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Seven Solutions for the Podcasting Brand Challenge

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Tuesdays With Coleman

If you read the last two installments of Tuesdays With Coleman, you are aware of the brand-building challenges that exist in the podcasting space. Two weeks ago, I wrote about how Joe Rogan is the biggest brand in podcasting, but that only 14% of monthly podcast listeners are aware of him on an unaided basis. Last week, we revealed new podcast research that indicated none of the top 20 most-listened-to podcasts are familiar to at least half of all monthly podcast listeners.

None of this is terribly surprising given the nascent and highly fragmented nature of the medium. Nonetheless, for any podcast that seeks out mass appeal success, building a brand is a necessity.

Fortunately, there is a route to building strong podcast brands, as my colleague John Boyne and I shared in our “Outside Thinking for Podcasts” presentation at last week’s massive Podcast Movement conference in Orlando. The first step on that route is to recognize that if you are engaged in podcasting, you need to go beyond content creation and think like a marketer. If you do, you will take an Outside Thinking approach to the medium and recognize that (a) you must teach people about podcasting, (b) combining great content with strong branding is crucial for success and (c) such success is not measured by download or listener counts but by having satisfied listeners.

Coleman Insights presenting at Podcast Movement

John Boyne and Warren Kurtzman presenting “Outside Thinking for Podcasts” at Podcast Movement

This means that you need to go beyond telling listeners, “Download wherever you get your podcasts,” and be more specific about where they can get your content. Your podcast’s website should go beyond that and provide step-by-step instructions for finding, downloading and listening to your podcasts.

Here are seven ways to build your podcasting brand:

 

  1. Have your elevator pitch down.

If you can’t succinctly articulate what your podcast is about, why people should listen to it and what differentiates it from other podcasts, it will be very difficult to build a brand. Once you do have that pitch, be sure to communicate it frequently, even to your existing listeners.

Another way to think like a marketer is to:

 

  1. Give your podcast a memorable name.

Your podcast needs to stand out among the more than 700,000 active podcasts competing for listeners’ attention. Does your podcast have a name that is searchable and memorable? If not, change it.

Building a strong brand also necessitates taking advantage of the fact that podcasting is an aural medium; great audio brands have their own unique sound and feel. Some of the best ones:

 

  1. Use jingles and other mnemonic devices that help consumers remember them.

Beyond jingles and mnemonic devices, there are things you can do with your podcast’s content that help with brand building. One is:

 

  1. Utilize a consistent structure.

This is important because meeting consumer expectations is crucial to building a brand, a reality for virtually every category of products and services. Examples of such consistency include making sure that your podcast follows a regular release schedule and having the flow of your podcast’s content follow a similar pattern with each episode.

Taking this a step further, your podcast should:

 

  1. Utilize benchmarks, recurring segments or features.

Think along the lines of David Letterman’s signature “Top Ten” lists or Jimmy Fallon writing “Thank You Notes” every Friday night.

Another content-based practice that helps with the brand building process is to:

 

  1. Make sure your topics are on target.

The topics you cover on your podcast should be not only of interest to your target audience but also aligned with what they expect from you. This does not mean that you can never deviate from those expectations, but when you do, you better make sure your content execution is outstanding.

 

Finally, we should not ignore that even if you think like a marketer and have all these things—a strong elevator pitch, a searchable and memorable name, mnemonic devices, consistent structure, benchmarks and on-target topics—your podcast’s ability to build a strong brand will require that you:

 

  1. Advertise your podcast.

Don’t despair, however, if your budget won’t allow for billboards in Times Square or television spots during the Super Bowl. A good marketer recognizes that there are many ways to get the word out about a product or service beyond traditional media advertising, with social media (paid and organic), being promoted on other podcasts, endorsements, cultivating reviews, your own website, search engine optimization, content marketing and public relations all representing other options for building a brand.

 

If you weren’t in the audience in Orlando (or you loved our presentation so much you want to see it again!), I’m happy to announce that Coleman Insights will host a free webinar at 2:00 PM EDT on Thursday, September 12th, when John and I will re-present “Outside Thinking for Podcasts,” which will cover many of the suggestions above in more detail. Click here to sign up for the webinar today!

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Joe Rogan and the Podcasting Brand Challenge

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Tuesdays With Coleman

Yesterday you may have seen news coverage of our podcast research data about the Unaided Awareness levels of the leading podcast brands. Our press release covered the “sexy” part of our findings, specifically that Joe Rogan has the biggest brand in podcasting.

The less sexy, but far more important aspect of our findings pertains to what we’re learning about brand development in the podcasting space. Next week, my colleague John Boyne and I will be sharing more about what we have learned in our “Outside Thinking for Podcasts” session at the Podcast Movement conference in Orlando, but in advance of that, we would like to add to the discussion around podcast brand development here.

At Coleman Insights, we are bullish about podcasting. It represents a great opportunity for the many talented content creators in the radio industry to leverage their expertise and expand it to a new growing platform, while also providing an opportunity for fresh, new voices to enter the audio entertainment space.

The ultimate success of the industry, however, will depend on its ability to build brands. By that, we mean brands that are well-known, that are perceived as providing content that is compelling to large numbers of consumers and that are associated with attributes with which consumers want to affiliate.

To date, such brand building has been awfully slow.

While the sexy headline from the podcast research data we recently reached was about Joe Rogan, the bottom line is that only 14% of monthly podcast users are aware of Joe and his show, even though his podcast has been available for a decade. The more significant finding of our podcast research, however, is that Rogan’s relatively low Unaided Awareness level dwarfs that of any other podcast. In fact, none of the four other podcasts that finished among the five best-known in our podcast research—Serial, The Daily, This American Life or My Favorite Murder—achieve Unaided Awareness levels above 6%.

In fact, our research finds that podcast users are about as likely to mention a platform or a category when asked to name podcasts as they are to mention a “big” podcast brand like Serial or The Daily. For example, 5% of podcast users mention NPR when asked to name a podcast; 4% of them say “music” and 3% say “sports.” A parallel here would be to ask people who use streaming television to name shows and have them answer Netflix or Hulu instead of Stranger Things or Orange Is The New Black.

Podcasting Unaided Awareness

By contrast, in most research we conduct with radio listeners, it is not unusual for individual station brands to exceed Unaided Awareness levels of 50% or more. One can certainly argue that most of these radio brands have multi-decade head starts on podcasts when it comes to brand building, but such an argument misses the point. No matter how great a podcast’s content is, its ability to attract an audience will depend on people knowing about it and having—at a minimum—the “big idea” of what the podcast stands for in their minds.

How does a podcast build a brand? We hope you can join John and me at Podcast Movement next week when we share how applying Outside Thinking can make that happen.

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The Case for Jingles

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Tuesdays With Coleman

Does your brand use jingles?

They’ve certainly become harder to find.

Listen to commercial breaks on TV or radio. Whereas advertisers once deployed jingles en masse, it’s more challenging to find a commercial that uses a good old-fashioned jingle.

We sometimes hear from those in charge of brands that jingles are played out, or that it’s “time to mix it up.”

Steve Karmen’s resume includes jingles for Budweiser, Doublemint, Michelob, Hershey’s, “I Love New York” and countless others.

According to Karmen, “Unfortunately, jingle is an unacceptable word today. Jingle implies old. Jingle implies stodgy. Jingle implies not with it.”

So, are jingles played out? Is it time to mix it up?

If we consider the current media landscape, we know it’s as challenging as ever to catch someone’s attention and deliver a message with frequency.

Isn’t that exactly when we should be creating audio that sticks in consumers’ brains? Fill in the blanks:

“______…the San Francisco treat”

“I want my baby back, baby back, baby back…._____baby back ribs”

“Gimme a break, gimme a break, break me off a piece of that _______”

“Like a good neighbor, _______ is there” (fun fact: that’s one of a number of famous jingles written by Barry Manilow)

Maybe the auto insurance industry is on to something, because State Farm brought the tune back to their commercials.

And how about, “Liberty, Liberty, Liberty. Liberty.”

“We are Farmers. Ba, ba, da ba, ba, bum bum bum.”

“Nationwide is on your side.”

Are those jingles played out? Is it time for them to mix it up?

And sure, those are national advertisers with very large spot buys, but they don’t have the market cornered on successfully using audio signatures…and it doesn’t have to be a jingle.

Audio signatures, like jingles, are memorable and create sticky brand connections.

Here’s one of the simpilest, most effective audio signatures of all-time:

What do you think of when you hear this?

The simple ticking of a clock means 60 Minutes is on. Just a few bars of the Fox Sports theme means it’s time for football.

Are those played out? Is it time to mix it up?

When you hear this:

You may not only instantly recognize Curb Your Enthusiasm, you may associate the music with the beginning of the show, the end of the show, or anytime Larry David does something really stupid. This audio signature isn’t just identified with the show, it helps define the show’s brand.

How effective is the theme music on the Serial podcast?

The song has been played nearly 300,000 times on YouTube.

What if Serial decided to change the song every season or every episode to “keep it fresh”?

Is it played out? Is it time for them to mix it up?

The audio signature is memorable and creates a sticky connection with the Serial brand.

This works on a local level, too.

I still hear jingles for local radio stations in my head. I don’t say Mix 101.5, I sing Mix 101.5.

Even a voice can be a very powerful audio signature. Jack FM listeners may not know the name Howard Cogan, but they surely know his voice. It is synonymous with the attitude and essence of the brand.

Is it played out? Is it time to mix it up?

The answer of course, is no.

When you’re in the business of building a brand that incorporates audio, consider how a jingle and/or audio signature can create that stickiness you’re looking for.

It just might get stuck in someone’s brain.

And in 2019, when the battle for attention is more ferocious than ever, getting stuck in someone’s brain sounds like a good idea.

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What’s your Brand’s Social Currency?

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I have a small circle of close friends, so it sparked my interest when several of the local ones mentioned a new bar in town called The Atlantic Lounge.

Here’s what you need to know about this new watering hole in downtown Raleigh, NC:

  • It’s modeled after a speakeasy
  • You have to have a “key” to get in or come as a guest of a member with a key
  • To get a key, you send an email to a specific address and request one
  • You’ll likely have to wait a little while to get a key because they’re only offering them on an “occasional basis”
  • The key will cost you $40 once you’re approved
Atlantic Lounge, Raleigh NC social currency
The Atlantic Lounge in Raleigh, NC builds social currency by requiring the purchase of a $40 key to enter and limiting access to keys

My wife is dying to get a key, because she wants the status and it must be the hip new place to be.

I can’t even, but I get it.

People like to feel special. They like to think they are getting something exclusive.

In his book “Contagious: Why Things Catch On,” author Jonah Berger credits the following common ingredients or factors of ideas or brands that catch on:

  • Social currency (sharing things that make us look good);
  • Triggers (things that keep ideas and products top-of-mind);
  • Emotion (when we care, we share);
  • Public (the more visible, the more opportunity to imitate);
  • Practical value (sharing things that are useful to others);
  • Stories (highly effective way to sell your brand)
Contagious Why Things Catch On Jonah Berger

The story of The Atlantic Lounge falls in the social currency category. Telling your friends about this bar makes you look good because you have information about a cool new place. Having a key makes you look cool because it is exclusive and not everyone can get it.

There are, in fact, similar examples in the book to the Atlantic Lounge. Barclay Prime in Philadelphia could have been just another steakhouse, except that it launched with a $100 cheesesteak on the menu. It’s not about how many people order the sandwich. It’s about the restaurant being top-of-mind because of it. It’s people who haven’t even been to the restaurant that talk about it. It’s the publications and internet sites that cover it. It’s the visits from the TV food shows. It’s the celebrities that stop by.

It’s social currency.

An even better example may be Please Don’t Tell, a bar in New York’s East Village.

After you walk into Crif Dogs, a hot dog shop that purports to have “NYC’s #1 Weiner,” you enter an old-fashioned phone booth, pick up the phone and dial a number. After a voice answers and you’re approved, the wall of the phone booth opens to a small room with a bar in the center. The bar’s website has one picture and a phone number. No other pages, no other information.

Please Don't Tell NYC phone booth social currency
The phone booth in Crif Dogs is a secret entrance to Please Don’t Tell in NYC. The phone booth is the bar’s social currency.

“Did you hear about the bar in a hot dog shop with an old-fashioned phone booth? It’s so cool! You have to get approved, then the phone booth opens up into the bar!”

Social currency.

And so, it’s time to consider how to make social currency work for your radio station or podcast or media brand.

Every city has steakhouses, many of which are interchangeable. But Barclay Prime is the only one with a $100 cheesesteak.

Every city has bars, many of which are interchangeable. But the Atlantic Lounge has a $40 key. And Please Don’t Tell has a phone booth in a hot dog shop.

Every city has radio stations, many of which are interchangeable.

They have different styles of music or talk, just as restaurants and bars have different menus.

They have different personalities, just as restaurants and bars have different servers and ways of presenting the product.

But how is your radio station, podcast or media brand creating social currency?

You don’t need (or want) a long list of things.

Barclay Prime has one thing: the $100 cheesesteak.

The Atlantic Lounge has one thing: the $40 key.

Please Don’t Tell has one thing: the phone booth.

What’s your one thing?

What’s your social currency?