Episode #100: Our Spectacular 100th Episode Celebration Bash
We’re 100! In podcast episode years, anyway. Who would have guessed we’d be able to come up with a hundred customer experience topics? But we did it. Every. Single. Weekday. And, don’t worry, we’re just getting started. There’s so much more customer experience on the horizon. But to commemorate this centennial milestone, we pause to look at a few iconic brands which are also celebrating their 100th this year.
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PODCAST TRANSCRIPT
Thank you, Jimmy. All right. It’s the CXM Experience. We love experience so much it’s in our name twice. For those of you who are the well observant, it’s the Customer Experience Management… Experience. Yep, that’s right. There are four words. Two of them are “experience.” 50% of the title of this show is all about experience.
I am Grad Conn. I am the chief experience… there it is again, chief experience officer at Sprinklr, the world’s most comprehensive unified front office and CXM platform. Kind of a crazy show today. This is going to be a little shorter, a little bit more celebratory. If you’ve got something bubbly, or something, I don’t know, celebratory or alcoholic or… it doesn’t have to be alcoholic. Could be non-alcoholic, could be like a kombucha, could be something interesting. But why don’t you crack it open.? Because you know what? This is our 100th show.
Isn’t that something? 100 shows. Yeah, 100 shows. Isn’t that something? Amazing. If you had told me a few months ago, Hey, Grad, I need you to crank out 100 podcasts. I’d be like, That’s crazy. Where would I ever come up with 100 things to talk about. And sure enough, we have easily come up with 100. And we’ve got many, many hundreds more, which is what I’ve learned. That’s super exciting. I’m sure I will look back on this show one day and say Huh, 100. Yeah we were still babies. Still learning.
But I want to talk a little bit about the number 100. What else is turning 100 in 2021? What else is celebrating 100? The first thing that sprang to mind was Betty White. Would Betty White be also celebrating 100? Sadly, just 99. So, Betty… boom. I got you beat. I’m at 100, you’re only at 99. You got to catch up, lady. Come on. She actually turned 99 in January and congratulations to Betty, a national treasure for sure.
What has turned 100? Well, a couple of things actually. Kind of cool. You may or may not know this, but if you’re familiar with the brand Cheez-It, that is turning 100 years old in 2021. Cheez-It, they’re all sorts of different cheesy snacks. It’s a cheesy salty snack. And these little one-inch size squares became particularly popular in 1929 when the stock market crashed as people rushed to local stores to stock up on Cheese-It. The Cheese-It was part of the stock market panic, which is kind of cool.
Another great icon, and ironically, we have a loaf of this in the house right this very second, which is Wonder bread. Probably the best-known sliced bread brand. It launched on May 21, 1921. And it was named after Elmer Cline’s love of hot air balloons after he watched them in action during an international balloon race. So those circles on the Wonder bread are meant to be balloons. Isn’t that cool? I do love those founder journeys that these brands talk about. It’s very cool.
Who else is turning 100? Well, have you ever heard of someone named Betty Crocker? Yeah. Betty Crocker is actually a fictionalized character. She was created in 1921 to personalize responses to customer inquiries. It’s kind of cool. Betty Crocker was essentially a way that the Gold Medal flour company tried to create a better experience for people who were asking questions. She also offered customers jigsaw puzzles, and answered thousands and thousands of questions about baking, and still does today. Very cool. Betty Crocker, a fictional character.
All right, what else is turning 100? Have you ever heard of an Eskimo Pie? The delicious vanilla ice cream bar covered in chocolate was invented by someone named Joseph Edy in 1921. And he named it the Eskimo Pie. Of course, Eskimo is no longer a word we can use. We’ll just leave that there. And they changed the name of Eskimo Pies to Edy’s Pies in 2020. So that’s kind of cool. I mean, Edy invented it, Edy gets the credit for it. That’s turned 100 years old as well.
Okay, a cool story in this next one. Not this year, but last year… this would be Valentine’s Day, 2020, I took my girlfriend Rachel, who you sometimes hear about, on a really spectacular Valentine’s Day evening. And we’re very, very deeply in love. And we were on one of these weird, crazy love-at-first-sight kind of romances. I never believed in love at first sight. I always love at first sight was ridiculous. I thought movies like Sleepless in Seattle, and movies like that… I didn’t get them. I didn’t understand them. It didn’t make any sense to me. It had no relationship to my life and my experiences. And then I met Rachel. She actually walked into the 21 Club. That’s where we were meeting to go on an evening to watch the West Wing and meet Aaron Sorkin, which is pretty cool, at the Paley center. But she walked in and sat down. And I was already a goner. Like, that was it. I was finished, and spent the rest of my night thinking about her. And then off we went from there.
Anyway, so on our fabulous Valentine’s Day in 2020, we went back to the MoMA where we went after we saw Aaron Sorkin, and then we went to a really great restaurant called Agern, which is in Grand Central Terminal. Kind of a Scandinavian cuisine. Very cool. And then we went to the Beekman Hotel. And then at two o’clock in the morning, or maybe one o’clock in the morning, got back in our stretch limo and went to this iconic brand, which is White Castle. Which has had a special Valentine’s Day. And we loaded up on White Castle and then gorged ourselves on that when we got back home until two or three o’clock in the morning. So, the iconic hamburger fast food chain White Castle was actually founded in Wichita, Kansas. It is the oldest hamburger chain in operation, and it is also 100 years old.
Okay, let’s keep going. Let’s stay in the romance area. Chanel N°5 is 100 years old. It was launched by the French brand in 1921. It was created as a collaboration between Coco Chanel and perfumer, Ernest Beaux. And though it’s not invented in the United States, it has become a timeless fragrance, particularly after Marilyn Monroe famously stated that she wore nothing too bed, but five drops of Chanel N°5. Oh my god, that’s so hot.
Alright, Wheaties is turning 100. The breakfast of champions, with the iconic pictures of well-known athletes on its boxes, that’s 100 years old. Very, very cool. Wise potato chips. Who doesn’t love Wise potato chips? Earl Wise, Sr. was a grocery store worker with too many potatoes. And instead of throwing out the crop, he decided to make handmade chips, which he sold in brown paper bags in his store. And of course, the rest is history.
And that is my list of people turning 100. As well as, of course, yours truly, the CXM Experience. And for the CXM Experience, I’m Grad Conn. And I’ll tell you, even though I’m 100 I feel as young as ever. I don’t feel a day over 20. And I’ll see you… next time.