was stressful and fun. On the last day of our internship we were given T-Shirts that read “I survived Dale Pon”. I, for one, was afraid to put it on - for fear of what his reaction might be - but also because I didn’t want it to end. 

A few weeks later, after he abruptly fired one of his managers he hired me on the spot to join his battalion, er I mean, team. We went to work on the TV advertising campaign that would take WNBC from #2 to #1 in the NYC market. 

We put a call out for twins and cast dozens of twins to kiss Imus. Shooting that campaign was the first production I had ever been part of and it was fast and furious and Dale took me to almost every meeting and along the way from storyboarding with the cinematographer to instructing the animator to directing sound and even buying the air time. 

I didn’t know it but I was getting a master class in creative strategy that was all about winning. It was not just fun – it was a mission to transform what had been a shitty, demoralized loser of radio station to being totally made over into an unstoppable #1 radio station. 

When the dust settled WABC, formerly #1 gave up completely and changed their format from music to News and Talk. An outcome that blew me away at the time. I thought Dale would be happy at the utter defeat he delivered to his competitor but he hated that they never took the bait to respond to his challenge. He wanted a worthy adversary but he never got it. They ran. 

The Nickelodeon Music & Sound Box Set and CDs

The Nickelodeon Music & Sound Library 1996

In June 1984, Fred/Alan booked it’s first major job, the turnaround of Nickelodeon. MTV Networks boss, Bob Pittman, asked Fred and Alan to try and bring their perspective to helping the kids channel climb out of the ratings basement it in which it found itself. 

Aside from the strategic thinking we brought to programmers Gerry Laybourne and Debby Beece, we knew we needed some executional magic. And since we had a counter intuitive philosophy for a visual medium like television –that is, innovative visuals and programming should leap from the sound– we started a brainstorm as to what Nickelodeon should sound like. The amazing pictures would follow when the animators were inspired by the music.

We were fascinated with bringing back the jingle sounds of Top 40 radio. We finally got there in the early 90s on VH1, but at the Nickelodeon moment we were focused on a sound that in our little minds was a spin-off/adaptation of jingles. That is, the a cappella singing of Black Americans. We’d already experimented for The Playboy Channel and Showtime with our new friends Eugene Pitt and The Jive Five. We loved the results and realized Eugene’s group could be the perfect engine for Nickelodeon. (Most of the tracks on The Nick Nick Nick Collection below are the soundtracks of these aninmations.)

With little prompting, Fred will recall the moment that Alan improvised on the opening of The Marcels’ “Blue Moon“ ... “Ni Ni Ni Nick-el-o-de-oooonnn!” What kid could resist it?!

Alan went on to finish the now classic song with our colleague (and my former record company partner) Tom Pomposello and Eugene, and the rest is a small part of television history. (I can’t think of any other TV network that had such wonderful music [or any actual music] as its branding centerpiece.)

A decade later, Fred/Alan had closed, but Tom continued to produce  special work for Nickelodeon, Nick-at-Nite and other cable channels. And Nick’s super smart, super talented worldwide creative director, Scott Webb, commissioned song after sound after song, eventually there was enough that he thought it was time to collect it all for the then global Nickelodeons to use whenever they saw fit.

You can hear it all if you scroll to the bottom of this post, and right below here is the transcript of the essays by Tom and Scott included with the CD booklets included in the box set.

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When Geraldine Laybourne inherited the top position at Nickelodeon, the net­work had the unpopular reputation (with kids) of being the "good for you" channel. Parents thought the idea was great - but their kids wanted noth­ing to do with it. Her job was to tum Nickelodeon around and make it a place that really was for kids. For help she turned to one of the most media-savvy companies in the industry - the New York-based Fred/Alan, Inc. Partners Fred Seibert and Alan Goodman headed up a brain trust/consortium that specialized in creating network identities. Their track record was  impecca­ble, having helped launch the wildly  successful MTV (Music Television). At that time, I was a produc­er/creative director and composer associated with the company and the three of us immersed our­selves in our new Nickelodeon challenge.

Creating an identity for a network is almost like inventing a person. You have to decide what they'll look like, what they'll sound like and what they'll say. From the outset, we agreed to place equal emphasis on developing a visual style and an audio sensibility. Both qualities had to be appealing and unique to Nickelodeon.

Much of my work with Fred and Alan revolved around sound design ... and so began a series of great freewheeling conversations about what the sound basis of Nickelodeon would be. We started tossing around ideas and what kept coming up was doo wop music. The more we talked about it, the more sure we felt doo wop would be the ideal sound for a kids' network.

Doo wop developed as street-corner singing. It was a people's music. You didn't need expensive electronic studio equipment you just needed your vocal chords and a desire to make sound: a natural for kids. Anyone could sing along with those doo wop nonsense syllables. And the beauty of using "antique" doo wop harmonies as a signature for a kids' network was that, for kids in 1984, it was a brand new sound! Unlike what their big brothers or sisters were listening to on the radio, this music was just for them.

One of our friends, Marty Pekar, had recently start­ed a record label and was working on a revival of doo wop music. He was nuts about one of the groups he was recording: the Jive Five. We all remembered their hit records from our teen years - "My True Story" and "I'm a Happy Man" (the latter was perhaps the last doo wop record to make the charts, and was a hit in 1965 while the Beatles and the British invasion were in full swing). It wasn't long before I started working with the great gen­tleman of doo wop himself, the leader of the Jive Five, Eugene Pitt. 

Now, Eugene is one of the finest singers who ever emerged from the genre. He can sing baritone or falsetto, but he's as good a lead singer and doo wop balladeer as has ever been. Eugene truly is the unsung (pun intended) hero of the Nick sound and his contribution to Nickelodeon as a singer and lyri­cist can't be overstated. 

One of the best choices we made was to work with this real-life street corner rock 'n' roll group, rather than studio musicians or jingle singers. This was honest-rootsy-gritty-folksy-get-down-and-be-real a cappella singing. Kids intuitively know the difference between real and sanitized. And we committed ourselves to always be authentic in our communication to our audience.

The other coup was the decision to treat "Nickelodeon" as a sound rather than a word. (Who knows what a "nickelodeon" is anyway? To kids, it's just a funny-sounding word.) Entire songs were written in which "Nickelodeon" was the only word. Playing with the word "Nickelodeon" musi­cally turned it into the ultimate audio logo - as distinctive and infectious as a jingle, without any offensive sloganeering attached. Just pure, lively, good-time doo wop. 

Once our doo wop tracks were married with the also-celebrated animated IDs, the ftnishing touch was sound effects. The initial sound effect tone (this time no pun intended) was set by the wild English sound effects maestro, Tom Clack, of Manhattan's Clack Studios. Tom is a veteran of the BBC and has created sound effects for about a million radio com­mercials as well as for TV and film soundtracks and record albums.

It was in Tom's studio that we post-scored many of the 10-second tracks for the original animated Nick network identity spots. Though there aren't many of these tracks represented on these CDs, it was Tom's comic sensibility and wacky perspective that informed the whole evolution of the Nick sound. He knew just how and when to punctuate the tracks with a sonic A-bomb or a sublimely subtte splat. ("Sound effects are funny when they're in sequences of threes," he once told me. "Listen. It's 'boink-­thwap-plink:' If you just go 'boink-thwap,' it feels quite unsatisfying.") The "Doo Wop Meets Sound Effects" music style is mainly reflected on disc one of this collection [The Nick Nick Nick Collection]. Discs two [The Flotsam Collection, The Jetsam Collection] through four [The Original Collection] contain music inspired by those early tracks. 

I saw that a big part of our job was to develop an audio identity for a kids' network that really spoke to kids. Our solution was the marriage of doo wop and wacky sound effects. It was one distinctive, unique way we would communicate the "voice of Nickelodeon." 

Did it work?

I'll never forget the time I was walking down Tenth Avenue in Manhattan. It was the spring of 1985. On the street where these little girls jumping rope and keeping time singing "Nick-Nick-Nick:-Nick-N-Nick­Nick-Nick, Nickelodeon." I thought to myself: "Well, I always dreamed of producing a hit record, but lit­tle did I imagine it would be the theme to Nickelodeon!"

Tom Pomposello Music Director/Producer/Composer

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Tom Pomposello talks about successfully solving a problem using doo wop for Nickelodeon, but the real success was recognizing the power of sound. Sound is often over­looked in creating television and it is often more powerful than people think. For example, you can have your head buried in the refrigerator looking for a snack and miss what's on the screen, but you can't avoid the audio as easily. Sound and music also make a deep emotional impression, like the songs you learn as a kid and never forget.

It shoutd also be noted that it took guts for Gerry Laybourne and Debby Beece to approve the use of doo wop and wacky sound effects for the Nick sound. They originally wanted to go with something more traditional and expected. In any creative endeavor, it takes courage to take risks and be unconventional, but the rewards can be spectacular. 

Since the introduction of the Nick doo wop sound in 1984, many talented composers and musicians have built upon and diversified Nick's aural identity. We have always tried to stay away from mercilessly surfing the popular trends in kids' music. Instead, at the heart of our personality there has always been humor, surprise, play, and a love and respect for kids.

The music and sound on these CDs are powerful tools for communicating  Nickelodeon's personality. Consider sound as you go about solving your strategic and creative problems, whether you µse these CDs as tracks, elements or inspiration.

Have Fun!

Scott Webb Creative Director, Nickelodeon Fall 1995 

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Co-conceived by Scott Webb and Tom Pomposello  Executive producer, Creator Director: Scott Webb  Produced and Directed by Tom Pomposello 

MUSIC  Production coordination & management: Barbara Powers  Production assistance: Melody Ann Mora  Digitally remastered and processed for CD by Danny Cavacco, This Way Studios, NYC 

DESIGN  Art Director: Laura Hinzman  Designer: Masaka Moribayashi  Illustrator: Sarah Schwartz Project Manager: Wendy Larrabee Production Manager: Nancy Morelli  Mechanical Production: Kevin Gepford 

Pomposello, Inc. wishes to thank Eugene Pitt and the Jive Five, Fred Seibert and Alan Goodman, Tom Clack, Beldeen Fortunado, Marc Chamlin and Geraldine Laybourne  Nickelodeon wishes to thank Robert Farro, Tom Harbeck, Greg Harrell, Lisa Judson, Anne Kreamer, Kim Rosenblum and Dennis Shinners.  

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NOTICE TO NICKELODEON PRODUCER/PERSONNEL:  Use this music as much as you wish. And remember, each us requires you to file a music cue sheet or music usage report with MTV Networks, ASCAP & BMI title, timing, type of use, composer(s) & publisher(s). It’s a mandatory requirement of compliance. 

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©1996, Viacom International, Inc. All rights reserved.  For promotional use only. Not for sale. 

Fred Seibert

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The Nick Nick Nick Collection

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Fred Seibert

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The Flotsam Collection

Fred Seibert

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The Jetsam Collection