069 - Steve Pratt: Podcasts - Your Brand's Unfair Advantage (VIDEO)
What makes a good podcast? How about a great podcast? In this episode, Emily and Steve discuss the best ways to create a valuable message to grow your podcast audience as well as how companies should be approaching podcasting as a new form of content marketing. They also discuss emerging opportunities with audio content and voice assistants like Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri.
Why do Facebook, Dell Technologies, Mozilla, Slack, Red Hat, NYT T Brand Studio, BMW, CBS, Charles Schwab, and more top brands come to Pacific Content when they want to create a branded podcast?
Steve Pratt is the Vice President and co-founder of Pacific Content, a company of 30 passionate podcast nerds that focuses exclusively on creating original podcasts with brands.
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Pacific Content joined Rogers Media in May 2019 and is one of Entrepreneur's 100 Brilliant Companies. Their shows have won Webby Awards, Digiday Branded Content Awards, MarCom Awards, and Shorty Awards.
What makes a good podcast? How about a great podcast? In this episode, Emily and Steve discuss the best ways to create a valuable message to grow your podcast audience as well as how companies should be approaching podcasting as a new form of content marketing. They also discuss emerging opportunities with audio content and voice assistants like Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri.
2:20: How Steve started working on branded content and more details on his background.
3:00: Sirius XM and the first podcast ever.
4:19: Getting bitten by the "podcast bug." Opportunities to generate exposure for new bands in Canada emerged through licensing agreements for podcasts.
4:35: The new wave of podcasting hits and with it the need for podcasters to think and act like media companies
5:37: Companies begin realizing a new medium to generate content to increase exposure, without overtly tying it to their brand. It doesn't sound like an ad.
Choiceology with Katy Milkman is an original podcast from Charles Schwab. It explores irrational decision making. The show was created by Pacific Content.
"They all understand that you have to put the audience first, and you have to have a lot of empathy for the people that you're creating this for. Anytime anybody makes a piece of content that is about themselves, it's an infomercial." - Steve Pratt
"If we make something that's about us, maybe people will listen once, and then they'll never come back." - Steve Pratt
7:22: Traditional advertising is becoming less and less effective due to the economic and global impacts of coronavirus. Advertising isn't always about showing off your brand and product; sometimes it's about just about creating something that adds value to the user's experience.
"This is a time for brands to serve instead of sell" - Steve Pratt
Loyalty and ROI
9:00: How do you play to the unique strengths of audio, and how do you measure your success in harnessing it?
11:10: Podcasting can reach people when screens aren't available
Podcasting hit a watershed moment in 2019 when, for the first time ever, over 50% of the U.S. adult population had listened to a podcast.
13:39: Everyone has a podcast, and the market is increasingly growing. Discovery and promotion can be a podcaster's biggest hurdle.
14:48: The same tips for growing your podcast can be applied as you're building a voice experience on Alexa or Google Assistant.
"This is all part of the concert of the marketing instruments; they play together." - Emily Binder
17:58: Word of mouth can grow ambassadors for your podcast or voice experience.
"You can't buy listens in podcasts, you have to earn them." - Steve Pratt
18:30: Goodpods is a platform for users to discover new podcasts and can help podcasters capitalize on the "word of mouth" marketing in a digital form. Goodpods is founded by JJ Ramberg, see our conversation with her here.
19:56: Establish patterns and comfort with users, and it will make them more drawn to new mediums. This will reduce friction to new technology and drive adoption.
"When we first had smartphones, you had to teach someone how to download an app and close an app...now, it has become second nature, and we can't live without it." - Emily Binder
23:05: This is the time to experiment with technology
24:53: Smart speakers are the training wheels of voice, but voice assistant is on so many more devices than just a smart speaker
"We had a 70% YOY increase in global shipments of smart speakers in 2019 over 2018. And voice in the car is actually the fastest growing and number 1 use case of voice." - Emily Binder
27:17: What has Google been doing in the podcast space?
Books and Podcasts Steve recommends:
Connect with Steve and Pacific Content:
Steve Pratt is Vice President and Co-Founder of Pacific Content, an award winning podcast studio
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039 - Katherine Prescott: Alexa Privacy, Echo Show 5
Katherine Prescott is the Founder and Editor of VoiceBrew, a digital media company dedicated to helping people get the most out of Alexa. We discussed privacy on Amazon Alexa as well as the future of #voicefirst advertising. Which tech company's business model has true alignment with the end user, examining Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook.
Katherine Prescott is the Founder & Editor of VoiceBrew, a top resource for Alexa tips and best uses
Topics and timestamps:
Privacy - Amazon Alexa - is she recording?
Amazon Echo Show 5 announcement - new features, especially for greater privacy and user data control
When is Alexa recording vs listening?
How do I control my privacy settings on Alexa?
3.10 This privacy dialogue is healthy - it improves voice assistants for consumers
Echo Show 5 has a new camera shutter and the ability to say “Alexa, delete everything I said today”
4.20 Alexa app is not the focus
5.00 Discoverability is the ultimate challenge
5.05 It’s called the 5 but this refers to the 5.5 inch screen - is same as third gen echo
5.10 Why the Echo Show 5 is such a big deal - compelling land grab for affordable smart display space
6.10 Like the shift from radio to TV, third party Alexa skills will improve dramatically because of multi-modal
10.04 Will smart display pave the way for advertising? Banner even? Less intrusive than voice? Alexa diplsay ads?
10.50 Emily: sponsorship and brand preference will be paid for - that will be the advertising, unlike previous digital like banner ads or PPC
11.30 Katherine: Tech giants are shifting toward privacy as a feature
13.15 Business model and alignment - Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook. Great point from Katherine.
14.02 Google's pitch: we provide free services and collect your data.
14.27 Think of privacy in broader context - we are in the early innings of voice
See this post on Instagram and follow @beetlemoment for #voicefirst news
Sources:
Echo Show 5: https://www.techradar.com/news/amazon-echo-show-5-everything-you-need-to-know
"Buried in this morning’s Echo Show 5 announcement are a couple of new security features worth highlighting. In addition to the inclusion of a built-in camera shutter on the new smart display are a pair of Echo commands that let users delete voice recordings with an Alexa command." -https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/29/amazon-adds-alexa-delete-what-i-said-today-command/
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036 - Monopolies: AT&T Yesterday, Facebook and Google Today - Robert Binder
Robert Binder is a Senior Engineer member of the technical staff at the Software Engineering Institute of Carnegie Mellon University. He has 43 years of experiencing working in technology on everything from mainframe computers to embedded cyber physical systems, including work in institutions in financial markets in Chicago including the CBOE (Chicago Board Options Exchange).
We talked about how the drivers of economics and business are sending Facebook in the same direction AT&T was sent. Topics include:
Classical Economics
The Network Effect
The Monopolist's Demand Curve
When it came to AT&T's breakup in the 1980s, it was not just the new technology that mattered, it was the business opportunities created at that moment. Capital investment and risk taking and entrepreneurial activity that resulted happened at a very large scale.
Customers used to lease landline phones from AT&T.
Timestamps:
3:15 How Robert got involved with software in 1976
4:00 2 GTE software project the theory of the firm monopolist's demand curve
2.40 Robert's project with GTE Automatic Electric, which operated specialized telephone networks. At the time AT&T operated all the wires and owned all the phones. People leased their home phones from AT&T.
The deregulation in 1985 of ATT opened the door for cellular networks and led to what we have today; this is a hugely complex topic. But we discussed a few aspects.
6:00 The Theory of the Firm
6:15 In a competitive market, no individual company can control price; they price based on supply and demand
6:43 The Monopolist's Demand Curve
7:09 Martin Shkreli and high cost drug monopoly- ‘Pharma bro’ Martin Shkreli sentenced to 7 years in prison — says, ‘This is my fault’
9:20 AT&T was a monopoly but they made more money by charging less - not gouging customers even though they could
10:00 Facebook is the greatest deal in advertising but is quickly increasing in cost
11:02 The power of monopoly is a street that cuts both ways for Facebook (privacy issues, scrutiny)
11:20 Most users don't realize Facebook owns Instagram or that user data is the product - the model is much more complex than AT&T's monopoly
12:20 In the 1930s people realized that if the telephone system was to grow, they would need to employ an inordinate amount of humans to man the switches - not scalable
13:20 Was there skepticism about technology like the telephone like there has been for the PC, the smart phone, email, and now voice technology?
13:50 Long distance calls were expensive
14:15 New technology, when scalable and affordable, can be adopted readily and becomes quotidian
14:30 The Network Effect (the value of a network increases to a power of two with the number of connections) - exponential growth
