Behind the Sound of Advertising: A Conversation with Ted “Theo” Rosnick - Part 1

Audio Branding

“We did one for Mercedes, which again was very unique and very simple. It was about this guy Raymond who had never tried ice cream before. And it was a great commercial, and it talked about Raymond never having ice cream, and he waited, and he would watch other people have ice cream, and then one day Raymond decided to have ice cream. And then all of a sudden it cuts to a Mercedes logo. And then the last ten seconds, it was for Mercedes, but it was so well done and so unique, and the score was very, very, very unique.” – Ted “Theo” Rosnick

This episode’s guest returned to Toronto from Boston in 1974 after attending Berklee College of Music. He soon began working as a studio drummer, but his passion for audio production quickly led him to start his own jingle production company, Rosnick Productions, in 1975. Through hard work and dedication, he quickly established himself as Canada’s top audio producer and audio director for commercials. He went on to partner with Steve McKinnon in 1990, forming RMW Music, and the company remained the top music production company in Canada for decades before being sold to Vapor Music in 2016. Since that sale, he’s remained with Vapor as a Creative Director, continuing to bring his expertise and passion to many projects and to the industry. His work is recognized not just in Canada but globally, having shaped the sound of major brands like IKEA, Molson, Subaru, Mercedes, Peroni, and Heinz, among many others. Over his five-decade career, he’s earned hundreds of advertising awards for his music and sound design, always pushing creative boundaries with fresh ideas and meticulous attention to detail – all of which are things we definitely appreciate here.

Beyond advertising, he’s made his mark in sound design and music for feature films and documentaries, and he’s the executive producer and audio director of the well-known advertising podcast IOFA with Aaron Starkman. He’s also mentored countless emerging talents over the years, a role that he takes great pride in. Just this past February, he decided to retire from the advertising industry after an illustrious fifty-year career, and he now enjoys spending time at his cottage in northern Ontario with family and friends, playing the drums, and catching Raptors games.

His name is Ted, or “Theo,” Rosnick, and getting the opportunity to speak with someone who has such a rich knowledge of the advertising industry and how it’s evolved over the years – not to mention how much sound has played a part in that – is a real treat. If you want to know where advertising’s been, where it is now, and where it might be heading, this is a discussion you won’t want to miss.

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(0:00:00) - Legendary Marketing and Music Memories

Our conversation starts off with Ted’s early memories of sound, and it’s one a few guests have shared: The Beatles’ unforgettable performance on The Ed Sullivan Show. “I had never heard that kind of music before,” Ted tells us. “So the next day in school, I think I was in grade six, yeah, like, everybody was talking about it, and within about two weeks, everybody was wearing Beatles boots and Beatles shirts.” He tells us about his musical start as a jazz musician and how it led to his first commercial production. “I had never done a jingle,” he recalls, “nor had I really even thought about jingles before that… We went into the studio together after our gig at one o’clock in the morning and recorded everything ourselves with one singer, and I showed up at the office of McConnell Advertising around nine o’clock in the morning with a tape and said, ‘Hey, here it is,’ and they loved it.”

(0:08:33) - Legal Battles and Musical Innovation

Ted and I talk about some of his early misadventures in advertising in an era when jingle copyrights and royalties hadn’t quite been worked out yet. “It went on forever,” he recalls one multi-million dollar lawsuit that was eventually dropped. “It made the lead story on Entertainment Tonight, and I remember my parents calling me at the time. They were in Mexico, and they said, ‘Oh, we’re so proud of you, you’re on Entertainment Tonight!’" He tells us about the early days of editing commercials and how his studio made the pivotal decision to expand from jingles to full sound editing. “I changed that because I thought, ‘Why are the editors doing the sound?’” Ted says. “So we started doing the sound effects, but also doing sound design with musical instruments rather than just footsteps or whatever, more abstract. And so we started doing that, and a few commercials came in that really warranted that kind of an approach, and they were very good commercials, like highly crafted commercials.”

(0:18:30) - Audio Director’s Legacy and Impact

As the first half of our discussion closes, Ted tells us about some of his favorite commercial projects, including a memorable Mercedes ice-cream spot, and the impact his unyielding approach to advertising work made on others. “I never sat back and thought about how I was perceived in the industry. I knew I was popular because I was really busy, but I assume people hated me.” He discovered just what that meant during his induction into Canada’s Marketing Hall of Legends, and he discovered what his clients thought of him. “I was driving back from shopping, and my girlfriend, we got it on my phone, and I said ‘Read it to me,’” he says. “It was all these interviews with ex-clients, and I started to cry, like, a number of times… I felt like Sally Field, you know. ‘They like me, they really like me.’”

Episode Summary

• Ted’s lifelong journey from jazz musician and drummer to pioneering jingle creator.
• How a McDonald’s ad and Chubby Checker’s The Twist " led to a hair-raising legal battle.
• Ted’s induction into the Marketing Hall of Legends after a fifty-year career.

Be sure to tune in for next week’s episode as Ted talks about how the dawn of digital media changed the way advertisers create content, his recent work with legally approved AI voice clones, and what he thinks of – and how he’s contributed to – the reviving trend of parody song commercials.

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Editing/Production by Humberto Franco - https://humbertofranco.com/

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