Marketers can hide information in pretty unusual places.  This post covers just one example of a hidden message you didn't know you knew.

Sometimes marketers can be sneaky.  They can get you to communicate something unwittingly about their product just by having you hum a tune. 

How is this possible? 

Consider the NBC musical tag - those three notes that rarely have any words to them - and if there's any obvious language at all it's usually just a group of people singing "N... B... C..." in time with the notes being hit.  (If you can't remember what the notes are just turn on The Today Show during the opening credits and you'll hear a grand orchestral piece arranged around them.  You can read a surprisingly interesting history of those notes here.  Also worth a visit?  The online museum of the actual instruments used to play the notes in the "old days."

Still can't remember the tune?  You can download the original sound recording from the US Patent and Trade Office and listen for yourself. It was the very first audible trademark granted. 

Most interesting to me about these notes is that they contain an Easter Egg of sorts.  If you go to your piano and play the tune (assuming you can actually play the piano... and own one... of course) you'll see that the notes are G-E and C. 

What's important about that?  Well, who owns NBC? 

Their full name?  "General Electric Company."

(A.K.A. Diiiing Diiiing Diiing.)

In summary - Just by humming a few notes you've made a connection between the brand that is actively getting your attention and the one that owns them.  And you had no idea...

Works great until you try it with a name that starts with letters beyond G.  (Pretty sure that an "S"- for Stokefire - is impossible on a piano - though maybe a lightly closed high-hat - second definition - would work.)

Are there any other musical (or other) Easter Eggs out there that you know about?