Audio Branding

“I see in your videos and I hear your, a lot of your episodes and I could tell right away, Jodi, you do have fun. You laugh, you’re laughing right now, you’re smiling. I mean, you’re obviously having fun. And I obviously don’t want to be on a podcast with somebody that has a very straight face and has a monotone voice and is not laughing. I think it depends on what the topic is. Oh yeah, definitel...

“You wanna know the hobbies, they’re part of the psychographics. That’s the lifestyle. And I say this all the time: you’re not going to make any money if you’re a football podcast and you’re marketing yourself to baseball fans. And I say this. You’ve I got people coming to me saying, you know, ‘I have a sports podcast, but I’m not making any money. Why am I not?’ Well, what sports are you talking...

“But you don’t know how that user is going to do it. Are they going to somersault through the entire level? Are they going to climb up a wall and jump down? And are they going to just sit in a corner for a while and then walk three steps and then sit in a corner for a while? You don’t know if somebody is going to, how somebody is going to play. And that’s the beauty. And that’s the draw of video g...

“I didn’t realize it at the time, but that was my first introduction into user experience, right? Like a UX or user experience. It’s exactly that. It’s like I could put a microphone out in a storm and then all I get is like, you know, wind distortion and then the gain dipping every time there’s a thunderclap or something, you know, and it just sounds completely, you know, just different levels of...

“We had an up and coming musician here last week who, he’s being followed around by a Netflix documentary team, but, like, he knows that, like, every day he has to post something, you know, and he was talking about starting a podcast, because it’s another form of content. And I think it's just like one of the easier ways to, like, look into your daily life and make those things interesting.” -- Ro...

“What we did with this product was, we’re trying to give people the benefit of using a mixer without necessarily having to be like the audio professional who went to school. Like, I hear all the time, anytime I meet someone they’re like, ‘Oh, the first board I ever used was a Mackie,’ and, like, we all learned on it. I, you know, we have them in my classrooms.” -- Rob Puzzitiello   This episo...

“Yeah, there’s a real opportunity here. I mean there’s a trend here in the conversation that we talk about the nostalgia and these spots that keep coming back. There’s equity in that. There’s, I mean, the giant equity. Even in a seasonal piece of music. It really is the subjects that we talk about in for what it boils down to this consistency and persistency. And even if you’re you know, Colleen,...

“I was just thinking that humans generally like things that are new, but not that new, and you probably have the familiar tune. And then if you hear something clever, I think the biggest danger is cheesiness. But if you have something clever and, as Adam says, anchored in the brand, if it’s a tongue-in-cheek brand and it’s a tongue-in-cheek lyric, that’ll work and maybe it adds freshness rather th...

“I do believe in independent voices getting heard and elevated throughout the world, and I don’t feel that there’s a lot of mediums anymore where we have that opportunity. But podcasting, to me, is the ultimate solution right now for getting a voice heard and elevated throughout the world, that it can really change somebody’s life. I’ve had stories from listeners. I have a lot of friends that have...

“Usually my podcast, I’d say, I probably say eight months of the year, it has no advertisement at all. But that way, when I do place it in, it’s on every single episode, and it’s there just for a short time to really pique someone’s interest, cause they’re like ‘This is different. What is this?’" “Yeah, that’s a really good option. Yeah, I like the dynamic insertion at the very beginning too, beca...

“Also, because nobody listened to these sounds, even the nurse that should be paying attention. They really, they got used to this kind of droning sensation." "You have to tune it out." "Yes, yes, and imagine the mental load to do that, to tune out these kinds of sounds, and, of course, imagine the poor people that are in the hospital as a patient as well." -- Andrea Cera   This episode’s the...

“I don't know if in Canada or in the States the sounds are different, but here, Toyota, for instance, is very abstract, high-pitched, it's a bike or like 'peeeeee,' like this, for instance. The Renault is more reassuring, more warm, it's welcoming, it's a little bit more, you know, it's less cold than other sounds." "Sure, yeah. Well, I guess maybe if it doesn't focus specifically on the sound of...

“My now retired business partner, who was the head composer for this company for years and years and years, he put that perfectly, and he said, I remember he talked to a young composer. He said, ‘Look, at the end of the day, it’s the difference between art and craft,’ said, ‘when you’re making your own music and you’re doing your own thing, it’s art, it’s art for you. You’re the artist and you’re...

“I would just play these crazy ‘80s drum beats and then I’d play on top of it and it was like the coolest thing ever. So it always became this really important thing to me too, and I couldn’t describe it in any way professionally at all. I mean, I was just a kid. But I was thinking about this like, I don’t know. I assumed some kids were, like, super into BMX bikes or something. Like, this was like...

“But if it’s a narrator, which it is, like, 90% of the time, why would you need to know their gender as long as they’re getting the message across? You wouldn’t be wondering what color shirt they’re wearing, why do you need to know what gender they are? So I’m really pleased that the industry is heading in this direction, and I’m even more pleased that clients have so far been very receptive to it...

“Loyalist College, they have their own marketing people, they had just done a visual rebrand, so it was the perfect time for a sonic – not even a rebrand, they never had any kind of sonic strategy. So that was very exciting. And they had this new young marketing team too, and they were really receptive to new ideas, and they had this agency on board that had done their visual rebrand and their ove...

“One of my clients said, you know, he literally stopped doing gigs for free or for a low pay because he was able to just stand in his body and realize that some part of his inner body was saying to him ‘you're worth more than this.’ And so he was able to hear that within himself, and it helped really shift that mindset, and so now, he said, ‘I'm doing way better gigs and I'm always saying ‘this is...

“It’s part of it, but the deeper part is truthful, authentic, safe, safe to express yourself, and I think that’s the biggest problem in this, you know, one of the biggest problems in the world. [It’s] that people don’t feel free to express themselves, to truly express who they are or what they want to say.” -- Danielle Soccio   This episode’s guest is an accomplished singer and performing art...

“I feel like people are just becoming more and more repelled by that and so I think the days of companies being more personal and accessible, and ‘I want to hear what you sound like, I want to know who you are before I sign a contract with you, before I do business with you,’ I don’t think it’s going anywhere. I think, if anything, it’s going to deepen. I think people think about branded podcasts...

“It just feels better to listen to somebody who sounds good. It just does, you know? And there’s all kinds of articles you can read about the psychology: you sound smarter when you sound better, you sound more trustworthy when you sound better. So it’s not about manipulating people.” -- Molly Ruland   My next guest is the CEO and founder of Heartcast Media, a digital content agency focused on...

“You know, 'do you have any advice for me?' And I say, 'Yeah go write one hundred bad songs. Go finish them. Because that's going to do way more for your career, even though you think they're like really bad songs.' I'm like, 'yep, you got to get through those to write the one that's going to actually start a fire for you. I'm not saying you have to put them out, you know. Just go write them. Go g...

“I just want to try to take a more thoughtful, mindful approach to helping artists think for themselves and become self-sustaining. Because the industry is going to change. The things we’re talking about right now are going to be either way more relevant or way less relevant ten years from now.  But I want you to be able to gain the tools and frameworks for kind of going through and saying ‘H...

“So a lot of times they feel like they have to pack this thing with so much dense information. I'm like, dude, you have 30 minutes and you have three of those to hook somebody and you still need to leave a little bit for Q&A. You still need to leave a little bit for engagement. So if you're not going to answer everybody's question about something highly technical in the span of a podcast or th...

“And I carried that into engineering in college and was going to go into computers, but then kind of got into robotics. But through all of that, I was still doing college radio. And again, that was like backdoor access to, ‘Hey, can I use the studio in the off hours? Can my band record our CD here in the summer when the stations technically shut down?’ And then that got me into, well, I’m on-air t...

“So I think that when people can get that one word that hits them in the heart and in the gut, that’s what makes a good podcaster. When it’s just information, it’s information. And that’s where we often think, well, ‘I’ll just read the blog.’ You know, ‘I’ll go get a book on that.’ ‘I’ll look it up.’ You know, ‘I’ll just do a Google search and find it.’ But if someone is adding something to it tha...