My name is. What? My name is. Who? My name is. Neil Cowling*
Trump v Rogan v Harris
The next couple of weeks sees the most important showdown between good and evil since Dangermouse versus Baron Silas Von Greenback – the US Presidential Election. Last week, both Kamala Harris and the other fella were choosing to appear on podcasts to reach those fully-engaged, intimately-listening voters. Now, in the final stretch, they’re apparently doubling down on this tactic by both guesting on the world’s biggest podcast – The Joe Rogan Experience. Not together, you understand.
Now, obviously I’m professionally happy that the medium I care about the most has become a significant pedestal for candidates to argue why they should be the world’s most powerful person. But, in the name of everything that’s precious and beautiful on planet Earth, why does it have to be The Joe Rogan Experience?
The answer is very simple – the audience of 11 million people are 80% male, 51% under 34, 32% Republican and 27% Democrat. So a young male audience, 41% of whom don’t have a fixed political allegiance – I make that 4.5 million floating voters in one hit. To reach that many people, it’s obviously worth being interviewed by the love child of Tyson Fury and Russell Brand.
MAD//Pod & Square
It’s time for another episode of MAD//Pod, recorded at MAD//Fest in July, and this week we dive into the marketing world at Square – the nifty payment solution – with Lizzie Barclay – their VP, Head of Integrated Marketing for Europe. She’s in conversation with Michaela – Fresh Air’s Director of Content and Head of Loud Nose Blows – who is thankfully nothing like either Tyson Fury or Russell Brand. More a combination of Claudia Winkleman & Davina in a green jumpsuit. They discuss how to focus on helping small business owners, and how to be more Barbie.
Sonic Identities
Sonic Identities are NOT jingles. OK? They’re not. Right, we’ve got that out of the way.
Well, they sort of are, but they’re so much more than that. I expect you know what the McDonalds audio identity sounds like, even now that they never finish it off with anyone saying ‘I’m Lovin’ It’. That’s kind of a jingle.
The noise Netflix makes – a swoosh, a bit like the closing of automatic doors? That’s not a jingle, and it doesn’t have a tune, but you’d recognise it. HBO is white noise.
EE? Their sonic identity is one man’s voice – Kevin Bacon.
It even works in writing. Taskrabbit’s tube ads are a sonic identity without any sound, and the *first line of this email would have at least made some people have Eminem in their brain. Others might have thought I’d just lost it.
So sonic identities take all sorts of forms, and all it really means is that you’ve thought through what a brand sounds like, not just what it looks like. It’s still weirdly rare, with so much resource going on visual design. Michaela DoCaHoLNB previously led creative for the sonic identity of BBC Sounds, and I worked with Elbow to create the theme for the London Olympics, so we know a thing or two about this stuff.
Well, thanks to Veritonic, a few more people know about it too. Their surveysaid:
58% of podcast listeners say that a brand’s audio identity is more memorable than their visual identity.
64% feel a stronger bond with brands that utilise cohesive sound identities.
So you simply can’t call yourself a multi-media brand if you don’t make a noise, in whatever shape that comes. Sounds, voice, language style, whatever it is – just make sure people know it’s your brand when they’ve got their eyes shut.
When I was on W963 University Radio Warwick, my friend Matt belched my whole name into a tape recorder in one go and that became my own jingle / sonic identity. So, as I said, I know a thing or two about this stuff, alright?
The American Life Preserver
If you love podcasts, you have to love This American Life. It’s the law. The most perfectly crafted storytelling in the audio world often happens on TAL, with the silky smooth Ira Glass pulling it all together. They set the bar for narrative, investigative, whimsical reporting and beautifully judged editing.
Well, sadly, that’s not been enough to shield them from a downturn in advertising revenue, which has apparently dropped by a third in a couple of years. The answer? Well, this week they apologetically announced that they’re setting up a premium Subscription service to help top up their funds. It’s all rather strangely phrased. Ad-free subscriptions offering exclusive content, archive and early releases etc aren’t normally framed as a desperate attempt to replace lost ad revenue. For many podcasters, including many of the biggies, they form a perfectly viable income stream. They’re also popular with listeners, so they could have just created the subscription option for their fans.
Still, TAL and Ira do things differently, so you can go to this link and sign up, either as an act of charity, or because you actually want to.
Annie Day backs local journalism…
6 years ago, the small city of Salisbury was thrown unexpectedly into the national media spotlight when a former Russian spy and his daughter were poisoned by the nerve agent, Novichok. Against all odds, they survived the assassination attack – carried out by Russia. Tragically though, local resident Dawn Sturgess died after coming into contact with the fake perfume bottle carrying one of the most dangerous substances in the world.
I heard the news and like everyone else was shocked by the story. But it felt closer to home for me. Before I was Head of Snacks and Chat at Fresh Air, I worked as a BBC radio journalist based in Wiltshire. My immediate thought was for my former colleagues who would be reporting on it, in a patch they know like the back of their hands.
The series takes over the feed of a long running BBC Sounds podcast covering true crime stories from neighbourhoods across the UK. Presented by Marie Lennon, Dan O’Brien and Andy Howard, who covered the story for local TV and radio, the release coincides with the inquest into Dawn’s death which started this week. I’ve only listened to the first 3 episodes, but they give a fascinating insight into how the story unfolded. You get a real sense of the unknown both from people in Salisbury and those covering it. At one point Andy talks about leaning against a wall in the city and wondering whether his jacked had come into contact with Novichok. At a time when BBC local radio is being decimated, this is a showcase of amazing journalism and highlights the importance of local journalists knowing their local patch and serving their communities.
Julie-Anna Needham has questions that need answering…
I clearly haven’t watched enough reality TV in my life because I’d never heard of the 2005 show ‘Space Cadets’, the focus of this podcast.
A group of contestants were told they’d been selected to take part in a trip to space. They boarded a plane bound – they thought – for Russia. In reality, it took them to an air base in Suffolk, where they underwent increasingly farcical training exercises. A ‘lucky’ few then selected to participate in the full space mission. They spent several days thinking they were orbiting the earth
The big questions this series raised for me are: would I have been so gullible, and what were the ethics of tricking people in the name of entertainment?
Screen speaks to some of the show’s producers (many of them thought the concept of tricking the participants would never work), actors and some of the contestants.
What’s innovative about this series is it has no narrator – a format successfully used now in many TV documentaries – but little used in podcasts.
What we’ve been listening to this week
A frog that sounds like Star Trek.
You have to be pretty special to end up being mentioned in this section of the newsletter. Our standards are famously high. I’ve previously rejected mentioning all sorts of half-heard noises or silly things. However, a newly discovered species of frog that sounds like noises from Star Trek? Oh yes, that passes the test.
Imagine having the power to name a whole new species of something after whatever you want. Well, Dr Mark D Schertz is the Curator of Herpetology at the Natural History Museum of Denmark and Assistant Professor of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of Copenhagen. That’s the sort of job title that means you can name stuff.
He’s found seven new species of frog in Madagascar’s mountain ridges, and he reckons they sound like noises from Star Trek. You can judge for yourself here. Yep, they whistle and buzz a bit I suppose. And Dr Mark is obviously a massive Star Trek nerd. So the seven species are now called Kirk, Picard, Janeway, Sisko, Archer, Burnham, and Pike – all surnames of Enterprise Captains.
I’m not a Star Trek fan myself, but I find this power to name new animals after TV shows you love very exciting. My life’s goal is now to discover a whole new set of amphibians who sound a bit like a church organ and call them Father Jack, Father Ted, Father Dougal, Mrs Doyle, Bishop Brennan, Father Dick Byrne and Father Larry Duff.
What we’ve been doing this week
I got into an argument with a man who wouldn’t move his bag off the seat on the train. I genuinely feel like this is something that unites us all and crosses all social boundaries: A simple signal you send out to others that is easy to spot, righteous to judge upon and not based on other prejudices or influencing factors. If the train is full, you’ve got your bag on the seat next to you, and you refuse to move it, you are on the side of evil. May a plague of poisonous insects build a home in your underpants.
