Audio Branding

“ There are a few perspectives from which you can see this. One would be you pay a premium price for a premium car or premium product in general. So basically, if you just look at the numbers, you pay for people like me at BMW, now doing this. But then also what you mentioned, you’re buying a premium product, you’re expecting a premium experience. And obviously sound, it can be, you can relate thi...

“ It’s just the way music is consumed. My kids went to summer camp, and they wanted to, like, bring music with them. But they’re not allowed to have electronic devices, like, they can’t bring a phone. And my son was, like, ‘Oh, I’ll just take my phone.’ And I’m like, ‘No, you don’t understand, like, you’re not going to have internet.’ And they’re like, ‘Well, how do I get the music from, like, Spo...

“ I can go back to when I was sixteen, and I was at a movie theater and I was watching a really great scene in a movie where the violinist was, like, moving his bows, you know, the camera was like panning around him. And I got to the end of that scene, and, like, he lifts his bow up, and I started clapping in the theater. And I realized that that film had just totally taken me out of the movie the...

“ So what we found out about the Flying Dutchman, for example, they’ve been in business for forty years and they simply didn’t know how to grow. But one thing I’d found out when I went to the original Flying Dutchman store is that people like to gather there, but they didn’t have anywhere inside the store to gather and sit down. Everyone sat down on the sidewalk and hung out outside. So that’s wha...

“ For example, like, even commercials, there’s that one commercial for the Indian casinos. And my wife loves the song, and she knows it’s actually a singer that’s produced it. And she always thinks about that casino, you know, she doesn’t gamble, but every time she hears that song, it goes back to that feeling like, oh yeah, it’s about the good time. It’s about, you know, gambling, right? So now w...

“ It’s one of the rare things. I know, Jodi, you know it ‘cause you’re, you’re literally like an ambassador of Podfest, but, um, it’s unusual when you share it with people like, ‘hey, the education could be some of the best you’ve ever seen.’ And they’re like, ‘Oh, okay. I hear that all the time.’ It’s like, no, no, no. People prepare all year to showcase what they’ve got at Podfest. So, it is an...

“ So I got involved in YouTube first, uh, in ‘06, and then audio, I got involved in 2012. I started, like, paying attention in 2013, um, the summer of 2013. I really got heavily in podcasting ‘cause I saw the opportunity and what it could do for people. And like you said, I love voice. It’s a much more nuanced form of communication, but it’s so profound ‘cause, right now, um, even today, even thou...

“ All right, so this happens a lot is that brands will be, especially in agencies, they’ll be coming up on a new campaign and they’ll think, ‘Oh well, you know what, this campaign is going to launch at such date, I’ll throw some audio branding on there.’ And then, from the get-go, then they’re thinking about the audio brand as part of the campaign’s messaging, and that is not what you want to do....

“ That’s right, yeah, and to me, that’s one of the most important steps in the whole process is this research, brand assessment. And then you bring that research and assessment to life in the mood board, and that is what allows you to create something that is so customized to this brand, that it only works for this brand.” – Jon Brennan   This week’s guest is a lifelong audio producer who lov...

“ It’s got to look good, sound good, look good if it is video, but it’s got to sound good, good quality audio, good editing, and it’s got to have enough interesting information that people want to talk about what they heard or they have a pivotal moment or an a-ha or it changes their life. So, and that again is why I am so incredibly passionate about podcasting and just, in general, because, I don...

“ I really believe in developing the power of an audio brand as the Nike swoosh, as the Amazon arrow smile. Your audio brand should be as recognizable to your personal brand, to your business brand, however you’re leveraging your audio platform. It should be as good a quality, and people should invest in, and not have it be an afterthought. If you think about what people invest in personal brandin...

“ So put on some good music, especially music with a very steady beat. Every time you have focus, yeah, every time that beat goes, it drips a little bit of dopamine. So that’s another reason why we also can support people with, with their gait, like with walking because we need that little bit of drip of dopamine when we walk. It actually naturally happens. But for people that have a challenge wit...

“ I had a client in the practice that they, well, what they said is, ‘I am disabled because of mental health and PTSD symptoms, and music therapy’s helping me work through many issues very directly in a way that years of talk therapy hasn’t been able to touch.’ For this individual, they had been through years of talk therapy, and for some people, that is very valuable and very helpful, myself incl...

“ I agree that humans will always want to work with humans and that we’re gonna always favor it in a lot of ways, especially because of the spontaneity, the creativity, the vibe. Kids love to use the word vibe, but we want the vibe and AI doesn’t have the vibe. Kids are really good at detecting AI, really good at it…. They pick it out way before their parents. So they’re really tuned into it. So I...

“ With AI coming along, I sort of look at more things being added into the workflow over the last year or so. A lot of it is, like, transcription, but also, ‘how are we gonna title the podcast?’ Show notes being written, I’m a little bit leery of, but it is used to assist in the process to write better show notes. So, I think for a long time, a lot of people have skipped over that, and AI has allo...

“ We typically think about music as a listening experience, playing an instrument, dancing. And I think that’s like a narrow view of seeing, of looking at this concept of music. And that was one of the inspirations. What I wanted to do in this book was to show that there’s another way of thinking about music that’s completely different from this, let’s say, three main ways we think about music. So...

“ When I started researching how music affected all these different parts of the food life cycle, I stumbled upon research about how it changed our perception of taste, how it can make beer taste more bitter or wine have a more full body. So I said, well, I love chocolate, and I stumbled across a food chocolate factory in the middle of Madrid. And I said, well, let’s try it. If there’s so much res...

“ Essentially, what musicians really need to understand is that the power to find success in sync is extremely accessible, and it’s right there in front of them as long as they’re willing to go and get it. There is no gate, right? There’s no gatekeeper. There’s nothing that you have to do or have, and there’s no one you have to know. It’s really just about being willing, and being willing to learn...

“ I think people just kind of were, like, ‘Oh, hi,’ you know. They were supportive, they were nice, and, you know, they could tell I was a kid who had no idea what I was doing but was obviously passionate about music. I do remember one guy, though, telling me to make sure I went to college for something other than music and, at the time, I was like, ‘Okay, I’ll consider that.’ But he was really te...

“ That’s the big problem. That’s the whole thing. You know, if it’s not done right, then it will definitely not be sustainable, it’ll just end up in some drawer after two weeks. And we’ve seen that a thousand times, how these great sounds are made, and then, after a few months, a week, it’s kind of like what happened? It’s just disappeared.’” – Simon Kringel   This episode is the second half...

“ I think we’ve all experienced how sound is kind of a last-minute decision in many creative projects or creative processes... That was actually the whole reason why we formed Unmute, because we thought, ‘Okay, we need to be the adults here and help brands understand the importance of this and the impact it has.’" – Simon Kringel   This episode’s guest is the Sonic Director and co-founder of...

“ AI, at least right now, is really adept at iteration, but not so adept at innovation. So I think it’s really good at augmenting the creative process, yeah, inspiring, but not necessarily great at coming up with something with all the nuances that, again, at a subconscious level, we might pick up on.” -- Steve Keller   This episode is the second half of my conversation with audio researcher,...

“ We should be hearing diverse voices. As I like to say, if the only time we’re hearing voices of color is in advertising to those segments, then we’ve not just segmented those voices, we’ve actually segregated them. So let’s lean into sonic diversity. You’ll create better representation and a better relationship for your brands with those communities at the same time, without having any negative...

“ For all of us, we are gaining our trust, our stability, our hope, our aspirations, our inspirations, all come to us through the medium of sound. Video is important, right? But FDR was able to keep a country from going mad on the brink of fear and concern and anxiety by fireside chats over the radio during the war. And we still look to our presidents today, President Bush during 9/11, was able to...

“ Early on in that we noticed that there are so many people in the blind and visually impaired community that are underrepresented in the respect of entertainment, both as an entertainer and as the consumer. The only products they have are descriptive videos on Netflix or something like that. And so they can’t get the exact same experience as the sighted world when they’re dealing with forms of en...