Author: Lasting Media

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STYLE GUIDE: A Detailed Breakdown

Nashville Web Services | Design, SEO, Email Marketing, Ads Management

Netflix. Spotify. Instagram. Starbucks. Airbnb

What do these have in common? Probably nothing, you might say. But you can’t deny the fact that while reading each of these names, their logos, colors, and fonts flashed right in front of you. So, they do have one thing in common, that is, they stand out due to their unique brand identity.

In this rapidly growing digital world, for any business to scale up globally, it is pivotal that they position their brand in a way that leaves a mark on the viewers. A brand’s true success comes not only through its sales and profits but also from how deeply its identity is etched in people’s minds.

Customers get attracted to brands that are consistent in their positioning across different platforms. One of the best ways to build a strong brand is to have a Style Guide that not only defines the crucial aspects of a brand but also makes it easier when someone wishes to replicate it.

What Is a Style Guide?

A Style Guide is a document or a reference sheet that has details about a company’s logo, colors, fonts, visual images, icons, and illustrations which are to be used consistently across different digital platforms uniformly.

Most businesses these days have a digital presence with creative teams working on it. Having a brand guideline or, simply put, rules set for positioning and expressing the brand identity makes it easier for the creative teams to adhere to the brand style. A style guide has all the elements that define a brand which helps in keeping the brand appearance consistent across multiple digital channels.

Concisely put, a style guide is a reference document that absorbs your brand entity to make it more user-friendly and easy to recreate.

Huge businesses that have a global audience have detailed brand style guides in comparison to the smaller ones.

Let’s look at some of the well-known elements present in a style guide.

Elements in a Style Guide

1. Brand Logo

The style guide should enlist the different variations of your brand logo across different products and verticals. So much so that even a slight change in the logo should make users recognize it. Along with the different variations in which the logo can be used, it is also advised to have a list of variations that are not to be used in order to maintain the brand position.

Example:

There would hardly be a soul on this planet who does not recognize this logo – APPLE. Though they might change the size of the logo across different products, the color and style remain the same.

2. Color Palette

A color palette defines the color schemes, including primary and secondary colors that reflect your brand and supports the purpose of your site. Including it in the style guide explains how it is to be used with anything associated with your brand. This will help your team to keep your brand identity consistent across different channels.

3. Name of the Business

A brand will mention the different variations of names that its team can use to represent it publicly. Having a predefined set of names helps the business in mitigating the risk of creating confusion among its consumers. As a result, the style guide must contain the business name and its variations, along with guidelines for proper usage.

Example:

Customers often confuse the brand name with the business name, believing that both are the same. This can be explained with the example of the Ford Mustang. Ford Motor Co. is the parent company of many car brands. Within each brand family, there are sub-brands, such as the Ford Mustang and Ford Focus. While the brand name appears on products, the business name is used to carry out administrative tasks.

4. Textures & Patterns

Textures and patterns act as supporting elements in your style guide which can be used to enhance the content, style, and tone of your brand. Placing them in your style guide can help in keeping your visual identity intact when using them on your web pages or social media posts.

5. Typography

Literally speaking, typography in branding deals with sustaining a parity between the use of text and the visual form of a page. Typography is not just about creating visually appealing text but also about enabling the message of a brand to be spread evenly.

Typography in your style guide includes text formatting guidelines for the font name, font style, font size, and font color used for headings, subheadings, and body text, as well as detailed guidelines for punctuation and capitalization. Aside from text formatting, paragraph and page formatting should also be mentioned because they have a significant impact on the quality of the textual content.

Example:

The multi-billionaire eCommerce company, Amazon, does provide the most comprehensive guide when it comes to typography.

There is one font that represents all Amazon products and services: Amazon Ember. Amazon Ember Display is also the primary typeface for Alexa, while Bookerly is used for hint text.

Below you can see the typography guidelines of the Amazon Echo brand:

6. Editorial Style Guide

An editorial style guide is that part of a style guide where comprehensive language and grammar guidelines are mentioned. It enlists the writing style, writing rules, grammar, strategy, and content type.

Example:

Here is one of the most renowned editorial style guides published: Microsoft Writing Style Guide:

7. Design Elements

This is a repository of all the design elements like illustrations, visuals, and photographs that a brand uses in positioning itself. Many brands rely on illustrations and photographs for their websites to add visual appeal to their users. Including these design elements in your style guide can help your creative team to maintain that visual consistency across all channels.

8. Icons

In order to present your brand consistently across all platforms, it is essential to ensure that you’re using a predefined set of icons for your brand. A set of icons could be anything from a well-known collection, or you can even define a customized one. Some examples of those well-known sets of icons are:

  • Duotone Icons
    Duotone icons are icons that are created using two colors; Primary Color is the one that takes up the major part of the icon, and Secondary Color is the one that complements it.
  • Outlined Icons
    Simple and clean, outlined icons are popular for their lightweight and minimalist look. They don’t have any color fill and are created with just a single colored border to form the shape.

9. Button Formats

Buttons might be the smallest part of a brand strategy but will definitely make a huge difference if tampered with or do not match the brand position. For instance, if you’ve defined a set of rules which showcase how your button should look or work when interacted with, then it’s crucial to mention those rules within your brand style guide, so it becomes easier to understand and follow them while developing/redesigning your website.

Example:

If we take a look at Spotify’s interface, they provide uniformity in how their buttons act when hovered upon; the important ones get a bit zoomed in, while the secondary ones get highlighted. Including these little details in your style guide helps keep track of them.

spotify desgin

Winding Up!

With the creator economy booming currently, there is no doubt that content creation is going to rule for a long time. For your brand to grow online, it is essential to have an effective content creation strategy, and a style guide can prove helpful in making it effective in an easy and simple way.

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5 Reasons Brands Shouldn’t Sleep on Co-Listening

Below is a landmark co-listening study conducted by Carat and Edison Research—and the results are even better for brands! Let’s get into the five key learnings for marketers in the audio space.

Whether you listen to SiriusXM with your family in the car, throw on Pandora when you’re hosting a backyard BBQ with friends, or choose the perfect comedy podcast to listen to while you prep dinner with your partner, chances are you regularly share audio experiences with others. For brands, that means ads reach—and influence—more listeners. It’s the co-listening factor, which is significantly undercounted in the face value of digital audio.

Thanks to the landmark study conducted by Carat and Edison Research back in 2018, we already know co-listening is a common activity, one that media plans and campaign reports are unable to capture. But is it just us, or does 2018 already feel like a few lifetimes ago? It was time to update that data for Pandora to see where things stood. And this time, they threw podcasts into the mix to uncover first-to-market data on co-listening for this ever-growing medium.

For this year’s study, the A-team of Edison Research and Carat got back together to revisit and refresh the topic. Leveraging the same national online diary study methodology, they increased their sample size to 1,850 Americans ages 13 and older to allow them to dive into both Pandora and podcast listeners.

Let’s get into the five key learnings—and reasons brands shouldn’t sleep on co-listening—from the new study to contextualize just how important co-listening is for marketers in the audio space.

1. Pandora’s Co-Listening Factor is Bigger than Ever
The 2018 study showed us that listeners often have shared audio experiences with Pandora, but, with so many changes in the past few years, we had no idea if or how co-listening has shifted.

They found that just under 4 in 10 Pandora listeners reported any co-listening in their diary day, which is quite consistent with the original study. Looking at who is most likely to co-listen, women, Hispanic Americans, adults 35-54, and parents are more likely to listen with others–almost 6 in 10 parents 25-54 co-listen to Pandora!

Where we did see an incredible shift was in Pandora’s co-listening factor, which factors in how many people are listening at a given time. This new study found that for every 100 paid advertising impressions purchased on Pandora, advertisers receive 52 additional impressions from co-listening. This represents an impressive 15-point increase from 2018.

2. Podcast Co-Listening is Emerging, and May Surprise You
Compared to 2018, podcasts now account for a much greater (and still growing) share of both consumers’ media time and brands’ advertising budgets. Podcasts are traditionally thought of as a solitary activity and there isn’t much data available on what co-listening frequency and behaviors look like there, so we knew that adding them to the study would be valuable data for the marketplace.

We learned that 12% of podcast listeners reported any co-listening during their diary day, and while this is unsurprisingly lower than Pandora co-listening, it’s likely a higher number than most would expect. Women, Hispanic Americans, and parents are more likely to co-listen here as well–1 in 5 parents 25-54 who listen to podcasts do so with others.

When factoring in how many people are listening at a given time, we are now able to share the first-ever co-listening factor for podcasts. We found that for every 100 paid advertising impressions purchased on podcasts, advertisers receive 5 additional impressions from co-listening, which is not trivial.

3. The Car Now Leads for Co-Listening, but the Home is Still Key
While the home was the top location for Pandora co-listening in the original study, this year’s results show the car moving into the #1 position. Just under half of those who listened to Pandora in the car on their diary day were listening with others, up +4 points from 2018. Not only does the car lead for streaming audio co-listening, it came in the #1 position for podcasts as well—16% of those who listened to podcasts in the car on their diary day were listening with others.

Despite the car’s lead in co-listening, the home is still crucial for shared audio experiences. Four in 10 Pandora listeners and 13% of podcast listeners who listened in the home during their diary day were doing so with others. The home is really the cornerstone of our daily lives, and audio is a constant companion that can be our soundtrack, whether we’re listening alone or with others, but more on that later.

Apart from location, we also dug into shared listening by device types. For Pandora, connected devices like smart speakers, connected TVs, and game consoles continue to lead in co-listening–almost half of those who listened to Pandora on connected devices were doing so with others. We did see an interesting shift in mobile; while smartphones are a great device for solo use, they also power shared listening experiences. In fact, over 4 in 10 who listened to Pandora on mobile were listening with others, up by +11 points from 2018. For podcasts, mobile devices came out on top for co-listening.

4. Co-Listening Powers Both Everyday Moments and Special Occasions
Audio content is the perfect companion to our everyday routines, whether we’re listening alone or with others. Given its flexibility and accessibility, digital audio is ripe for multi-tasking moments.

In addition to powering these everyday moments, co-listening enhances special occasions. Over 3 in 4 Pandora listeners say they co-listen to audio during holidays, over 7 in 10 co-listen during road trips, and over half co-listen during outdoor or indoor social gatherings. These are memorable moments for listeners, and audio is a key element that enriches those memories. 5. Co-Listening Is a Positive Space for Listeners and Brands Alike It’s clear from the factors shown above that co-listening is valuable for brands in extending reach–but there is so much more to the story than simply hitting additional ears. Beyond the numbers, the mindsets and moods of listeners during these shared audio moments is important to keep in mind. While listening with others, people feel a host of positive emotions, with relaxed, happy, entertained, productive, and carefree topping the list. We have long known that audio is a great mood-booster for listeners, and that’s great news for brands in this space, as listeners are more receptive to advertising when they are in positive moods. In addition to mood-boosting, people listen to audio with others for a variety of reasons, whether that’s to set a specific vibe, to spend quality time together, or to share content they love with their loved ones. The excitement of sharing music and podcasts you love with others transcends all genres. On the Pandora side, top co-listening genres are pop, alternative, classic rock, hip hop, and R&B. For podcasts, the top genres for co-listening are comedy, news and information, true crime, history, and science. Podcasts aren’t just a great source of knowledge and learning, they’re also a growing form of pure entertainment, where friends, partners, and families alike can turn for shared laughs. Offering unique opportunities both in quantity—incremental reach, anyone?—and in quality—cherished moments and positive mindsets—co-listening should be music to every brand’s ears!

Ready to reach more listeners?
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How podcast listeners hit the advertising “sweet spot”

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Podcast listening has now mainstreamed to the point where no matter who is in an advertiser’s target, that audience can be found, as is shown by the annual Infinite Dial® survey sponsored by Wondery and Art19.

But where does podcasting most ‘over-deliver’? When it comes to age, the podcasting audience is strongest right in so many advertisers’ sweet spot: 18-44 year-olds.

The graph below shows the U.S. population for those age 12 and older on the left and the composition of weekly podcast listeners on the right.

Interestingly, among the seven age-breaks represented in the graph, they break out as follows:

  • Index lower for podcast listening compared to population: 55-64s and 65-and-older
  • Index at par: 12-17-year-olds and 45-54s
  • Index higher for podcast listening compared to population: 18-24s, 25-34s, and 35-44s
  • While the population of those age 12 and over that is between 18 and 44 is 41% of the total, it makes up 58% of all podcast listeners. So not only is podcast advertising effective, if your target is 18-44 year-olds, it is extremely efficient as well.
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A surprisingly small number of podcasts are still in production

Small Number of Podcasts

Spotify recently announced it has 4.4 million podcasts on its platform. This intel was one of the few podcast-related numbers released in their quarterly report, which is troubling for many reasons. There was no specific data about the number of people listening to podcasts or other goodies. Last quarter, they told Amplifi Media 7% of all listening on the platform was to podcasts. This time, Spotify went for the biggest stat they could find: 4.4 million. While impressive in size, this number is hollow.

We all hear there are millions of podcasts, but a surprisingly small number of them are still in production. Almost half are abandoned after just a few episodes. Call it a by-product of Covid-19 or the reality that creating good content is hard.

Findings From April 2021

A year and a half ago, right in the middle of the pandemic, Amplifi Media took a deep dive into the big pile of podcasts to learn more. At the time, Apple Podcasts had roughly two million podcast titles. With more than a hunch that many of them were inactive, Amplifi Media joined forces with the perceptive Podnews.net editor James Cridland and put on their x-ray glasses. They produced a pair of posts that found that despite everyone repeating this comment, you’re really not competing against 2 million podcasts.

At the time, 44% had produced three or fewer episodes. That removed 880,000 of the two million podcasts right away. Then they focused on podcasts that had produced ten or more episodes and came up with 720k. By the time they drilled down to podcasts with ten or more episodes and a fresh one produced in the past week, they were down to 8% of the two million, or 156,000.

What’s Happening Today

Amplifi Media decided to take a fresh look and see where things stand today. The chart below compares the ratio of podcast titles produced from April 2021 and late July 2022, according to The Podcast Index.

Key Takeaways

Many of the results they found raised more than an eyebrow, but one finding blew them (and us) away— despite the large growth in podcast titles, the number of podcasts that have produced 10 or more episodes and produced an episode in the past week stayed the same as last year. Out of the big pile of 4 million podcasts on Podcast Index, only 155,764 met the criteria. That’s just under 4% of all the podcasts available.

Even with the growth of new podcasts, only 1,338,631 (32%) of shows have published ten or more episodes. Translation: most podcasts have not produced a lot of content.

Is it head spinning that relatively, so few hit these thresholds? Yes and no. Podcasts come in different flavors and varieties. Many are short run series of just a few episodes, some are less prolific producers, some are seasonal. That said, the big enchilada: nearly half started a podcast and quickly stopped after fewer than 3 episodes.

Other Noteworthy Findings:

·      47% of podcasts produced 3 or fewer episodes. Even with the doubling of podcasts in this study, the percent of “3 episodes and done” podcasts remains relatively the same as our last x-ray.  Last time it was 44%, now 47% (1,905,090)

·      12% of podcasts have been updated in the last 90 days. Of the 4 million titles in Podcast Index, 12% are fresh in the last 90 days. (475,529)

·      8% of podcasts have been updated in the last 30 days. Of the 4 million titles in Podcast Index, 8% are fresh in the last 30 days. (325,141)

·      7% of podcasts with over ten episodes have been updated over the last 30 days. The last 30 days is less rigor than the “past week” criteria shared above, and yet only 7% of this more “core” group has been recently updated. (282,444)

·      Comparing Apple(s) to Apples(s) – Out of curiosity, they looked at Apple Podcasts data from Podcast Industry Insights too. Despite a 20% increase (2m to 2.4m) in podcasts on the Apple platform from April 2021 to late July 2022, the percentage of shows that produced one, three or fewer, or ten or more episodes remains consistent with last year’s analysis. The numbers reflect the same trend as The Podcast Index’s larger base.

Putting These Numbers In Context

The 155,000 podcasts that produced 10 or more episodes and dropped an episode in the past week may seem small in relation to the universe of all podcasts created (and still available). Thinking about this in terms of other media might put it in perspective.

There were 559 new scripted shows on cable, streaming and broadcast outlets last year. 74,000 new audiobook tiles were published. Some were hits and others missed the mark. So, looking at the 4% of podcasts that met their criteria might seem like a deflating number when contrasting to Spotify’s hollow 4.4 million announcement, it still results in a fantastic amount of variety and choice of content.

 “The Podcast Index data is a goldmine for analysis like this, says Mr. Cridland. Even though it removes some dormant shows automatically, it still shows that there are a lot of great podcasts out there that have run their course and aren’t being produced any more. The most popular podcasts are produced to a consistent schedule, and released every day or every week. Those are your real competition.”

True that.

Good content in any form is hard to create and harder to sustain.  These numbers really bear this out. Next time, someone says “but there are over 4 million podcasts out there,” show them this sobering post. They might feel better, or worse.

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How brands can use Connected TV to reach the right audiences

Nashville Digital Marketing Company | Branding, Graphics & Online Ads
Making marketing decisions on how and where to spend your budget is always a challenge. With the uncertain state of the economy, companies feel even more pressure to focus on expenditures that bring the best return. Where should they increase spending? Where should they pull back?Brands are increasingly considering connected TV (CTV) as an option to reach consumers. With traditional linear TV use declining and an increase in the number of consumers using CTV devices, how can companies harness these two trends to reach fragmented audiences?

CTV Spending Increases as Traditional TV Spending Declines

CTV is growing. According to Nielsen, CTV content reached almost 142 million adults across the country each week in 2021. And, the number of devices purchased is steadily increasing. If your audience isn’t looking at their phones, there’s a good chance they’re looking at their connected TV device.

The numbers back this up. There are now more than 1.1 billion CTV devices in use worldwide. Subscriptions to streaming services reached 1.1 billion globally, a 26% year-over-year growth.

Meanwhile, a growing number of people – 79% of U.S. households – watch ad-supported and paid streaming services. Further, the global smart TV market demand was measured at 268.9 million units in 2020 and is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20.8% from 2021 to 2028.

Given this data, it stands to reason that more brands are considering adding CTV advertising to their marketing mix. The appeal of TV ads is undeniable. They’re shown on a big screen, are longer in duration, are sound-on – and are offered in a premium, high-trust environment. However, traditional TV advertising has always been untouchable unless a brand has a big budget. Now, with ad-supported streaming TV reaching a meaningful scale, new categories of brands can take advantage of its strengths.

How to Get Started with CTV Advertising

The CTV trend is catching on at an economic moment when budgets are tightening. Yet, while brands and agencies understand the importance of taking advantage of the power of CTV advertising in its early stages, they may feel uncertain about the best way to get started.

Historically, TV as a format has been off-limits to smaller companies, niche industries, and attribution-minded advertisers. Now that CTV is available to all those marketers, the first movers will get the most benefit from this powerful format.

“This is a unique and short-lived moment where first movers really can build a mental moat around their brand in consumers’ minds,” said Aaron Grote, senior director of identity and attribution products at Stirista.

CTV can be a more efficient way to use your budget because it’s much more targeted. CTV ads allow brands to target a specific audience through behavioral attributes, demographics, and location – and track them through detailed analytics. This takes the guesswork out of determining the right network, time slot or show.

Even B2B organizations are getting in on CTV ads, and interest in CTV is growing. Half the B2B marketers surveyed by Stirista earlier this year said it was “highly likely” they would add CTV to their marketing mix in the next 12-24 months (52%). However, nearly one out of two B2B leaders cited a lack of knowledge when it comes to CTV (46%).

As brands get started with CTV ads, it’s always wise to consider tying your goal to the business, not the medium. Determine your business-level KPI, and be sure to ask potential partners how they might approach driving toward and measuring this outcome.

“While channels like paid search can be good at attributing conversions to themselves, often the incrementality of those conversions is low, which means you aren’t getting very much actual growth for that dollar,” says Grote. “This manifests itself as positive-looking marketing dashboards, but less positive company-level metrics.”

CTV combines the power of TV’s format with the addressability and attribution capabilities of digital marketing, as well as the ability to coordinate with other digital channels for sequential messaging and cross-channel frequency management.

“The ability to demonstrate performance through attribution still matters,” Grote said. “Maintain a healthy amount of spend on channels that are good at reaching and converting new prospects and demonstrating their performance through attribution.”

Multiple Devices Equate to More Data

Many CTV users also connect with multiple devices, giving you more data, which can provide a much clearer picture of their preferences. This allows you to target your ads more precisely. Ads that are more personalized resonate more strongly with viewers, meaning more robust engagement and product recall.

“It’s critical to select a partner that understands data and can sift through the millions of data points in any one campaign to identify which points are accurate and useful – versus those that could lead you astray,” Grote said. “Look for a partner that provides radical transparency and highly detailed delivery reporting.”

CTV Helps Brands Reach Key Audiences More Effectively

As brands look for the most effective ways to reach consumers, CTV offers them the opportunity to better target the right audiences for their message. Brands and advertisers of all sizes should consider CTV advertising not only because it’s a growing trend – but because it works.

Interested In Getting Your CTV Campaign Started?

Contact Us today to start reaching more consumers.

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The history of the word ‘Podcast’

Podcast History

How did audio referenced by an enclosure tag in an RSS feed get named? This is a full timeline, showing when, and where, it was used – and who invented the term.

A new medium emerges

As Eric Nuzum discusses elsewhere here, the first audio referenced by an enclosure tag in an RSS feed was published on Jan 20, 2001; with Dave Winer placing one song by the Grateful Dead into a post, as a test.

While the actor and comedian Robin Williams may hold a claim to being the first podcaster, Christopher Lydon is generally held to have the published the first ever original piece of audio referenced by an enclosure tag in an RSS feed on Jul 9, 2003. Here’s the first 60 seconds, via Dave Winer’s website:

The first program to automatically grab an audio show like this, originally called RSS2iPod, was launched by Adam Curry on Oct 12, 2003.

But these audio shows did not have a name. Yet.

‘Podcasting’

Ben Hammersley, a British author and journalist, had been researching RSS and audio for some time, writing Content Syndication with RSS for O’Reilly Media, published in March 2003. In chapter 4.2 of this book, he discussed enclosures in RSS 0.92, and gave an example of an RSS feed with a number of linked audio MP3s.

He was interviewed on Rob and Dana Greenlee’s syndicated Web Talk Radio show on Dec 20, 2003, including a chat about RSS:

In The Guardian, Hammersley turned his attention to the growing use of RSS for the use of audio and radio content, and wrote on Feb 12, 2004:

What to call it? Audioblogging? Podcasting? GuerillaMedia?

He spoke about this piece in a BBC documentary (“Podcasting – The First Ten Years”, Trevor Dann for BBC Radio 4):

That was the first time the word ‘podcasting’ had been seen in print, alongside two other potential words for the medium. In the same piece, Hammersley interviewed Christopher Lydon, who, with Dave Winer, had been producing audio referenced by an enclosure tag in an RSS feed.

Hammersley told Podnews in an email: “It’s a dumb thing I made up in about 5 seconds while trying to pad that article out to make it fit the page, very close to deadline”; but it was the first time ‘podcasting’ had been seen in print: in a national British newspaper with a circulation of 383,000, and one that, later that year, was claimed to be reaching 2.5m US readers alone.

The word didn’t appear to instantly catch on, however. After Hammersley’s initial article, the “podcasting”, or any derivative of it, was not mentioned anywhere else in the media or in blogs for five months.

 

The community takes notice

The next time it was mentioned at all was on Sep 16 2004, when Dannie J Gregoire wrote on the ipodder-dev mailing list:

I can see there being the desire of users in some instances to be able to easily subscribe and get older posts/episodes/shows (what are we calling these things anyway? How about pode or sode for short?) that no longer appear on the rss feed. Right now if for example someone wanted to listen to all the Daily Source Codes back to sode #1, they would have to manually go through the archives and download any sodes not automagically received, somewhat defeating the purpose of an ipodder. Not too much of a problem now but…

…adding…

I guess one could argue that this is simply an rss/server side issue, and that the “podcaster” (yes, I like making up new words) should be responsible enough to offer a page of seperate feeds of old sodes by month/year/season/etc.

Gregoire is credited by Dave Winer, speaking in Guy Kawasaki’s podcast Remarkable People:

Adam had the initial idea for why this made sense at that particular point in time. This was the first meeting that we had, and this goes back to 2000.

He saw me do it, and then he started doing it. And then, I don’t know, by September of 2004, there were twenty or thirty people doing [it], and we needed a name. And so we had a mail list and I asked people, “What should we call this?” And a guy named Dannie Gregoire said, just call it “podcasting.”

And Adam and I were doing a podcast called Trade Secrets, and on that we discussed it. So let’s just go with podcasting, and that’s it.

Guy Kawasaki: That’s how podcasting got named?!

Dave Winer: What did you think? We hired some kind of a market research firm and they did a focus groups and shit? Come on! That wasn’t how it worked!

and by Adam Curry, in Joe Rogan #1436 in March 2020:

And this just kept building and building, and other people started doing these and we call them soliloquies, and little bundles of joy, and all kinds of really dumb names. And Dannie Gregoire, a guy who was just listening, said “Oh, this is a podcast”, and the name stuck.

Now – Ben Hammersley from The Guardian years earlier had actually use the term ‘podcast’ somewhere in an article which – there was no podcasting at the time, but he envisioned that, and called it ‘podcasts’, so…

Joe Rogan: Oh, wow, so he’s the guy – he’s the guy who named it.

Curry: (sigh) He used the term, but I would say Dannie Gregoire really named what we were doing at the time.

While, as can be seen here, Curry’s recollection of the timeline is not accurate – it is fifteen years after the fact, after all – it certainly appears that Gregoire, backed by Curry and Winer, kick-started the term’s popularity.

Gregoire, a blogger, was registering a number of domain names, and registered podcaster.net. According to the WHOIS history of that domain name, he created it, via GoDaddy using his nameservers, on Sep 16 2004.

"domainName": "podcaster.net",
"domainType": "added",
"createdDateRaw": "2004-09-16 15:58:58 UTC",
"nameServers": [
    "NS1.DGREGOIRE.COM",
    "NS2.DGREGOIRE.COM"
],
"registrarName": "GoDaddy.com, LLC"

The first use of ‘podcast’ in a podcast

On Sep 18 2004, Dave Slusher is said to have been the first to have used the word “podcast” in a podcast, Evil Genius Chronicles, and credited (un-named) Gregoire:

Somebody has registered podcasting.net, and I saw podcaster, or podcaster.net and I saw podcaster hitting as a user agent hitting my RSS feed and I went and looked at it and right now it’s just a coming soon page but I’m going to pay attention to that. I want to see who’s got that and what they’re doing but that term, I think they’ve coined the term. So “iPod platform” just doesn’t spring from the tongue but what I’m doing right here, and what Adam [Curry]’s doing, and what Dave Winer’s doing, and what IT Conversations are doing, that’s podcasting. I think that is the term. I am using that from here on out. Y’know, so I am a podcaster, and they are podcasters, and I am podcasting right now, and you listen to my podcast. Fuckin’ A! I’d like to know who this is, because you are one brilliant bastard! Goddamn that’s a good term!

The word catches on

The term was quickly taken up. Adam Curry mentioned podcasting on his blog for the first time on Sep 21 2004; Dave Winer blogged ‘what is podcasting?’ on Sep 24 2004, by Doc Searls, who blogged about podcasts on Sep 28 2004, and Dan Gillmor on Sep 28 2004.

A number of podcast-related websites began to go live in early October, including PodcastAlley.com, live on Oct 7 2004, and the original podcaster.net seems to forward through to podcast.net, which was already live on Oct 9 2004.

As an example that the term was already well-embedded, Todd Cochrane posted the first “Geek News Central Podcast” on Oct 9 2004; and, on the same day, Rob Greenlee posted a comment announcing the new name on the Web Talk Radio Show website. Evo Terra followed on Oct 13, 2004.

The first time the word “podcast” appeared in print (alongside “podcasting”) was on Oct 14 2004 in The Los Angeles Times.

It was then swiftly taken up by The New York Times, on Oct 28 2004; Matt Webb, then working at the BBC as a software developer, used it in an informal announcement on Nov 11 2004; Newsweek used “podcasts” on Dec 2 2004; The UK’s Independent newspaper on Dec 8 2004; Dublin’s Sunday Tribune on Dec 12 2004 (p39, “Radio Head”); and the BBC on Dec 30 2004.

As for Hammersley, on Nov 14, 2004 he released “RadioPod”, a piece of software that recorded radio streams, converted the audio into MP3, and produced an RSS feed for a… podcast.

So, who invented the term?

Ben Hammersley was the first to use the term in print, in a widely-read publication.

Dannie J Gregoire was the person to make the term popular in the community: and it’s very possible that without Gregoire’s use of the term in Sep 2004 – and its enthusiastic use by Adam Curry and Dave Winer – we’d be calling audio referenced by an enclosure tag in an RSS feed something quite different.

 

Ready To Start Your Podcast?

Contact Us today to get started on your podcast journey.
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Why Every Company Should Start a Branded Podcast

Nashville Podcast Studio Rental | Podcast Editing & Video Production

Are you intrigued by the idea of a branded podcast? Wondering whether you should start one for your brand?

Storytelling has been a key component of brand marketing for decades. Companies use stories, culture, education, and entertainment to build their brands, showcase their values, and further their missions. And so, considering the popularity of podcasting, the emergence of the branded podcast is no surprise.

Companies of all sizes are starting their own branded podcasts, either on their own or with the help of the major podcast production companies, such as Lasting Media, Gimlet, Panoply, or Pineapple Street. It’s a powerful way to tell their stories and engage with their fans on a deeper level than blogging and tweets could ever provide.

What exactly is a branded podcast? Are they effective tools to foster your brand? In this article, we’ll explain everything about them, show you some examples, and help you get started.

What is a Branded Podcast?

A branded podcast is a marketing initiative by a brand that’s not strictly promotional, but definitely, ties into the brand’s messaging. These kinds of podcasts exhibit the same storytelling qualities of a typical podcast while aligning with the brand’s mission. In 2018, Fast Company called branded podcasts “the ads people actually want to listen to.”

Lex Friedman, the CRO of Midroll, puts it succinctly:

“No one wants to listen to a 10-episode podcast about how great ZipRecruiter is at finding a job or helping hire the right applicant. But if we can create a show with someone like entrepreneur and author Seth Godin about what it means to be successful and being the most productive person around, that’s going to appeal to exactly the kind of people that ZipRecruiter wants to reach.”

Some branded podcasts are more promotional than others. Inside Trader Joe’s, for example, gives fans a behind-the-scenes look at the store’s history, employees, and operations. The show is entirely about Trader Joe’s, but it produces content that Trader Joe’s shoppers care about: health, sustainability, environmental impact, etc.

Example of a branded podcast.

On the other end of the spectrum, General Electric’s The Message (and it’s sequel Life After) is an eight-part science fiction podcast series that follows a group of cryptographers investigating mysterious transmissions using real technology developed and sold by General Electric. It’s a unique way to bridge the gap between entertainment and GE’s commitment to tackle the world’s biggest challenges.

Another example of a brand running its podcast successfully.

Are Branded Podcasts Effective?

A BBC Global News neuroscience study discovered that branded podcasts are more effective than TV or radio ads. Researchers surveyed 2,500 consumers across four continents and measured their “second-by-second brain activity” while respondents consumed content.

They learned that brand mentions within a branded podcast tended to stand out from the surrounding content, delivering 16% higher engagement and 12% higher memory encoding than the surrounding content. That’s 5% higher than radio. Furthermore, their engagement, emotional intensity, and memory encoding around brand mentions beat TV benchmarks by 22%.

The same study found that this engagement leads to better brand growth the eyes of listeners:

      • 89% higher awareness
      • 57% higher branded consideration
      • 24% higher brand favorability
      • 14% higher purchase intent

What’s the cause of this effectiveness? The same reason many people love podcasts: The intimate and conversational nature of podcasting creates higher engagement and a feeling of closeness to the content. Plus, branded podcasts are a good way to reach people who avoid ads.

But do branded podcasts drive sales? Absolutely!

NPR discovered that 75% of podcast listeners take action in response to a sponsored message on an episode, including branded messaging. Since consumers need to hear messaging 25 to 30 times before taking action, a branded podcast is a perfect opportunity to deliver that messaging without hitting them over the head with advertisements.

Interested in Starting a Podcast for Your Brand?

Our editing and production services are staffed by a complete team of seasoned audio engineers, talented show note writers, and expert producers who can take care of almost every aspect of your podcast. Contact Us today!

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Apple Privacy Update – How That Impacts Your Email Marketing

Nashville Digital Marketing Company | Branding, Graphics & Online Ads

Apple announced the release of a new privacy feature in iOS 15 and Mac OS Monterey. What does this mean? Well, your contacts using Apple Mail now have the option to enable a new feature called Mail Privacy Protection, which will limit the ability to accurately determine:

  • Whether or when an email has been opened
  • Where a contact is located when they open it
  • The type of device and client a contact is using when they open it

This change may affect how marketers measure the success of their email campaigns and how they engage their contacts. Rest assured that even with these changes:

  • Your emails will continue to be delivered to your contacts who use Apple Mail
  • Engagement within an email (click activity and click rate) will still be reported for your contacts who use Apple Mail.

In this article, we’ll answer common questions about how these changes impact you and your email marketing efforts.

How does open tracking work today, and how does Apple Mail Privacy Protection change it?

Currently, with open tracking enabled, Mailchimp (and other providers) places a tiny, transparent image (a single pixel that isn’t visible in the email) into each email campaign. The pixel loads each time the email is opened, which we count and report. Opens help us estimate a contact’s location and time zone, as well as determine device type and email client.

If a contact enables Apple Mail Privacy Protection, Apple Mail will preload pixels, even if your contact hasn’t opened the email, resulting in unreliable open metrics. You will not be able to accurately count opens, estimate location, or determine device type or email client for these contacts. With Apple Mail Privacy Protection enabled, it is likely that all email present in Apple Mail will be reported as “opened” regardless of the contact’s activity, resulting in inflated and inaccurate open rates.

Does this affect email opened in any other apps?

No. Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection feature only applies to Apple Mail users for now.

I’m a MailChimp user. How does this impact my Mailchimp account?

We anticipate impacts to your Mailchimp account from Apple’s new Mail Privacy Protection feature.

  • Campaign reports might show distorted numbers for opens, a lower “Clicks per unique open” rate, and potentially inaccurate geolocation and email client reporting for any contacts who use Apple Mail and enable the Mail Privacy Protection feature.
  • Because the IP addresses will be obscured for contacts who opt into Mail Privacy Protection, you may notice fewer contacts in segments targeted to a location.
  • Resend to non-openers will not be delivered to contacts that opt-in to Apple Mail’s Privacy Protection feature.
  • The results of A/B tests that are based on open rates may not be accurate.
  • Any Customer Journeys or Classic Automations and automations triggered based on opens will automatically be sent to a larger audience. If the trigger is based on a “not-open”, it will be sent to a smaller audience. Consider expanding your trigger criteria to include other engagement criteria like clicks or purchases. We suggest pausing your active automations triggered based off of opens to preserve historic metrics.
  • Contact ratings of Apple Mail users will be higher than expected based on inflated open rates.

Although reported opens by Apple Mail users may inflate your overall open rates, you’ll still be able to see other data from your email campaigns. Clicks and purchases are stronger signs of engagement than opens, and we don’t expect these to be impacted by Apple Mail Privacy Protection.

How can I prepare for this update?

  • Understand the size of the impact. To get an idea of the potential impact to your open rates, you can check how many contacts in your audience use Apple Mail. The greater the percentage of your audience that uses Apple Mail, the more likely you’ll see inflated open rates as a result of the new Mail Privacy Protection feature.
  • Change how you measure success in your email campaigns. If you’re not already doing so, we recommend you focus on clicks as part of your email strategy. Also monitor your bounces, unsubscribes, and conversions. If your account is connected to an e-commerce store, you should also consider purchase data as a metric.
  • Monitor your reach. Both contact ratings and email marketing engagement rely on opens, which may yield misleading results.
  • Collect location info directly from your contacts. To populate your Audience Fields with city or ZIP code data, consider using a survey or form to ask contacts where they are located. To maximize your reach, you can create segments that combine audience fields with your contacts’ self-reported location information.
  • Review your segments. If you’ve defined segments based on opens, contact rating, email client, location, or email marketing engagement, consider whether other operators or parameters are more appropriate.
  • Update your active Drip Campaigns or Automations. If your trigger is based on opens, consider revising it to include stronger engagement criteria like clicks or purchases. If you want to preserve your historical data about your existing journey or automation, consider pausing it and creating a new one instead.
  • Use different criteria when you resend a campaign. Because all emails to Apple Mail users may look as though they’ve been opened, resending to “did not open” may not reach as many contacts as you want. When you resend your campaign, consider sending to “did not click.”
  • Update your A/B tests. If you’re running A/B tests based on open rates, your results might not be accurate. Consider using click rates instead.
  • Use a different method to identify a contact’s email client. Although data about your contacts’ email client may be misleading when based solely on opens, data based on clicks is more accurate.

How can I measure engagement without relying exclusively on opens?

We recommend expanding your measurement using other metrics such as clicks and double opt-in signup forms.

As always, we’ll keep our eyes and ears open and tuned into the Apple Mail Privacy Protection situation and update you as we learn more and have additional recommendations. If you have other concerns, please contact our team.

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Digital Marketing have you feeling ‘Lost at Sea’?

Nashville Digital Marketing Company | Branding, Graphics & Online Ads

The world of digital advertising and marketing online can seem vague or a bit ambiguous in meaning. You may ask, “What does ‘digital marketing’ even mean? What services does it cover? Why do I need It?”  All these questions can make you feel very overwhelmed!

Not only that, but Digital Marketing can also feel frustrating because it is constantly changing.

Once you embark on understanding one element of marketing or advertising online, things change either slightly, or altogether! Like ever-shifting tides we see new technology becoming more complex, and at the same time, the ability to reach your customer digitally becomes even greater with each passing day!

As you chart your course for success, digital marketing is non-negotiable; you MUST have an advertising presence online.

So how will you navigate the waters of online marketing? What resources are available today? What are the most cost effective solutions for your marketing budget?

From day one, Lasting Media has been at the absolute forefront of helping businesses in Brentwood, Nashville and nationwide in the uncharted seas of state-of-the-art digital marketing strategy. Let us help you navigate your digital needs towards online success!

The Lasting Commitment

What makes Lasting Media different? We pledge that every product and service we offer to all clients include our 3-Point Client Commitment:

1. Commitment to Client Accountability: Your success is our success. That’s why transparency and honesty is at the absolute forefront of everything we do. We pledge to never sell you a product or service you don’t need, or that we do not recommend. Furthermore, as an insured business, we will never offer you a product or service that can knowingly be compromised or deemed ‘malicious’.

2. Commitment to Client Education: As a client of Lasting Media, you will never be treated as a ‘transaction’. We pledge that every product or service we provide, is given with the client’s knowledge of how it works or functions. In the constantly evolving world of Digital Marketing, you deserve 100% clarity on how your product or service works.

3. Commitment to Client Innovation: No matter the economic climate or forecast, you have to make your marketing dollars count. You deserve the best service or product that your budget allows. That’s why we pledge to never offer you old marketing strategies or antiquated technology that can no longer effectively convert into prospective business. The benefits of a robust, state-of-the-art Digital Marketing strategy, is that is allows you to be very cost effective with your budget. If a product or service we offer can’t provide you maximum results for minimal spend, we will not offer or recommend it , no matter what the incentive for us to sell that product or service could be.