Woman 1: This week on the Sonic Truth. Veritonic's VP of Marketing, Kristen Sharon, sits down with Ryan Rose of JoneKiri to discuss the evolution of audio usage for brands and content producers, unpack the secret sauce to matching talent with Fortune 500 companies and D2C brands and more. We hope you enjoyed this episode and welcome again to the Sonic Truth. 

Kristin: Hello and welcome back to the Sonic Truth. Today I am joined by Ryan Rose, founder and principal at JoneKiri. Welcome, Ryan. 

Ryan: Thank you. Good to be here. 

Kristin: Great to have you, so let's just first start. JoneKiri, can you give us a little bit of background on where the name came from, what it means, why you chose it for your company and what exactly you guys do? 

Ryan: Sure, yeah, so to start, I've always loved traveling and one of the amazing trips that I've been on was in Japan and I did a couple of weeks in Tokyo, and there I just learned that there's beautiful practices that are really emphasized there in every single manner, and one of them is discipline, another is passion, and when I started JoneKiri, my idea was really how do I make those golden buzzer moments come to life? So admittedly, I'm the type of person that when you're watching America's Got Talent and you see that golden buzzer type of opportunity come up, that's things that I really wanted to pursue and be able to provide for people.

Especially provide for brilliant talent, and I thought there's an opportunity to bring discipline, so the ability to actually create structure for those that are passionate and talented, and the whole concept is to be able to equip those people who are talented in any form, any category, to be able to reach their dreams through a discipline structure, and what I did was I created a word out of 2 words, passion and discipline, so in Japanese, that's kiritsu, Jonetsu is passion, and kiritsu is discipline.

I took the first 4 letters of each and I combined them to create what's called a port manto, and that's what formed Jone Kiri, and then another fun angle of that is I remember learning about the founders of Haagen-Dazs and the actual name Haagen-Dazs doesn't mean anything and it's more of a homage to the Danes for allowing Jews into Denmark just during the Holocaust, and it was kind of just like this nice homage to them, and they also thought that it would be this fun exotic word, especially with the [unintelligible] on their letters, so I thought there could be a really fun take with having this exotic name being pronounced, that no one else has ever come up with before. 

Of course, there's just pure organic SEO, so the name doesn't exist anywhere else. 

Kristin: Sure. I love that. I like how you describe your value as providing kind of that golden buzzer moment. If you've ever watched America's Got Talent like that most of the time those moments just give you goosebumps. They're such incredible opportunities for the talent, so that's a really cool descriptor and also a fun fact on Haagen-Dazs. That's like a great trivia thing because I didn't realize that. Okay, so you obviously work with a wide array of brands and content producers and talent at JoneKiri. How big a role is audio in their overall marketing strategies and how have you seen it evolved? 

Ryan: Yeah, so I would say brands of course have been investing in audio long before podcasts with radio really being a tried and proven channel for plenty of the Fortune 500 brands who are just looking for mass reach at very efficient CPMs, just really great pricing, especially compared to anything that's a little bit more customized in premium, and with radio, I think in the original days it was like the MCs and the DJs who they were the original talent where prerecorded spots would be placed adjacent to their content, and then we saw that starting to evolve where the DJs themselves may have potentially been endorsing content. 

I think that's what introduced this elevated opportunity within audio for people who were respected or listened to often, to start endorsing the products that they love, and then came opportunities such as SiriusXM, where this was really where the first time people were able to opt into specific channels that they were able to listen to content that they can expect to hear, and then when podcasting came into the picture, I would say that really became like the critical and the beautiful disruptor within the audio world, where consumers I think for the first time, were able to opt into this hyper niche content that they could choose to listen to, whenever or wherever they were. 

I think that changed the playing field for how brands were able to incorporate audio into their marketing strategy. Typically it's just been brands or their creative agencies who have been coming up with their own messaging and for the first time within the audio world, and I think generally in any channel podcasting allowed for brands to start placing trust within the talent, and when I say talent, in this case, when brands are working with these talent, it's really they're brand advocates, because if brands are choosing to work with these particular people, there's hopefully some type of clear alignment with whether or not that personality has used a product before, or there might be interest in testing it out and discussing why it might be beneficial to themselves and especially to their audiences. 

That became a pretty unique opportunity for talent to start working with brands, and that they can actually start taking, going off script and endorsing content in their own way and talking about their own experiences. 

Kristin: Part of what you do at JoneKiri then is you match talent, so the athletes, the celebrities, content producers, with those Fortune 500 companies and direct to consumer brands for that advertising relationship essentially. Correct?

Ryan: Right. 

Kristin: You talked about radio with its mass reach and the, the influence in the early days that MCs and DJs had, have you found that with digital audio in terms of whether it's a podcast ad that's produced or a Host Red ad, is it being perceived as more effective or a higher reach vehicle than say radio was back then? Or how are brands kind of looking at that today? 

Ryan: Yeah, absolutely. There's plenty of studies that have shown that there's a lot more brand recall. There's just a lot more efficacy in terms of product being sold and listeners actually being able to resonate with the product in a better way. I think to use the most cliche example with Joe Rogan anything that he's endorsing. It's going to have a pretty profound impact. It's going to have ripples across the community, so using Traeger Grills as an example. Anyone who's in the grilling community, of course they're going to start really not only interacting with that product in its traditional way, but there's going to be some type of element being affiliated with the talent that they know that they love, that are working with the products that they're already working with. 

We're seeing that through multiple case studies, through a lot of the industry research, especially for Veritonic, there is a lot more of this affinity towards podcast host reads that happen to do well with products that are just being promoted. 

Kristin: Are the Fortune 500 companies, when they get these matches so to speak, are they doing any kind of testing to ensure that there's alignment there, and that it'll be well received by listeners? 

Ryan: Yeah, I would say that there's a variety of test methods. , Traditionally with Fortune 500, I think they typically have much larger budgets, whereas if you're comparing something like a direct response advertiser, they're going to test in their traditional format of being able to test in either 1 or 2 episodes versus, or maybe one month at a time. Whereas with brands, , naturally they do have larger budgets and they're more likely to test in larger frequencies, larger budgets, larger capacities, but yeah, I would say that lately there's been a lot of similarity in between the host read expectations, providing a document or a couple of page document that gives direction in terms of what's expected for the host to talk about.

Whether it's a brief summary about the brand, about the product and the service, things to make sure that they're in line with that are sticking to the key points, and then of course, allowing for plenty of flexibility for actually speaking to their personal experience with the product. 

Kristin: Aside from the examples you've mentioned, are there any that really stand out as being a match made in heaven, that you've put together that have successfully leveraged audio? 

Ryan: I would say our best campaign to date would be with Maria Menounos, whose podcast is Heal Squad and for anyone who's not familiar with Maria Menounos is a health and wellness personality, but more in a fun take. She was actually one of her first jobs ever. She was a perfeum spritzer on the Macy's floor, and so when we teamed up with Macy's, there was really this fun organic fit of one of her earliest moments of being able to relate to this Macy's experience, and we started testing out in audio with traditional host reads.

It's expanded since then to a much larger 360 natured type of partnership where we're bringing different types of social channels and we're bringing video, and we're even flying her to the Herald Square flagship store in New York and having her record episodes in the store, so really that's our goal is to work with brands to test in a small capacity, make sure that there is alignment with the brand, and especially with the audiences, and as things start to work out, we can really start scaling across different channels. 

Kristin: That's so fun. I love Maria. I actually listened to that podcast and I've heard her endorse Macy's on it, and to hear kind of the backstory as to how that came to be and what you guys are doing to further, that is really fun and definitely a bit of a full circle moment, which is cool. 

Ryan: Definitely, and it's been a fun campaign because she's one of the prime examples where we create these media plans and essentially, it's our own language within the agency, the media world, and we have these terms to stick to, but Maria is a great example of someone who when she's in love with the brand, and to take a step back, part of our vetting process we're working with our talent is making sure that we're reaching out to the brands that these talent, that as brand advocates that they love, we're making sure that there really is this good fit, and Maria, like I said, is a great example where we have our media plan terms, but then she starts going above and beyond, and starts adding a ton more value beyond what's expected of her.

The best example with that is when she was interviewing at the Oscars on the Red Carpet, and she unexpectedly was wearing a Macy's dress surrounded by people who were wearing multiple thousand dollar dresses, and the CEO of Macy's actually ended up coming back and saying, "I wasn't aware that she was planning on wearing a dress, and none of us were actually in the loop on that." So that was just a really fun way of thinking about how a partnership can start from purely just a podcast, and then expand to product integration even unexpectedly. 

Kristin: That's amazing. What a gold mine for Macy's. That was so wonderful of her, so to zoom out for a minute, how should brands be thinking about audio, specifically podcasting as it relates to their more traditional channels? So video display, social, is it complimentary? Is it kind of a standout category in terms of reach and ROI. When you get approached kind of with that questioning, what's your response? 

Ryan: Yeah, I would say the simple answer is both, and to just dive into that audio on its own should be treated as a standalone type of channel where plenty of experts in the space who are much more focused on the actual quality of production aspect will always say, if you're producing an audio spot, it should be made specifically for audio, and the same for video. Just because there is this listener experience to actually be conscious of, so similar to like this user experience or customer experience, there is this listener experience where you want to be conscious of the fact that they might be distracted, their eyes might be elsewhere. 

What's the best way to captivate the listener? And is that whether through you're going to have some type of audio or a sound that backdrop to fully and capture listeners, or is it just making sure that there really is this engaging, dedicated, passionate content that you're discussing, but I would say that audio in general, just to kind of umbrella all of that audio serves as a gateway to generate curiosity for what's potentially possible beyond podcasting, so I would say listeners of a podcast, they're either a fan of that host or they're coming on board, and they might not be familiar with that talent in the first place.

It becomes a gateway where naturally, if you're listening to audio, you don't have the ability to view, so something that actually really stuck with me was when Connell Burn from iHeart mentioned, I think it was that podcast movement a while back, he said that audio is a really unique channel in that everyone has their own vision of whatever they're listening to, because there is no visual attached to it, so every single person who's listening to the same episode of a podcast has their own different visual mapped out for it. 

That becomes a really fun opportunity to think about how else could this partnership expand, so if you're hearing Neil deGrasse Tyson on Smartlist, part of me at least would want to see... well, I would love to see him actually talking about something just because he's a really interesting person when he talks, he's very flamboyant in his mannerism, so my point being is I think audio is a great way for unlocking interest and curiosity beyond what else can be offered, and that just speaks to the ability to create larger partnerships. Well, if a listener is listening to a podcast, is there an opportunity to view a larger partnership.

You're driving listeners potentially from the podcast to then social and then to video, and then to potentially in person, so audio in my opinion, it creates a greater opportunity to think about what could be, and I think if that mindset is being spoken about consciously with brands, you can really start expanding to these three sixty opportunities that we're focusing on later on. 

Kristin: Well said, that's a really, really good point about everyone kind of having their own visual in mind, and being able to leverage the imaginations of listeners. You kind of jumped ahead a bit to my next question, which was, what are some of the ways that audio and its utility will evolve by brands in the next couple of years outside of it opening the gates, if you will, to a massive opportunity of other ideas and ways that brands can engage. Is there anything else you can think of that you'd add to that? 

Ryan: Definitely. I mean, I think there's multiple things that we're already seeing. One of them that's actually, that I'm not seeing too much of is cross channel measurement, so a lot of what we're working on is podcasting plus social plus video, and I haven't seen too much of an opportunity where naturally brands will ask what opportunities are available to make sure that we're being able to track conversions across all channels, so that's something I look forward to seeing being developed. We've just seen measurement continue to be developed over the past few years, that has helped incentivize a lot of the bigger brands getting into the space.

Just to actually understand where their dollars are going into. The big one I think in terms of evolution is video, so like I said earlier, we're seeing a lot of people curious about what does it look like with them actually being interviewed, or are there additional opportunities that could be unlocked beyond the audio element, so we're seeing a lot of brands both from brands direct and from the agencies asking for a video compliment. Some of them are actually asking for video views to be coupled into the audio downloads or impressions together, and then another is programmatic. 

There's obviously a lot of potential with being able to zero in with layering up psychographic data, and being able to reach particular listeners if you're really looking to get super nuanced, and then I think the most relevant thing nowadays would be AI, so you've got artificial intelligence being spoken about everywhere. I think that's going to be the hottest subject, and understanding what does that mean for the benefit and the ease of editing and production. Of course there's the concerns that come with that, so are people going to be put out of jobs because of it, and then one thing that I'm very curious about is synthetic voices. 

I'm really curious to see how listeners are going to react to that, and whether there's going to be concern about the true authenticity being lost, or knowing that if there is a strict approval process from the talent and them being hands-on with every single spot, is there an interest or is there some willingness to still adopt the method, and will it have an effective ability to be able to drive product sales? 

Kristin: Absolutely, and I'm sure particularly on the Synthetic Voices piece that I'm sure research will follow on consumer's perception of that, and any impact it has on intent and favorability and memorability and that kind of thing. Like does it matter? Does it not matter? Does it take anything away from the listening experience? It'll be interesting to see for sure. If you didn't have anything else to add, we'd like to end our podcast with a couple of fun, more out of the box questions, just so our listeners get to know a little bit more about you if you're up for it. 

Ryan: Definitely. 

Kristin: Okay, so first question, what is your go-to karaoke song? 

Ryan: I would say that would be Chicken Fried by Zach Brown Band. 

Kristin: Oh, that's a good one, especially in the summer. 

Ryan: Definitely. 

Kristin: All right. What was the last thing you bought from an audio or podcast ad? I

Ryan: I would say Manscaped has been my go-to. It's actually been my first product, and I have been a subscribing customer ever since, so I am loyal and I continuously buy Manscape products. It's very relevant for my life. 

Kristin: Excellent. Okay, final one. If you had to choose one song to wake you up every day for the rest of your life, what would it be? 

Ryan: That would be Everything's Going to be All Right by Kenny Chesney, so clearly I'm a bit of a country fan. 

Kristin: Yes, but also the positive vibes in that one. I like it. That's a good choice. 

Ryan: Definitely. That just reminds me of beach life, so that's my happy place. 

Kristin: I like it. I like it. I like it. Well, thank you again, Ryan, for joining us, and it's so wonderful to connect with you and to hear your take on all this. Best, best, best of luck with JoneKiri. 

Ryan: Thank you. 

Kristin: We hope to have you on again soon. 

Ryan: I appreciate it. Thank you so much. 

Kristin: Thank you, Ryan. 

Woman 1: At Veritonic, we remain committed to helping you get the most out of your audio strategy. If you're interested in learning more about audio research, testing and measurement, visit veritonic.com or contact marketing@veritonic.com.

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