Ready to Govern via a Podcast

Hello. Hello. It’s good to be back. It’s good to be back.

I tried to think of an intro to beat last week’s Terry & June joke, but I really don’t think it can be beaten. Yes, OK it temporarily alienated anyone under 45, but us oldies have got to have a few special things all to ourselves, right?

Pre-Cannes

This has officially been pre-Cannes week, where most of the Fresh Air team are up to their eyeballs in work; producing podcasts for our wonderful clients and keeping the wheels turning at the UK’s leading producer of podcasts for brands and businesses. Meanwhile, three of us have been working out how we get invited to the parties that will most impress our teenage children when we send them selfies.

Yes, Richard – Director of Pressing Send on the Email, Michaela – Director of Content and Fierce Woman – and I are off to La Croisette on Sunday with a packed agenda for meeting influential and inspiring people in the creative industries. Michaela’s booked a Yoga session on the beach, Rich is taking his running gear for those early morning jogs along the promenade, and I have bought some Solpadeine Plus from the Co-op. For the second year running, we have eschewed buying actual passes to the official bits, but will be loitering around the beaches, having meetings and talking podcasts for brands with anyone who’ll listen.

So, if you’re in Cannes and you fancy discussing podcasts and audio while we pour you a glass of something, please get in touch. There are still slots available in our busy loitering schedule.

This, of course, means that next week’s newsletter will be written by a worthy stand-in, who this time is Oli – Head of Looking Too Young to be Served in an Off-Licence. He will share news and witty observations on the podcast world, and may reluctantly pass on any news from Cannes that we Whatsapp him in the week.

Podcasts for New Ministers

I’m sure that, like me, you’re a subscriber and regular reader of Heywood Quarterly – the high level blog exploring innovation within the civil service. So, you’ll naturally know that this week featured a piece by the former Cabinet Secretary Gus O’Donnell about how civil servants should manage the transition to a new government on July 5th.  His advice includes that, in the unlikely scenario of the Tories somehow getting back in, civil servants should ask Rishi Sunak how much of the manifesto he actually wants to implement and how much of it was just put in there as a joke to annoy everyone.

Then, in a section subtitled ‘Information Overload’, the man known as GO’D suggests:

In my experience of transitions, the Civil Service is good at preparing detailed and comprehensive briefings, but sometimes neglects to find ways of helping a new Minister absorb all the information. I hope this time we can call on new techniques; why not, for example, record an interesting podcast on key policy issues that the Minister can listen to in the government car on the way home?

Well, the first thing to say, of course, is that Fresh Air is ready and waiting when that RFP comes out. Producing high quality internal podcasts is a big part of what we do, and a daily recording for ministers across 24 different governmental departments sounds like a good regular gig to me. GO’D clearly understands that audio is a brilliant way for listeners to consciously and subconsciously absorb complex content with depth, detail and nuance without having to read reams of written information. We fully endorse GOD’s advice.

Also it could be very entertaining, because all I have in my head is a daily Malcolm Tucker audio rant so that Nicola Murray can hear his closing thoughts on her way home as well as during office hours. We have some proper swearing experts in the Fresh Air team, so whatever the requirements, we’re m***********g here for it.

AI Emails.

Yesterday morning I received an email from a company who clearly thought I’d be interested in their AI - drive sales services. I wasn’t. However, the whole email was clearly written by AI, including the opening line:

‘Hi Neil,

As I delved into Fresh Air's remarkable journey, I was struck by the parallels between your team's innovative spirit and the pioneering work of Joe Rogan.’

I can hereby say that, other than working in the same medium, my team’s innovative spirit has absolutely nothing in common with Joe Rogan, and never will.

In an effort to cram the world’s worst people into one section of this newsletter, I can also report that Logan Paul has interviewed Donald Trump for his podcast ‘Impaulsive’. If ever there was an argument for closing the door on a podcast studio, sealing it in concrete and then dropping it in the sea, this is it.

Ad Nauseum

Our friends at Sounds Profitable have conducted new research on the attitude of podcast listeners towards ads. This is a survey of over 2,000 American listeners, to understand how much they skip, how much attention they pay and whether they take action as a result. 

In short, they skip or ignore them a lot, but not as much as any other media, with 28% of people saying they ‘watch or listen to all of the ads they encounter on podcasts’. 

More people agreed with the phrase “I am more willing to consider products and services after I learn about them on this media” than any other platform, including TikTok & Youtube.

And more people said they discovered new brands from podcasts than either YouTube or TV streamers. You can download the full report by clicking right here, which includes a full video talking through the results and the insights they show.

MAD//Fest - Come Along!

In just three weeks’ time, it’ll be MAD//Fest week, and Fresh Air have dived in as sponsors and partners for the first time. We’ll have our own beach hut, framed by our now famous bright blue 8 foot high headphones, and we’ll be extolling the virtues of podcasts for brands to all who visit. We’ll be speaking on stage and creating the MAD//Fest podcast along the way, speaking to industry leaders. 

And that could be you! Would you like to come to MAD//Fest as our guest? You don’t have to hang around with us all the time, but we have some free tickets for readers of this newsletter, so please email back if you’d like to spend some time in Shoreditch absorbed in the ad world.

Sam McAllister on Fresh Ears

There’s a theme here. In May, we were at Media360, recording the official podcast, and the full length episodes will be released on our ‘Fresh Ears’ podcast over the coming weeks. Our first full length conversation is between Michaela DoCaFW and the equally fierce Sam McAllister - former BBC Producer and the inspiration behind ‘Scoop’ - the Netflix story of Prince Andrew’s non-sweaty and definitely non-guilty looking interview. It’s available to hear right here. 

Michaela and Sam discuss the concept of risk: how markets and businesses can embrace risk without being crippled by fear, and why Prince Andrew completely missed the risks involved in discussing his relationship with a convicted child abuser on TV.

Martin Poyntz-Roberts recommends...

Yes, it’s series 4, and yes, I’m late to this party. But that is the beauty of podcasts. They stay online unless forcibly removed.   The folk of Fesh Air are known for their sartorial elegance (stay with me…) apart from me (and perhaps one other member of the team – answers on a postcard), so when I heard a trail for this series, I sought it out and was faced with an episode called ‘The Hairy man’. I was going to play this episode, but then I saw Case 3: The Platte County Poltergeist. Blimey. I kind of wish I hadn’t as this sent shivers down my spine. But it was amazing. Really chilling stuff that sounded very convincing. Of course we have no idea if the story is genuine or totally fabricated, but why let the truth get ion the way of a great story. I then listened to The Hairy Man and again…chills… And it’s educational in a pub quiz kind of way. For instance, the footage shot of what was supposedly Big Foot from 1967, shot in Bluff Creek (you’ve all seen it) is the second watched piece of film ever (for an extra point, the most watched footage is apparently The Zapruder Film). You’re left to make your own mind up about the stories, but they are all gripping.

Listen here.

Eva Higginbotham is rivalling Martin recommend by recommend.. 

Ever been made redundant from a job you love? Luckily I’ve escaped that fate so far, but I have friends who have been. It sounds, frankly, terrible. They’ve been left picking up the pieces of their careers, dealing with a lot of grief and sadness in the process.  Someone else who’s experienced being made redundant is Yowei Shaw. After working at NPR for many years, she became the host of the lovely show Invisibilia (one of my favourites back in 2017ish). Sadly, Invisibilia (along with many other narrative non-fiction shows) was lost to budget cuts in early 2023.  And boy, was Yowei sad. While processing the experience, she had questions for the HR reps involved - those people who are on the other side of the table during those painful conversations. But, you can’t exactly go back to the office and grill the rep who let you go… can you? 

Enter, Proxy: Yowei’s new, independently produced show, where she lines up guests with people who can help get them some answers, acting as ‘proxies’ for the people they might really like to talk to.  The series is kicked off by a trilogy about her own layoff, and tells the pretty heartbreaking story of a couple who dealt with redundancy too - culminating in them all sitting down with an independent HR rep to talk it through.  It’s an interesting premise, and if you’re a fan of the NPR/Invisibilia style it will scratch an itch for you. It appears to be following a similar pattern of lots of podcasts from extremely experienced producers/presenters who have had a rethink in the last couple years as the industry has changed a little bit (see PJ Vogt’s Search Engine for a comparison). I’ll be curious to see how it develops, and what new questions and answers might come up. 

Listen here.

What have we been listening to this week?

Sound.

Well, yeah, derrrr, but the aforementioned Oli HoLtYtbSiaOL has written an article for PodBible laying out ‘Five Podcasts to Teach you about Sound’.

The podcasts are five great choices by a thoughtful and inquisitive producer. You need to listen on headphones and I promise your ears will never be the same again.

What have we been doing this week?

Being fish.

As mentioned above, in three weeks’ time, the Fresh Air team will be at MAD//Fest. Richard DoPSotE gave the team a briefing on the event this week, and said he would like to see a blue ‘shoal’ of Fresh Airers around the room. A poetic description for a bunch of beautiful people.

So there we have it. The collective noun for a bunch of Fresh Air staff - a shoal, moving around a conference room gracefully and silently, while quietly tempting attendees into a conversation about podcasts. It begs the question of what type of fish we would be?

Given what we do, you know, audio and all that, I’m going with the Elephant Ear Fish, which sounds like it’ll appreciate a good podcast. Although, on closer inspection, it doesn’t have big ears, and probably can’t hear very well at all. But it looks very beautiful, and is apparently ummm… delicious. I may have to either give this some more thought, or move on.