Chord analyzes how and why our modern media environment works on us and in us. For example, why do some video bloggers who talk about things of little importance to anyone attract millions of followers? Tony Schwartz explains, “People are more likely to choose programming on the basis of some personal function it serves, rather than for specific content. In many instances, it does not matter what a program is about.” (p. 51) As Sam Roberts of the New York Times writes, “Mr. Schwartz presciently anticipated camcorders and also cellphones, iPods and other [modern] electronic devices.” Insights from the book also help us understand current media phenomena such as viral media, social media, virtual reality, and mobile media.
Tony Schwartz’s work in advertising, audio documentaries, political communication, public service media and soundscapes of everyday life is voluminous and legendary. He worked on five presidential campaigns, dozens of senatorial and gubernatorial campaigns, and thousands of television and radio commercials for hundreds of major corporations as well as countless social causes, including public health, crime prevention, educational funding, civil rights, environmental conservation, police-community relations and nuclear disarmament. This output was complemented by more than a dozen commercial records, sound for Tony Award winning Broadway shows and Oscar-winning films, two books and hundreds of radio programs. The entirety of his collection of audio recordings and related works was acquired by the Library of Congress in 2007, shortly before his death. Transporting it there required three large trucks.
In order to understand the principles that underlie The Responsive Chord, it is helpful to know a few things about Tony Schwartz and his work. Early on, Schwartz was heavily influenced by posters and poster art. He worked as a graphic artist for the Navy during World War II, creating and studying posters that urged support of the war effort. After college, he worked for the famous French poster designer, Jean Carlu. Many of the TV commercials he discusses in the book have the characteristics of a poster: a strong visual image that evokes emotions to convey a simple message. Though the audio is often complex, in the end the commercial usually communicates only one thing, e.g., people who drink Coca-Cola have fun, or, when you flee a room that has caught fire, close the door.
Another of Tony’s qualities that helped define his work was his strong populist sensibility. As a Jewish child growing up in rural New York, he was frequently beaten up at school. He developed a great compassion for the underdog and, more generally, for ‘common folk.’ You can see evidence of this throughout his work. For instance, in his passionate work for social causes, frequently without pay; also in his rejection of slick productions in favor of lower-budget approaches that lacked pretense but hit hard; and in his custom of using ‘real’ sounds and real people. Though Tony Schwartz worked with some of the best announcers of the 20th century, such as Bob Landers and Bob Marcato, he did not like to use actors playing people. If, for example, a commercial called for a postman, he would find a real postman for the part. He reasoned that because announcers were only a product of the media—there were no ‘real’ announcers in everyday life—listeners would accept them for who they were. However, there were real postmen, teenagers, firemen, etc. in everyday life and, properly directed, they came across as more authentic than actors. This led to some interesting consequences. At one point, when a Coca-Cola commercial called for teenagers at a party, Tony decided to use the students of a class he taught at the Dalton School. The commercial that resulted, Coke Party, won several awards and ran nationally for many months. Because of the commercial’s success, the teens in the commercial earned the equivalent of a semester’s tuition at their very expensive school. Schwartz’s class was very popular after that.
Articles about Tony Schwartz often call out another of his personal traits: Tony’s agoraphobia, a fear of being far from home or in vast open spaces. While those accounts often exaggerate his condition—in reality, he left his house every day, owned a car and drove it around Manhattan, and once even took a cruise to the Caribbean—the phobia nonetheless helped shape his work. Since he did not like to travel far from his home, he relied heavily on media to stay in touch with others who were at a distance. He came to understand, at the most microscopic level, how we all rely on media to communicate and how he could use this understanding to communicate with anyone. Media education scholar John Culkin famously said, “I don’t know who discovered water but I know it wasn’t a fish.” We all live in a media space but few of us can see it. Tony Schwartz could see the media space we all live in and use it to powerful effect.
All intellectual work builds on the ideas of others and influences those who follow. The Responsive Chord was strongly influenced by Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan and his landmark book, Understanding Media. Others who influenced the work include John Culkin and anthropologist Edmund Carpenter. In turn, The Responsive Chord inspired legions of marketers and creative directors in advertising, and generations who followed in political and public service communication. Tony Schwartz also shaped an army of undergraduate and graduate students who studied with him and eventually used the book as an anchor for their careers. I am one of them.
I studied with Tony Schwartz in the late 1960s at Fordham University, where he taught with John Culkin, Ted Carpenter and Marshall McLuhan. At the end of a year of study, he offered me a job. I spent several memorable years working for him. That wealth of experience with Tony taught me a good deal about who he was and how he worked.
I first met Tony in his studio, a 10′×15′ room in the basement of a townhouse on 56th Street in Manhattan. Floor to ceiling shelves filled with reel-to-reel audio tapes lined three of its walls. Along the fourth wall he had installed his plywood work console, which was cut to hold his recorders and mixers. That low-key setting only magnified the experiences that followed. The equipment in his studio was the best in the world: KLH-1 speakers, Sennheiser microphones, Ampex and Nagra recorders—all modified by the brilliant sound engineer, Fons Iannelli, to far exceed the specs for the equipment. The sound quality created in that room was better than anything I have heard before or since. Except for special moments, it was not loud, but always had an incredible presence, so that the room itself became like a set of headphones.
Into this magical setting came the moguls of Madison Avenue, powerful politicians, media executives, scholars from many fields, and Tony’s students. Many of the moguls—picture the characters of the TV series Mad Men—felt that they were ‘discovering’ Tony and commissioned work that would win awards for them and advance their careers. However, they did not always know what to expect. Having enjoyed a three-martini lunch at the 21 Club the day before, they would go to visit Tony, who would offer them a hero sandwich and soft drink from Rocco’s sandwich shop around the corner. They probably assumed that when Tony ‘made it’ he would take over a big suite on Madison Avenue. Not a chance. When Tony acquired a bit more money, he bought the Pentecostal church next door and moved his studio into its first floor.
Though some of the people coming to Tony’s studio were seeking a gun-for-hire who would sell products and make them even more powerful, most were fans of Tony and colleagues who wanted to see what he was up to and share ideas. Again and again over a period of years, people like Chet Huntley from NBC News, Art Pearson from Bristol Myers, Bill Moyers from PBS, Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, astronomer Carl Sagan, Herb Schmertz from Mobil Oil, documentary film-maker David Hoffman and psychiatrist and philosopher Harley Shands showed up to learn from and with Tony. The U.S. Information Agency regularly sent foreign dignitaries to meet Tony and take in his perspectives on media and society. For me, working with Tony and his various visitors was like a rolling graduate-level seminar with people who cared deeply about how media function in our lives.
Tony Schwartz was a meticulous observer of the social media of his day. There were no Facebook or Twitter but he observed and recorded how people used the telephone—the way we now use Facebook or Twitter—to convey their own feelings and ‘retweet’ gossip, funny stories and emotions. He understood the fundamental structure of these social exchanges and used this understanding to create social communications. For example, in one powerfully artistic audio piece, he mixed an actual recording of a telephone conversation between a runaway
