Discover the science behind why podcasts are such a terrific tool for driving brand engagement.
For more tips, tools and inspiration, visit www.jutecreative.com
Here are some of the links mentioned in this piece:
Neuro-Insight - BBC StoryWorks study
https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/worldnews/2019/audio-activated
IAB study: Recommendations for Marketers in a Screenless World
https://www.iab.com/insights/recommendations-in-a-screenless-world/
Neuro-Insight
https://www.neuro-insight.com/
Simplecast
The Science of Podcasts for Brand Engagement
If you’re a brand or business hoping to reach a podcast listener, look no further than the average living room… or the local gym. Oh, and you’ll find us in our cars, too.
Of the 62 million people in the U.S. who listened to a podcast in the last week, most tuned in while they were doing something else. So they’re distracted and unengaged listeners?Not so fast. I’m Gretchen Kilby, a podcast producer and editor and your host for this episode of the Jutecast. In this first of a two-part series we’ll explore how podcasts are uniquely suited to build engagement with your business or brand.
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Marketing 101 says if you want to reach an audience, you need to go where they are. And according to a recent report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau, a quarter or U.S. households have chose to cut back on screen time. That number jumps to almost 45% in households with young children. But aided by the arrival of this lady (“My name is Siri”) and others like her, they’re not cutting back on listening. According to Edison Research, the average podcast listener currently spends 17 hours a week listening to podcasts.
So what makes listening so compelling? Research shows that people process sound faster than any other sense, and that sound influences emotion. But what is so unique about the podcast format? To answer that, I decided to start in an unexpected place: the human brain.
Pranav Yadav: So it’s funny that … we’re talking about decoding podcasts on a podcast.
Gretchen: (laugh) Yeah.
That’s Pranav Yadav the CEO of Neuro-Insight in New York City. His agency uses brain imaging to analyze when and how consumers relate to various forms of advertising.
Pranav Yadav: 80-90% of decisions that everybody makes take place in the subconscious. Some claim it’s 95%. So if I were to ask you questions around why you picked a particular brand of shampoo or the clothing that you wore today, you would have perfectly rational answers as to why you did those things, but those are not the reasons why you did those things.
The reasons are more likely tied to emotion, or how and when you learned the name of that shampoo. And even though you don’t know why, your brain does. So that’s where Yadav and his team look.
Pranav Yadav: Whatever your target demographic is, we’ll go out and recruit them. They’ll wear a headset. That’s how we record the second-by-second electrical activity as they experience the stimulus…
As the recruits watch a TV ad or listen to a podcast, the headset tracks what part of the brain registers activity and when.
Pranav Yadav: That’s how we then go back and decode how people are perceiving content. What is it that they like? What is that they’re committing to memory? What is relevant to them?
In a study for BBC Story Works, Yadav and his team found a group who self-identified as “ad avoiders.” They had the recruits listen to a branded podcast that had seven brand mentions. Brain imaging during listening paired with a survey about podcast listening habits led to a major insight about what makes podcasts special. Remember when I told you at the beginning that most people listen to a podcast when they’re doing something else? Turns out, that’s an ideal setting to get a listener’s attention. Yadav walks me through how it works.
Pranav: Have you ever been on the street and have someone come up to you and try to sell you something?
Me: Oh, sure.
Pranav: What’s your typical reaction to that?
Me: Well, usually I’m not interested.
Pranav: Exactly. You are structured because of years of training and being bombarded with sales messages and other kinds of sales tools to put your barriers up the moment you realize that someone is trying to sell something to you. So when you’re in a situation where you’re actively focusing on something else and then this message is delivered on the side, you’re no longer going to hit barriers that you may have put up had you been perceiving that content exclusively as the content you were receiving.
This is known as the “under the radar effect.” In Yadav’s BBC study, the test group ranked higher on levels of engagement with the brand, emotional intensity (or reaction), and long-term memory of the brand; that’s compared to advertising delivered in a TV ad. And brand mentions actually stood out from the podcast content, with awareness up almost 90% and favorability toward the brand up 57%. Yadav is quick to point out that active listening can also produce these outcomes.But it’s key that distracted listeners aren’t a problem-- brand messages still break through and also have an impact.
So we know how people are listening and that they’re retaining and engaging with what they hear. But there’s more.
I reached out to Dane Cardiel, Director of Partnerships at Simplecast for the next stop on our podcast de-coding journey. Simplecast is a hosting and analytics platform for podcasts.
Dane Cardiel: Brands who might be accustomed to these millions of impressions via web traffic and social media really have some learning to do when it comes to a download metric. We’re talking about a really engaged audience when compared to someone who is just scrolling through Twitter.
Download numbers or subscribers don’t necessarily correspond to the actual number of people who are listening. Simplecast can track unique listeners and listening habits.And it’s that last data point Cardiel finds more compelling.
Dane Cardiel: By and large people are completing full episodes upwards of 40, 60, 120 minutes, so that’s a lot of attention. It’s completely different to maybe the video format where brands are trying to capture 60 seconds or 30 seconds.
So you have listeners willing to give you an hour to two hours of their time. Most won’t give that kind of time to just any podcast, though. Listeners crave interesting conversations and creative and authentic storytelling. And that takes us back to marketing 101. Or actually even further back.
Pranav Yadav: Providing a narrative structure to deliver an important message is something we’ve actually known for thousands of years…
Again, Neuro-Insight’s Pranav Yadav:
Pranav Yadav: … and an ad, or a great creative, or a great podcast with brand integration is nothing but that, creating story, a narrative structure that a person engages with.
How are brands and businesses harnessing storytelling in their podcasts? Tune in for the second part of our Jutecast series on podcasts, where we’ll hear about several companies that have tapped into podcasts in very different ways.
Carrie Roso: I think what we wanted to do was help people learn and grow through shared experiences and conversations.
I’m Gretchen Kilby. Thanks for listening.