This is an automatically generated transcript of the PodPod episode ‘Tom Denford: Why B2B podcasts are a key marketing tool’. We apologise for any errors in spelling and grammar.
Rhianna Dhillon
Hello and welcome to PodPod the podcast which delves into the making of podcasts for all you podcasters I'm Rihanna Dillon and this week I'm joined by Reem Makari, journalist and PodPod reporter and Gideon Spanier, editor-in-chief of Campaign and editorial director of PodPod. So this week for our interview with Tom Denford, about marketing in podcasts, I'm joined by Gideon Spanier and Adam Shepherd, editor of PodPod, which kind of got me thinking about the best branded podcasts out there. If you do listen to branded podcasts, can you get in touch and let us know what works for you? Because I'd really like to know, kind of what resonates with audiences. Thinking about the British Podcast Awards, for example, in 2022, Forced To Flee was a podcast that won and that is through the work of the UN refugee agency. So it's really you know, it's a podcast that tells the stories of refugees in their own words. It's a different way, I suppose, of what we think of branded or sponsored podcasts. And I find it really fascinating how companies are thinking outside the box when it comes to podcasts, which are maybe promoting their own brands, or just trying to make sure that they're being recognised outside a particular field. Reem, do you have any sort of favourite branded podcasts?
Reem Makari
Um, I mean, I will say I don't listen to many branded podcasts. But I do remember that at Podcast Day24. There was one session that was on, I think it was total TotalEnergies. And they were talking about a scripted fiction podcast that they were doing as a brand new podcast to promote their brand. And that was very, yeah, because I don't think I've seen many branded podcasts go towards the fiction route, and try to do that to promote their products. So I thought that was really interesting.
Rhianna
Gideon, what about you?
Gideon Spanier
Well, it's definitely an interesting space. Owning the content means that you can really get your message across. But that was interesting at the IAB Podcast Upfronts which were back in October, and you had the National Lottery on stage with FreshAir, the production company, and, you know, they were saying, which might be obvious to some older people that the National Lottery needs to re-energise itself for new generation. It was actually launched 30 years ago, and they've got a Love Islander being part of that podcast, and makes total sense, in a way, you know, for the TikTok generation. A TV ad, watching a drawer on TV is just so antiquated. It's not relevant.
Rhianna
Absolutely. And I was on the train the other day, and I spotted a podcast that was advertising, essentially the train, but just using celebrities like Greg Wallace talking about food, for example, in the different places that this train line visits or Mary Beard going around talking about all the historical sites that you can find on the train line. I just think that sort of stuff is really clever because having seen this advert, I then went and listened to Mary Beard talking about visiting Battle Abbey. So let's get on our guest, Tom Denford. Gideon, I know that you and Tom go back. So you want to tell us a little bit about who he is.
Gideon
So Tom is the US CEO of a small company called ID Comms and he's British, he used to be in London, where they launched the company, he and his partner, David Endo, they manage advertising pitches for large companies, companies like Burberry, Sky, British Gas, and they advise companies on where they should be spending their money. And if you think some of these budgets run into hundreds of millions of pounds. So he's got an interesting perspective, because he used to work in advertising agencies himself, and understands the sort of rationale that advertisers have when they're looking on the one hand to reach the biggest audience possible, a trusted environment, very important. And then also sort of deep niches. And that's where audio comes into play and the intimacy. So ID Comms has been going since 2009. And perhaps not surprisingly, in the last few years with both COVID and digital disruption, advertisers and brands generally need more advice about communication. And where it has also been interesting is that they've developed a communications platform by having a YouTube show and also a podcast called MediaS nack, and they're communicating with a very niche audience of mainly top decision makers at these companies, and of course, their competitors are watching too, and listening.
Rhianna
You read that some very ominous I liked it.
Reem
So speaking of Fresh Air, they're actually going to be part of this year's Podcast Show, which is like a week-long festival celebrating podcasting. And they're going to be in the Brand Works Theatre with Global and Campaign and PodPod. And so PodPod is going to be involved in the Podcast Show this year. There's a lot of exciting things to look forward to, there's Faces to Watch. And there is going to be a live recording as well of this podcast. This is going to be very intimidating, but also very exciting.
Rhianna
I can't wait. So here is Tom Denford talking all about marketing in podcasts. Tom Denford. Welcome to PodPod. Thank you so much for joining us. Hi. So you are here to talk all about your kind of background as a marketer and how, essentially, the marketing industry is using podcasts. So let's start off with how long you've been a marketer for how long you've been in the industry. And when you came to podcasting.
Tom
I've been in the industry since like the mid to late 90s. So you can do the maths on that. So 25 years, I started off in media and advertising agencies in London, and worked in various different agencies over the time in 2009, I joined up with a chap called David Endo, who was head of media at Nike. And previously Coca Cola had come from the brand side. And we created a company called ID Comms, which is a consulting business. And it's, it's a powerful little company that you've not heard of, is what I often say to people. We've been going for 10 years, with a team of about 40 people spread across Europe and North America. And we work as advisors, often in the background to some of the world's most famous brands. And we're looking at their media and their advertising spend and their processes and the resources that they have. And we're typically helping them answer a few simple questions like, How do you do things? How can you do things better? Who are you working with externally, like your agency partners and relationships with other media vendors and publishers, and then how you measure things, particularly what we do is we map the money flow. Because the global media industry is a 600 plus billion dollar, annual industry, a lot of money is flowing in lots of different places. And we kind of track that. So we just help, we basically help marketers be better. We're driven by a vision that brands deserve better media, we're all in service of the brands that we love, we want to be reminded of that. Because media and advertising can get very complicated and technical. And it shouldn't, it shouldn't be intimidating or frustrating. It should be exciting. And we're trying to make it exciting. I've yeah, I've read some of your posts. And I really love that the sort of language you use is about talking about allies and empathy. Those are words that you don't hear very often with advertising. Presumably, it's not just you, but how successful is that sort of push back against that really far more aggressive aspect of advertising, especially in podcasting. I mean, broadly, the advertising and media industry has been through some kind of tension with the advertisers over the years, because the advertisers are kind of in the middle, right? They're the ones with all the money. And they are the ones that have to make decisions. And they're the ones who own the brands. And they're the ones that are passionate about their brands. And then they work with a whole vast supply chain of going from giant, great big agencies down to this, you know, the smallest little publisher, and lots of money flows through that system. And over the years, lots of money kind of, we don't really know where it's going, some of that money. That's the problem from the advertisers perspective, you know, that advertisers have never really known how their money works particularly well. And over the years has created some tensions between the advertiser and what we call the supply chain, which is a pretty unromantic way of thinking about the advertising industry. But it's but you know, we call it the supply chain, and to become very entrenched in a, you know, a little bit of a war of words and suspicion, and there's a lack of trust in the industry. It's not a regulated industry, yet. It's a vast multibillion dollar industry. And so there's been a bit of tension over the years. And so, you know, we just see it, it's not necessarily our role, but we try to encourage all players on all sides. Just to remind them, what I said earlier is that we're all in service of the brands that we love, like we were privileged that we get to work with these amazing brands. Liberty loves advertising, if your average person on the street, they dislike advertising more now than they've ever done. Because the quality has become so crappy, and it's interruptive. And it spoils the experience. And then it has all of these other wider, horrible implications, which I know you don't wanna talk about in this pot, pod. But, you know, whether it's lacking funding to good quality journalism, for example, or, you know, creating a divided discourse, social discourse, or whether it has a huge environmental impact in terms of its vast energy use, as an industry, we've got lots of questions that we can answer. And we really were trying to get everybody back together. This is not a campaign of ours. By the way, we're, you know, we're a serious business. You know, we're a consulting business, but we try to do it with a clear mission, which is to get a better deal for the brands that we love, and we enjoy. So how does that translate into podcasting? Well, we made a decision and I think it must have been about 2015 2016 You know, we're a B2B Business. So we're talking here about podcasting. From a B2B perspective, we created a YouTube show in 2015, called MediaSnack, which is still running, so you can just add media snacks on YouTube. And that was me and my co founder, David. And we started just talking about some of the trends and issues and challenges in the media industry, it became quite typical of what was going on at the time and why and I think we had, and we continue to have an interesting perspective, because I come from the agency background, I am the supply chain, right, and David is the marketer. And so we saw things from both sides, and that, that built an audience, that was kind of interesting. The reason cynically, that we did that I came up with the idea to do it was that back in 2015, there was a bit of tension between the advertiser the agency, and I felt like we were sticking ourselves kind of in the middle of that, and I wanted to, I thought, if we could create an audience, it can work like armour, you know, I think the more that you've got, if you've got an audience, then maybe you're less vulnerable to criticism, perhaps. So it was actually more of a defensive move than a really intentional marketing, you know, positive marketing move, move, if I'm really honest with you. And I would encourage people, if you, you know, if you're starting a business, particularly if you're in an arena, where there is a tension in a debate, and you want to get right in the middle of that, to create an audience is actually very powerful, because maybe you're less likely to be attacked, that was what I was thinking, it's like a moat around our business. People don't mess with you, if they think you've got an audience, even if it's a small audience. So that was one of the ideas that came about. And then it has this naturally positive benefit that if you do it, and it's okay, and you know, I will say, good, if it's good, then people come back, and they get to know you, and they get to understand you as people. And so it was actually very, it's a very good marketing and business development tool. For us. It's not a revenue generating activity, we don't run ads, we don't take sponsors. And frankly, we don't have the size of the audience in it in order to do that anyway. Because it's pretty niche. But I know that I can fly across the world into a conference somewhere, walk into a conference room, and somebody will come up and say, Oh, you're the guy off that media snack show. Wow. You know what I mean, and not, from an ego perspective, I just mean that. It's just nice. There's a familiarity there, people trust you immediately, which is a lovely benefit. So for those listeners that are thinking, Should I do this? Or shouldn't I do this, like, that's one of the beautiful benefits, if you're doing a B2B podcast is that it's a great way to build familiarity and trust. And that's been very powerful. I think when we look back at the success we've had, it's been one of the great drivers, I think of our success. Do you know what I've absolutely noticed that, through podcasting, people who would normally never give you the time of day, suddenly, when it comes to a podcast are much more willing to actually sit down and chat much more than they would be for, you know, another project and interview or, you know, a written interview or similar once you've gotten a guest on, and they will come on, because they see previous guests, and they know the format, we use the podcast to get access to some people that might not normally take a meeting. Right. And that's just a good way of building that familiarity and trust with a guest, somebody prominently in an industry that's got an interesting story to talk about. I think the one thing that we've learned is the easier that you make this show for them, the more likely they are to come on, the more that they know that there's not going to be an ambush, or I'm not I'm not a journalist asking tough questions. We just want to get to know them and a little bit about them and the way that they view media and advertising. And lots of our clients, as I mentioned, are Fortune 100 companies. And I'm looking to speak to very senior marketers within those companies. And most senior executives are bound by some form of, you know, comms protocol, they're not just free to go out and talk to whoever they want about whatever they want. Very rarely do we have a comms person who sometimes comes, you know, comes along for the ride. And he's making sure that I'm not asking too many things. But to try and get those people on the show, we'd make it very easy for them to come on. So what we figured out was that actually, if you have a standard format for a show, that it's not just a free form, interview, that I have to prepare a whole bunch of questions and get them validated by their internal comms people is that we all say six questions in 15 minutes or less. And so we asked the 16 questions, so they know what I'm going to ask them. And they know that there's nothing contentious particularly coming up and they know that I give them lots of room to be able to share their own view. And that works really well because they can see the format. They know it's only going to take 15 minutes and they know it is a safe environment for them. And so I kind of create that, that you know the guardrails for the guests to come on with confidence, we get a far better acceptance rate now that we've got a standard format, if we have an amazing guest, I might follow up with a longer form interview if they're interested in doing it. But we found that quite good trick of just encouraging people to come on. If they don't notice that, well,
Gideon
Tom, I've been lucky enough to go on MediaSnack once, and that was in a video format. So I know that this brand PodPod cares about the craft and business of podcasting. Tell us a bit more about the craft because for example, you've done live discussions, broadcasting live on YouTube. And there's a sense that it's on the fly. I know that you're also doing more in audio now. So there's some trade offs right about the quote unquote quality, you've used video graphics in the past? Well, how much do you think about the craft? And how much is it? Actually? No, it is a utility?
Tom
Yeah, so it's a good question, I can talk about our experience. I know that I mean, the previous guests that you had on, I would listen to some amazing guests, you had a professor of podcasting on recently, right, which is just to manage your expectations. I'm obviously not because of podcasting, as you as you well know. But I can tell you the journey that we've been on, and we have the advantage of our company, and we can kind of adapt and change. We started off as a pre-recorded YouTube show, which was edited, and found that that was really good. It's a good quality product, as long as you don't watch the first five or six episodes, which are horrendous. But just because we just obviously didn't know what we were doing. But that's a pretty good quality product. But it takes a long time to plan, you spend hours in a room, sometimes, and he's trying to make a weekly show, I mean, just trying to just create some form of editorial structure to a show, thinking about what those topics are, what's our perspective, it takes a lot of preparation, then it would take us sometimes an hour and a half to record a 20 minute show, because we just keep messing it up. And as soon as you sit, give yourself a quality threshold. You can find yourself agonising over that. And we have to keep reminding ourselves, this is not our business, this is just a little bit of marketing, we do you know, but it could. You could easily spend half a day a week, or more just doing media snack. But we did that and we did that for years and years and years. But it was when I moved to the US that I moved to the US in 2018. And my co host David was still in London. And so we had to figure out how we were going to do that. And so for a period of time, we actually again continued to pre record it on a green screen. So in my office here, I have a whole studio setup of things like camera, green screen, all this kind of stuff just took just as much time. And it was me on my own here in the US having to mess around with SD cards and upload things and set up lights and all this kind of stuff. And like my levels, right? You know, it's just like, This is not my job. I'm the CEO of a company here. Why am I what am I doing? And 25 people watching this is like, well, maybe 2000 People watching maximum but then just as soon as the technology became viable, really, for us to be able to stream live, that's what we started to do. So we started to use a platform called stream yard, which I think it's gotten quite popular now. But in its very early days, again, it was pretty clunky. And we just decided to just do the show live. And we do it at 11am Eastern time every Friday. And it lasts half an hour. And we spend half an hour in advance of that just coming up with the things that we're going to talk about. And this is just different energy to streaming, which I love just the live broadcast of it. You know, we invite people on and they say no, because nobody wants to go live, right? Nobody really wants to live. But we're willing to do it. And I just think it's like tightrope walking, you know, without a safety line. You have to sometimes roll back some things you've said because you realise that you've upset somebody, or set some inappropriate things, but it's a different energy. And the cool thing was, we were finding people would be listening live, okay, and it's streaming on YouTube and Facebook and Twitch and various different places. So we might have a handful of live viewers, they started leaving comments and asking questions during the show like, This is great radio. This is like radio. This is always slightly strange from a media person, as advertised. I love all these formats are all meshing together and blending. So I don't know whether we do radio or TV or podcasts or what you know, whatever it is. People are asking questions. And so we would just pause the show and say, Oh, hello. Oh, good. He's asking questions about something completely different. Let's just talk about that or that people would wave and want a shoutout in the show. And we thought, This is so good. So we've done that for a long time. We took a break from it last year, because we just thought there's probably a new format that we need to think about here. Because you're going back to what we talked about earlier, like our driven mission as a business is to help serve brands by encouraging us all to better kind of collective understanding and collective action. Right, this whole idea of better empathy in the industry. Instead of it being Tom and David on a pre recorded YouTube show just preaching about some trend or in our view on something, why don't we have more people just participate in this, because if we hear each other's voices more, and if we hear different sides of the argument or different perspectives, maybe we get a better understanding, maybe we can be a better industry. So we have this kind of lofty goal here, to actually just try and foster a bit more conversation. And the best way to do that is to do it live. And so summer of 2022, we were like, Why don't we stop our show for a period of time, just temporarily, and just think about what we're going to do. We thought we'd do a Twitter space. But of course, that coincided with Twitter, just who knows what was going on at Twitter, in the middle of 2022. So we'd heard that LinkedIn would provide this audio product, where you can have a live, I suppose, like a radio show is like a phone in radio show type thing, right? If you've been on Twitter, you'll know the format, you have a certain number of speakers and an audience. And people can put their hand up and contribute to the discussion. And you set a theme, and then you talk about that. So we've just recently stretched out a media snack into a LinkedIn audio show, which we call media snack live. And we've done two shows now on that, but we've continued that, we're going to do that as a monthly show to be discussion based. Because people have got something to say. Yeah, I felt a little bit like a seven year old at a birthday party, like sending out invites, and no one's gonna turn them off. It's just gonna be me dancing on my own. People turn up and about eight, nine people want to contribute. And we had a really good discussion, got some really lovely comments and feedback afterwards. And it's something that will continue, because I think that, to me, now feels like the most powerful platform is audio only. It is easy to consume. We try to keep it to like 30 minutes, and have people participate. I think that can be very valuable.
Rhianna
Just thinking about brands going back to podcasting, specifically, do you think that brands are effectively using podcasting? Do you think they've really kind of got to grips with how important it is to do a really, really good podcast, if it's branded,
Tom
There was a period of time where it felt like everybody was just creating a podcast. And I know, there were some cynics saying, oh, everyone's everyone's got a podcast, right? Everybody's doing a podcast. But I think
Rhianna
It was a line at my wedding, in my wedding speech, I think because guests were podcasters.
Tom
But isn't amazing, it's not often a whole new medium comes around. And it is not often that a whole new medium, which is a pretty basic medium, is just people talking, which is lovely, right? It's not, you know, Disney Animation, as much as we'd love to do. I mean, it's not a it's not a manufactured thing. It's just humans talking to each other. I think that means a lot. So I think the format is powerful. And I can understand people wanting to experiment with it. I'm sure lots of people started podcasts that really, they didn't have the heart to continue to do it. Or it's just not at the mercy of the right thing for them to do or their business to do. But it's definitely fun to experiment with, as a marketer, as a business owner, as a founder, as just as an individual with a passion. It's a really fun experiment. You experiment a little bit on yourself, like, Can I do this? Do I really understand, like, how to talk to people? Or how to listen to people. And you'll know as, as you know, protocols, professionals and producers it is quite difficult to do that in real time, isn't it to really listen and to ask questions, and to be checking all the levels and making sure that you're kind of keeping to the agenda and all that kind of thing. It's a fun thing to do. And if you're a business owner, personally, if you're a small business owner, or you're working on your leading marketing for a kind of medium-sized organisation, absolutely, you should experiment with it, because you might be really good at it. And whatever business you're in, you definitely have a community that you can serve. There are definitely things to talk about. I think you've probably heard I've received from all kinds of people across the podcast industry. People say, Well, what do you talk about? Well, it's not difficult to find things to talk about. And if you're around interesting people, then you literally just ask questions, and you learn things. We happen to be in an industry, which is just rife with conversation and fast moving and fast changing. There's always something to talk about, as we know, campaigns have kind of led that narrative for many, many years. But there's always so much to talk about. So you just got to kind of start an experiment with it. As I say, from a b2b perspective. I think interview based is the most interesting, nobody really wants to hear about you talking about your company or how good you are. Okay? A podcast is not just a long advert, the minute that you start making it about you, it becomes really boring. I want to get that on a t- shirt. Yeah. Because even Steven Bartlett's like Diary of a CEO, which has been a phenomenally successful podcast, every moment that he strays into talking about himself, it gets really boring. You know, he has these amazing guests, but he can't help himself and can't help himself talk about him all the time. Every time somebody answers a question, he's got to add His own, His own view of everything. And that stuff sometimes just makes it painful, painful to listen to. But you've got great guests. His podcast in particular, is a real standout in terms of just a laundry list of the best guests you could possibly ask for in terms of profile.
Gideon
So I had one other question you mentioned, obviously, advertising. And given your earlier career in agencies, you obviously advised a lot of advertisers about where they should advertise. And I'm curious, where does audio fit into the mix? After all, people think video and TV are the best for storytelling. And yet here we are talking about this new medium of podcasting, part of audio, which is very immersive. And you can often be niche, but attract people who are really engaged. So where does the role of advertising fit in?
Tom
So there's, there's two kinds of ways to think about podcasting, isn't it, there's like creating the content to attract an audience. So some brands do that. But I think that's very powerful for a b2b perspective, to have to have a podcast content. But then, of course, there are lots of advertisers who see it as a media vehicle, right, they see it as a place to put their ads in, because there are some podcasts which deliver huge audiences. And you want to associate your brand with those popular shows, from an advertising planner's perspective, which is what you're suggesting. Gideon, which I spent many years within ad agencies kind of advising brands, how to invest their money to reach their consumers, we would treat podcasting, very similar to radio. Obviously, it's an audio product, which is I mean, there's an obvious comparison there. But from an advertising perspective, we used to advise brands to be on radio for certain things. There are certain what we call media moments that radio can deliver that other types of advertising can't deliver, you have to think from the listeners perspective radio, you know, it's a broadcast medium, right. So if you're, let's just say you're listening to live radio, okay, like it's a live radio show, people tend to go back and listen to radio shows that they like, right? They're loyal to particular stations, they're actually loyal and familiar with particular presenters. And they spend time in their homes or in their cars or on their headphones, listening to those voices. And those voices become very personal. And they build a huge affinity with those radio stations, and particularly with presenters. So radio is a peculiar thing, because it's a broadcast media, you know that there are potentially millions of people listening, but you're not that person or that show you feel like it's talking to you. So there's an intimacy in radio as a medium that you don't have watching TV, or you don't have reading a magazine, or you don't have scrolling a social website where you don't have that sense that the owner of putting your brand in those moments of real trust and intimacy, that property has an intimate relationship with you. So putting advertising in those moments can be very powerful, and is a great place for certain brands to be with certain messages. I mean, in America, like I live here, now, right? You hear radio shows for pharmaceutical products, where 40% of the airtime is all the disclaimers, right? Read at a very, very high speed. You should not be doing that. That's not the way to use the medium. Because you have to respect the medium, you have to respect that intimate relationship, and you cannot fill the airway. So somebody told me as fast as possible, all that kind of legal disclaimers, it's just it's so stupid. It's such that it undermines the integrity of that brand. From a podcast perspective. I think it has the same thing, even maybe even more so because it is very, very intimate. You're consuming podcasts. Typically through a mobile device, you have a library of actual shows, you're not just switching on the radio to see what's on there. You're actively looking for a presenter, right, you're coming to see the pod pod. And then you can scroll through an archive of all the stuff, you can actually look at everything that they've ever made and find the thing that really speaks to you. So it's an incredibly proactive choice of media that you're making. Very specific.
Rhianna
Yeah, I think that's absolutely true. With that in mind, can you think of any examples of podcasts who are successfully using marketing to its fullest extent? Because obviously there are, I was thinking about the first time branded content really came into my consciousness, and I was a judge for the British Podcast Awards. And I think it was a year that maybe Land Rover one because they had thought about the whole concept of the sound design of driving or having thought about exploring the outdoors, so it kind of fitted in with their sort of TV campaign, but it also was appealing to children because there is no kind of visiting these sites. So something that family could listen to in the car, even though it wasn't, it wasn't a podcast about cars, it was about the experience of adventure. So that has always stayed with me, as you know, a really kind of high level, something to aim for. So from your experience, is there anything that you think has done that really, really well,
Tom
from a brand perspective, there's putting ads in shows, but if we think about how we used to, like by radio, same principles is put ads in shows, but what you really want, you want the presenters talking about your brand, because that turns that intimate, trusted moment into something is even more powerful. You put an ad in the podcast, and you buy it on, you know what we call the Ricci buy it, how many people are picking to see this and what we're going to pay for it. But then if you pay a little bit more, or you can really kind of build a relationship with the host or the owner of that podcast, and encourage them to talk about your product, or talk about your service or endorse you. We used to call that from an advertising perspective, right? You want the present endorsement, that's even more powerful. So you've got to think not just about putting an ad in a podcast, but also how you're going to build a bit of a relationship with that podcast owner, which I'm not sure agencies are necessarily doing right. They're putting ads on podcasts. If you represent a brand, like you mentioned, Land Rover. So if you work with a brand like Land Rover, you obviously want to find podcasts, where potential Land Rover buyers are listening. And so you can do some analysis of cars or outdoors or whatever it might be farming, right? And put your brand in those places to get an intimate relationship, an intimate media moment for people that might be in the market to buy your product. So you do the analysis, find this podcast, negotiate some rates, and do a buy through a network or podcast directly. But as Landrover, what would be really good is if you could identify a few of those podcasts that ticked a lot of the boxes, like a scale audience was really kind of a, maybe they talked about Land Rover, that you really thought this was a highly valuable potential customer listening, then go to that podcast network, put that podcast owner build a relationship between your brand and the owner of that podcast, offer them, offer them a test drive offer to give away a car to sort of build something a bit more valuable with the owner of that podcast. So they're more likely to just talk about it favourably. And when they literally say the words Landrover, you're going to hear the joy in their voice when they talk about that. And that becomes infectious. Because because you have that intimate relationship with that podcast host, it's going to make you reevaluate what you think of Land Rover, or it's going to keep it in front of your mind and is going to go in much more powerfully than just listening to an ad word. Yeah. So I think as a brand, thinking about podcasts as a platform, to think about it like radio, it has so many of the similar characteristics. But you have to use those characteristics to your advantage. Don't just think of it as a broadcast medium where you placed ads, and you're trying to reach a million people. Think of it as a very special moment that you're going to be in and how can you make that the most valuable experience for the listener and the most powerful result for the brand? There's some really good examples. Lots of presenters do that now. I think one of the earliest and very best proponents of the endorsement was Tim Ferriss. Right when he was early days. I guess he still does that now. But when he started off his podcasts, years and years and years ago, he would just talk about products that he liked. Which podcast sorry, you know, Tim Ferriss, The Four Hour Workweek. He's a writer? Oh, yes. Tim Ferriss has a US movie. But he has one of the best and biggest podcasts, I think of all time, but he's been going for years and years. And so he's one of the very early proponents of the medium and is a fascinating guy. So you should definitely look him up. I think he's innovated the format. Again, I'm not a podcast expert by any means. But I just enjoy it. I have enjoyed his stuff over the years. But in each show, and you hear lots of other people do this now, but I think he was the inventor of that is to say, hey, I can really recommend that you use this product because I use this product. And I've tried lots and lots and lots of different versions of this product. And I think this is the best. I use it myself. Let me tell you why. I think it's really good. Now he was doing that. And he revealed that it's a paid for thing, right? He's promoting them. And he started that whole thing like, go to WWLP dot blah, blah, blah slash Tim, where you can get 10% off, you know, because I'm doing what I'm working with. Now you hear everyone do that. But I think that's a Tim Ferriss thing. I think he started that. Very commercially astute. But he's such an influential voice that I don't know the numbers. I'd love to know what that drove in businesses. I mean, I literally bought underpants because of Tim Ferriss. Right. What Tim Ferriss listeners will know is a company I think it's Australian called me undies, which is the mechanics kind of big thing, but he was a very early proponent of that. I was like I need some Tim Ferriss thinks that these are the best lenders in the world. I'm so ready. That's how powerful that is. incredibly powerful, but you got to have a good product, but you also got to build a relationship with the host.
Adam Shepherd
So then for any marketers that might be listening, who haven't yet explored creating their own podcasts or engaging with the podcast medium beyond audience level spot ad buys, what advice would you have for them?
Tom
Well, I think the first thing is just to start, because this is not my words, I heard this, somebody else said this, again, it's a slogan from a t shirt, I'm sure is that the only way you're going to make a great podcast is by making your first podcast, which I thought was really nice, because you know that first one, okay, like, like your first pancake or your first child is going to be a disaster.
Rhianna
That thing that's going on a t- shirt.
Adam
As a firstborn job by itself, I take exception to that.
Tom
Me too. I am, too. But I said, my eldest was like, You're a pancake, don't worry. But the first one is going to be a disaster. The first show we ever did, I even got the name of the show wrong, you can go back and look at it, and it stayed in there, nobody noticed. So you've got to start. It is so much easier now to do it than it was five years ago. You know, I would sit on the train, I used to sit on the train and edit podcasts and clunky software myself. But now you can live stream things, you don't have to worry about editing too much, you don't have to worry, honestly, he doesn't worry too much about quality, really, you need a good audio quality, but just try it, try it and get better. I would highly recommend using it if you're in the b2b space, using a guest based interview podcast is really much easier than trying to come up with interesting things to say each week, interviewing people. And then you have the added benefit that I mentioned is that you actually just get to know more people in the industry. That's really, really good. And when you're thinking about guests, think of it as like a flight of stairs, right? Think about who you want to get to eventually. Who was your dream interview, and then think of the five people that you'd maybe need to interview on the way there. So and then work backwards. So if I wanted to interview, I still haven't managed to do a podcast with Marc Pritchard at P&G, for example. But I've done I've done some other people at P&G, but if I wanted Mark Pritchard at P&G, I just got to think like, Okay, who if I had on a guest, who would that be to convince Marc Pritchard that this is a good place for him to be. And then you go get that person and you go back and then you know, you work your way all the way back to somebody that's actually feasible that you could get on the show. And then just think about that, it is literally like a staircase up to your dream guest. We're still going up those stairs. But that's sometimes the way I think about it. I think some people who wouldn't come on, I think about how to get to them. Eventually.
Rhianna
Tom Denford, thank you so much for your insights, and for joining us on PodPod today.
Tom
Thank you. It's really enjoyable. Thank you.
Rhianna
So that was Tom Denford, speaking on marketing, and made a really interesting point about how using a podcast as a marketing tool, not as a way of making money and making a connection with the audience, I thought that is quite a kind of salient point that a lot of brands might not quite understand. So I'm really glad he brought that up. Reem, what stood out for you?
Reem
That was a very big part of it. Like he did also mentioned that he doesn't use the podcast as another direct stream of revenue like it really is a good way for them to build trust with a new audience and with their already existing audience. And I think that's something that a lot of brands have been using now. And it's kind of like a trend and I actually have a feature that's coming out today, which will probably be live by the time this episode is live, like TV shows and films using also podcasts as a marketing tool to promote their shows and films. So none of it is used to kind of make extra money, it's really just to build that connection and brand awareness and community feeling which I think is very interesting.
Rhianna
Gideon, what was your takeaway from this chat with Tom?
Gideon
Well, a few things so because I know him a little bit I thought it was quite funny. He said they're not really doing it for ego but at the same time he likes it that he goes to sort of industry conferences and people know him and his business partner David, so you everyone needs a bit of ego and I do think actually, you know two rooms point he is this is a piece of branded content they're creating themselves which is obviously cast them in a favourable light even though they say that they are doing this because of sort of they can't make it just about them. They're trying to make it about the industry. Second thing is that they've found time to squeeze this in with their day jobs, but they clearly see it as a useful marketing tool literally. So that's good and I also really liked the the five steps to your great guest, which made me obviously think who would be PodPod’s ultimate guests and I have been thinking could we get Dua Lipa because Dino Sophos mentioned her and she'd be a great I think
Rhianna
that'd be a So we will now just gonna really put at the top of our Stairway to Heaven. Oh God, seven.
Gideon
Can I ask you two? Who would you like to be a guest?
Rhianna
I would love to Dua Lipa on. Let's start manifesting right now.
Reem
My dream guest would be Rupaul, I think that would be the ultimate guest to have on PodPod.
Rhianna
Now, I know that Tom wasn't a fan of hosts using their own personal stories, but I met Michelle Visage the other day, I did a show with her. So you know,
Reem
Oh, that's amazing
Rhianna
a possibility there.
Reem
You need to tease that a bit more
Rhianna
I did find it interesting, actually, that Tom wasn't a fan of hosts using their own experience. And I don't think I agree with that at all. Actually, remember, we're talking about this. I think the whole point of podcasts especially, is, you know, it's the host that I don't mean with PodPod. But I mean, you know, using Steven Bartlett as the example that Tom gave, I think Steven is the reason that people listened to that podcast where he's a charismatic, incredibly successful guy. Of course, you want to hear his advice, and his anecdotes as much as the guests. So yeah, I don't know if I agree with that. Gideon.
Gideon
I basically don't agree with it. I mean, I think that the way we think about PodPod and I think a lot of people who are listeners generally is you want a personality to hook you in, whether that's the personality of the host and or the guest. And we actually think you know, we are sort of legacy magazine publishers at a market. And the guests each week are like the cover stars of PodPod. And when you see the link to the podcast on the website, we do it with our brilliant art director, Chris Barker, designed like that. It's meant to be exciting to draw you in. So I'm all for being humble, but at the same time, yeah. Why do you listen, you want to be compelled to listen?
Rhianna
Absolutely. Nevertheless, thank you so much to Tom Denford for his time. Thank you so much for listening. And to my guests, Adam Shepherd who joined us for the interview, Reem Makari and Gideon Spanier. You can find out more on PodPod.com. And as I said, please do get in touch about some of the branded podcasts that you're listening to. I really would love to expand my knowledge on those and subscribe to make sure that you never miss an episode of pod pod. Why would you? The podcast is produced by Emma Corsham for Haymarket Business Media and I'm your host Rihanna Dhillon. I'll see you next week. Bye.
