Audible has introduced an analysis tool which will measure how many times a podcast has been downloaded, whether it was listened to and for how long. The company will charge three cents per download for basic service. Also offered, for five cents per download, are tools to disallow a podcast from being emailed to others, presumably to make sure every listen is counted from the source. For half a cent per download, the service will insert relevant ads in the podcast. Measurement will occur when the MP3 player is synced with podcast software.
Smartly not attempting to launch a podcast about the latest and greatest washing machine, Whirlpool has launched a podcast series about the American family which will "explore a range of issues affecting today's families including but not limited to parenting, education, career, health and relationships." Recent topics include life a a stay-at-home Dad, caring for an older parent, teaching values to pre-schoolers, choosing the right daycare, being blind in America, playdates (that's when kids play with each other for you non-parents and others who can't stand today's overly invented parental-speak), raising teens and tweens and Naval spouses (no, not spouses with a belly button fetish but those who are in the Navy - those military people on ships.)
Nice subject matter. Far better than listening to someone drone on about the latest agitator technology.
If you work in advertising or marketing there are two podcasts you should be listening to. The first, American Copywriter, produced by Wichita-based Sullivan Higdon & Sink creative team John January and Tug McTighe is like hanging with an insightful creative team as they riff about what's right and wrong with the industry, interview adver-celebs, skewer really bad creative, heap praise on great work, banter about pop culture and admire the return of the Doublemint twins. The chemistry between the two is flawless with each one bouncing perfectly off the other.
The second, Across the Sound, produced by Jaffe LLC President Joseph Jaffe and CooperKatz & Company Client Services VP Steve Rubel, is more structured and fact-filled than American Copywriter with podcast episodes broken into segments such as a wrap up of current news and trends called Podbits, a summary of topics blogged by Joe and Steve called What We're Blogging About, a Theme of the Week section and a Winners and Losers section that examines the past week's successes and failures. The chemistry between Joe and Steve is a bit different, perhaps because they are sitting, literally, across the Long Island Sound while recording the podcast while John and Tug, who have worked together for years, are in the same room while recording.
Each podcast approaches its coverage differently but the two, together, make the perfect combination of audio information about current advertising and marketing news, issues, trends and opinion. Both should be listened to, without fail, each week.
To promote its UK website, podcast and blog, Playboy has launched a a viral which, while containing no nudity, might raise your blood pressure a bit if you use your imagination.
A couple weeks ago, Talent Zoo launched The Naked Career, a podcast interview series hosted by Sally Hogshead. This week, Sally's guest will be Nancy Vonk, the woman who took on Neil French after his less than kind comment about women in advertising. Without a male in the mix, it's sure to be a man bashing podcast but let's hope common sense prevails.
The two will explore how men and women are better at certain things, the apparent lack of female leadership in advertising, how childcare fits into the picture, sexism in the workplace and how women can be more successful in both career and motherhood. The podcast will release November 2.
Talent Zoo announced the launch of Radio Talent Zoo, a network of podcasts concentrating on the communications industry. The first show on this new network will be "The Naked Career," a weekly show hosted by Sally Hogshead, a creative director and author of Radical Careering: 100 Truths to Jumpstart Your Job, Your Career, and Your Life. (whay are business book titles so long?) The first show will be available Wednesday, October 19, on TalentZoo.
Sally will be interviewing some of the industry's "influential and powerful" executives. They tells us this isn't your typical, lame question-and-answer session, but a much more "naked" look at the career of each of these industry leaders. Lance Jensen, world class creative and founder of Modernista!, is Sally's first guest. Each show will be approximately 15 minutes in length, and a new interview will be available every Wednesday via podcast.
You can also catch Sally on the fantastic American Copywriter podcast. Give it a listen as John January and Tug McTighe marvel over Sally's beauty and aspiring creative career.
On Tuesday, October 18 at 9AM, I'll be moderating a panel at BlogOn in New York. The panel is called "Can Advertising Be Social." On this panel, the panelists, who include Organic CEO Mark Kingdon, Unilever Brand Development Director David Rubin, Jaffe LLC Founder Joe Jaffe and I hope to discuss the relationship between social media and advertising - the ways in which people have entered what has now become a two-way conversation rather than the former one-way, marketer to consumer bullhorn approach.
It should be an interesting and, hopefully, informative discussion. There's blogs, chat rooms, forums, IM, Wikis, podcasting, social networks and innumerable other methods with which consumers can achieve a voice as powerful and widespread as marketers.
As examples of this newfound consumer voice, there's Jeff Jarvis who, following a bad experience with a Dell computer, took on Dell publicly forcing Dell to respond. Unfortunately, it wasn't much of a response. There's George Masters, a teacher who created a professional looking iPod commercial which raced around the globe. Smartly, Apple took a hands off approach. There's Converse who asked people to submit films about Chuck Taylors. There's Mercedes who encouraged people to send in photos of themselves with their Mercedes which were ultimately featured in the company's ad campaign. The examples go on. People have become socially active with their brand experiences, good and bad, and the level of activity is forcing marketers to join the conversation and, forever, putting aside old methods of controlling it.
Indeed, marketing is in for the ride of its life.
An early believer in blogging and podcasting, GM, a while back, created Fastlane, a blog written by GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz and other GM top executives. Today, Lutz has produce his first podcast in which he talks about "the realities of today's market for full-size sport utility vehicles with host Bill O'Neill, GM executive director of communications." It's encouraging to see executives at this level in large companies engaging in these two new, but very powerful media.
Bob Cefail and Laura Betterly, Chairman and CEO of In Touch Media Group have fired radio station 1340 WTAN in Clearwater, the station that hosts their business The Profit Doctors radio show because, apparently, the station had disabled the 1-800 call in number, an integral part the the show. In the meantime, the show, thanks to the rise of podcasting, will continue to be aired from their website, a move that, about a year ago, would have been inconceivable. Sure, no one's ever heard of Cefail and Betterly but that's irrelevant. What's very relevant is the rise of another medium that could potentially give radio a bit of competition.
Marketing consultant and author of Life After the 30 Second Spot Joe Jaffe along with CooperKatz & Company VP Client Services Steve Rubel have launched Across the Sound, a weekly podcast on marketing, new media and public relations. The two are already very vocal in marketing circles with Jaffe publishing the Jaffe Juice weblog and Rubel publishing the Micropersuasion weblog.
The first podcast discussed the FedEx furniture guy, agencies hiring bloggers and marketing winners and losers of the week. The second podcast will cover product placement.
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