Michael Smith: Pivoting the NPR Brand to Entice Broader Audiences
NPR CMO Michael Smith offers a candid look at how (and when) even trusted institutions benefit from brand and demand marketing.
“The enduring thing for connecting with any audience is about making them feel like the content is by them, for them, and about them—that you’re not flying in at 40,000 feet and telling them what you think they want, but integrating with them and amplifying their voices.”
By E.B. Moss
Michael Smith arrived at National Public Radio 18 months ago and is finally about to move closer to their DC corporate offices, which had closed due to COVID just two months after he was named Chief Marketing Officer. When we spoke recently, he was also in the midst of planning 2022 marketing budgets, preparing for a board meeting and, oh, refreshing their overall brand positioning.
It’s a lot of pivots, but Smith, who went from running television networks to helming marketing for the behemoth that is NPR, takes it in stride with his trademark calm and thoughtful perspective, as this interview reveals:
Since The Continuum is focused on the value of both brand and demand marketing, let’s start with how each serves to attract audiences for a media company?
It depends on where you are in the brand strategy life cycle. Oftentimes you're in the mode of trying to reposition, evolve or reinvent a brand, and that's where the brand marketing and brand message become more important than maybe the performance side of it.
When I was at Food Network, one of the big things we were trying to do was redefine Food as less of a channel for people who cook and more a channel for people who just love reality TV. I remember telling the agency, “This isn't going to be measured by campaign KPIs. This is going to be measured over many years by changing consumer perceptions about the brand.” This approach took the pressure off how many viewers we got from a particular campaign. I looked at it over a year or two in terms of how the needle moved when we asked people how they then thought of Food Network – as a cooking or entertainment channel.
I think it’s the same with NPR: We're redefining it as more diverse, for more young people, as a digital podcast brand, and less an older radio brand. A lot of it is just changing perceptions and less about if the ratings go up 1% or 2%.
But there are other times in a brand's life, once it’s redefined, when it’s more about chasing performance KPIs because it’s then more about growing audience viewership every year and every quarter, which translates to greater ad revenue.
Are there different approaches or tactics using brand versus demand in marketing media overall?
With brand you're not asking for the order, or trying to get immediate conversion, so the creative is going to be less performance-driven. It's more about making people aware and giving them more of an emotional sell of what the brand stands for, and how it fits into their lives.
One interesting thing for a lot of media companies now is the move from a third party to more of a DTC model. That moves it from a goal of getting people to be aware of your channel and shows (to drive higher ratings in order to monetize those ratings through ads), to now going direct to consumer with streaming and subscription service offers. So, it's forced us to learn some of the skills from the performance world, because we actually are trying to close the order.
How is that showing up at NPR?
We’ve just rolled out a subscription service option in partnership with Apple where you can subscribe to NPR podcasts ad-free for a monthly fee.
That's different because we're used to saying, “Check out this podcast, like it, keep listening.” Versus now saying, “Subscribe and pay $2.99 a month.” Also, our metrics are different now because we're looking at the conversion rate of listeners who click the subscribe button, or the churn on those subscribers. So, it's a whole new skill set that I think a lot of entertainment marketers didn't have before the shift to DTC.
A big element of the NPR brand is trust. How do you market that in today's times?
I think it’s reminding people about why trust matters, especially in media. In consumer surveys, American media has some of the lowest trust across the world. There's polarization, there's misinformation. We think there's a big opportunity with an audience looking for something they feel isn’t biased and specifically saying, “This is a trusted source. This is a place that you can go to really know the facts.” Just making that messaging salient is working for us.
When we spoke last year you said, “When the audience starts to know some of [our] young, diverse hosts, a Sam Sanders, or the host of a Pop Culture Happy Hour, that creates much more engagement than when they see the three block letters: NPR.” But you also said it's about really driving the overall feeling and association with shows that make up the whole of NPR. How do you balance marketing shows, personalities and the brand?
NPR has historically been marketed through the brand and people have thought of it as an institution, which it is. But increasingly, especially among younger consumers, that relationship and emotional connection with the personalities telling you the stories matters a lot more than just the institutional source. As we're trying to redefine NPR as a brand for younger, more diverse people, I think it's important to walk the talk and show the faces, show the people. We’ve done things like redesigning our newsletter so when there's a byline we put a little inset photo of that journalist, so it feels a little more personalized and human.
There's good news, bad news: NPR is often at the top of the podcast charts. While it's the sincerest form of flattery a lot of shows and companies have emulated your signature style. With 4 million podcasts out there, how do you attract and retain podcast listeners and how do you protect against any decline in your radio listeners?
The good news also is that there's not that much overlap between the podcast audience and the radio audience: The median age of the radio listener is 59 years old and it's about 80% white and 20% people of color. The podcast audience’s median age is about 33 and it’s about 60% white and 40% POCs. So, it's a very different audience.
We found that even when we look at the people who listen to, say, Morning Edition, which is our radio show, versus people who listened to Up First, which is our podcast that features some of the same hosts from that radio show, there are two different audiences. So, we don't have that problem of cannibalizing or one killing the other, which is great.
As a marketer you have two different audiences, and, including smart speakers, three different types of platforms. So, what's the through line and what do you prioritize?
Well, the messaging to both audiences is the same in terms of what the end value of NPR is: Valuable information that's going to make you smarter, more culturally aware and enhance your life. So, whether you're an older listener on radio or a younger listener on podcasts you're coming for the same enriching content. It's just how we tailor that message to the audience. If it's in digital then the style, the tone of the communication, the people who are doing the ad, are going to be different than the way we would do it for the radio audience.
And does demand – or performance marketing – get applied differently for reaching either diverse audiences or marketing pop culture versus tech topics, or with the more linear radio audience?
The thing that's a little tricky for people to understand is that we do DTC on both the radio and podcast side, but they're different in that NPR distributes programming to local radio stations and they are the ones who monetize it through the DTC relationships. So, when you support public radio, you're supporting a local station who then passes some of those funds back to the NPR corporate office. So, the DTC marketing on the radio side [is done by] the 264 different stations that carry our content, at some very small markets and at some like a WNYC or WBUR.
And at the national level with podcasts, we're just starting this journey on the subscription side working with Spotify and with Apple, and we're building our own podcast subscription app and payment processing and CRM system ourselves.
Michael, when you headed up digital channels and a then brand-new streaming platform for Scripps, you were charged with developing ways to reach younger, more diverse audiences. You’re charged with much the same at NPR. Are there tactics that you employed then and now?
The enduring thing for connecting with any audience is about making them feel like the content is by them, for them, and about them – that you’re not flying in at 40,000 feet and telling them what you think that they want, but integrating with them and amplifying their voices to really be the messaging.
At NPR we're working with influencers more than ever before. We're leveraging partnerships with people who love the brand. Think about tiny desk, which is a very popular concert series we do on YouTube, and the cross-marketing we get from the artists who appear on the show: Through their social media they publicize the brand in a really authentic way, because it's like, “Hey, I was on NPR. I love NPR. I am NPR.” That approach, I think, resonates really well.
How do you set KPIs when you're engaging with influencers and asking them to promote the NPR brand in any aspect?
I think that for media companies, the influencer thing is lot easier and more organic because media companies by definition are influencers themselves. We spend our time making influential content. Our personalities are influencers. We have guests who come on our shows like It’s Been A Minute or Fresh Air that are influencers. It’s a little different than with consumer-packaged goods where they’ve got to go out and give money to people to talk about their product.
I think we've gotten better at figuring out how to leverage those relationships for marketing and advertising sales’ benefit, while keeping the line between content and the editorial newsroom. But let's say a celebrity was on being interviewed about their new movie, our press department might follow up and send them NPR swag as a thank you. And then by coincidence you see that star tweeting about being on NPR, wearing an NPR T-shirt!
“One interesting thing for a lot of media companies now is the move from a goal of getting people to be aware of your channel to drive higher ratings in order to monetize those ratings through ads, to now going direct to consumer with streaming and subscription service offers.
It’s forced us to learn some of the skills from the performance world, because we actually are trying to close the order now.”
How are you interfacing with [your sponsorship sales arm] NPM?
Just creating bigger ideas and partnerships, more 360 stuff that NPR hadn't been doing. One thing, and this came from my experience at for-profit media companies, is as we're spending more money reaching audiences through national paid media campaigns, are there ways to partner with sponsors in those messages and the shows we're promoting are brought to you by those sponsors? The sponsors get additional exposure and in return maybe through some of their consumer touchpoints, cross-promote back to NPR.
Finally, congrats on the exposure for NPR’s 50th anniversary!
Thanks! All the earned media that Isabel Lara's communications team was able to get was great, from People Magazine to appearances on late night shows. It seemed like these undercover NPR fans all came out and wanted to talk about the brand, on everything from the early days, like our founding mothers like Susan Stamberg [the first woman to anchor a nightly news program] to our latest successes like Code Switch...and none of it was paid!
October 19, 2021
