The Power of Podcasts for Developing Brand Affinity

Doug Downs (00:04):

In February, 2004, English journalist Ben Hammersley was completing an article he was writing for the Guardian newspaper. It was a piece about a new trend in which people were uploading digital audio files to the internet. "Most unlistenable" he wrote, but it was an interesting trend for his beat on technology. He got a call from the subs desk, which is the team that gives stories their final check. Before going to print, we need one more sentence. They said it was just to fill the page. So Hammersley wrote one more sentence, what should we call this new phenomenon, audio blogs. He realized that wasn't quite long enough, so after some thought, he combined the words iPod and broadcast and wrote, how about podcasts? A month later, he got a call from the Oxford English Dictionary. They couldn't find any earlier citation of the word podcast and asked if he'd really made it up. Still not many were all that familiar with the term until Apple produced the iPhone podcast app providing a library system. For listeners, here's Steve Jobs in 2005

Steve Jobs (01:20):

And what is podcast? It's been described a lot of different ways. One way has been TiVo for radio. You can download radio shows and listen to 'em on your computer or put 'em on your iPod anytime you want. So it's just like television programs on TiVo. Another way it's been described is Wayne's World for radio, which means that anyone without much capital investment can make a podcast, put it on a server and get a worldwide audience for their radio show. We see it as the hottest thing going in radio hotter than anything else in radio. And there are over 8,000 podcasts now, and this is growing really, really fast.

Doug Downs (01:58):

In 2024, there are approximately 5 million podcasts in the world, and many of them are what are known as branded podcasts. They're meant to inform and entertain while connecting the listener to the brand, and they're a huge success today on stories and strategies, how podcasts have gone from most unlistenable to Unmis.

(02:35):

My name is Doug Downs. My guest this week is Tyler Chisholm. Joining today from Calgary in Canada. My city. Hey Tyler,

Tyler Chisholm (02:42):

Doug, how are you doing, my friend? We're good. We're in the same city. So normally I would ask a guest, how's the weather? But I can look outside my window. I rely on weather as an icebreaker for many, many pun intended, every conversation. But it's a beautiful day. We've been in minus a hundred and now it's going to be spring today. So I think both a good, we'll both be in a warm weather mood.

Doug Downs (03:01):

I do like the Sunshine. Tyler, you're the co-founder and CEO of Clear Motive Marketing, a marketing firm with offices both here in Calgary as well as in Toronto. Toronto. But you've had a really interesting journey to get there. Commercial pilots, true story, then fitness entrepreneur and now successful marketing leader and philanthropist.

(03:24):

In 2012, you were recognized as one of the avenues top 40 under 40. And in 2023, you and your wife received the cups Bruce Covernton community service award in Calgary. That's beautiful. And you're the host of the amazing podcast Collisions, YYC discussions with leaders, innovators and thinkers in Calgary who are pushing for change. So let's start at the top because what I want to dig into is how podcasting fits into your ecosphere for you because great question. It's a love, but I know it is business too. Tell me a bit about Clear Motive Marketing and what compelled you to start the podcast.

Tyler Chisholm (04:02):

Clear Motive Marketing. We've been around, we were 15 years last year, which I don't know the exact formula, but in agency years, I think it's like being a hundred. It's like dog years if you survived the first five years at agency.

(04:12):

So we celebrate our 15 years last year, and I will correct you a little bit on something in a positive way. We don't have offices anymore. We went full remote during Covid and we never went back. Oh, right on. We've gotten rid of both of our offices and our team is across the country, and it was one of the single best things that could have happened to us because I will joke, we made it the best thing. But also our team, our culture, the empowerment, the freedom, the ability for people to live their best life while also being their best at work, clear motive and showing up for our clients has been an incredible experiment. So that was the last three years. So I can joke that we've been in business for 15 years, but the last couple have been the best of those 15, which you don't always get to say that.

Doug Downs (04:52):

So that's very cool. It's like this Friday Jeans thing has gotten out of hand.

Tyler Chisholm (04:55):

Now people, I think it's gone right off the rails, Doug, because we're dating it. We're dating ourselves. Even people are like Friday jeans. We had to actually pay money to a charity to get to wear your jeans on Friday. We're really dating ourselves with that one, Doug, for sure. Well, we'll call it the good old days and then we'll move on. So we're a full service agency. We work right from strategy through to execution. We work with our clients. Our clients are best described. We've kind of really have two sectors. We have clients that are in highly competitive, always on hardworking, I would argue, sales driven environments, whether they sell a product which could be a motorcycle or generator or a side-by-side, Honda, Canada being one of our largest clients.

(05:30):

And we also work with Hope Row residential here in Western Canada where we help them to with all of their promotion around their housing and their communities for their single and multifamily homes across Alberta. Although those clients are very different. They're in competitive spaces. There's a lot of their brands saying that they're good, they're better, my product is better. So we are working with them. One to help differentiate, but always in an always on capacity. These clients are running campaigns regularly. At the end of the day, they don't necessarily want to have a creative that wins awards. They need creatives that feeds leads and feeds business to their sales teams. Got it. And I make that as a differentiator because it's so critical to be an agency who, the joke if you don't understand, if you don't know what your client takes in your coffee, do you really understand their business?

(06:15):

So we lean in really, really hard on that and become long-term partners, Honda 12 plus years, Hopewell five plus years. That's through our ability to work really closely and be truly a partner to them in how they need to be delivered on. And we've built our agency around that right through to executing on digital media where we can now prove that maybe we're not chasing awards with our creative, but it's driving leads, it's creating conversion, it's driving what's most important to them. And that's been our dream from the get go. And over 15 years we've just gotten better at it.

Doug Downs (06:44):

So then eyeballing the podcast idea number one, and I know this plays a part, you're a good speaker and you've taken some training too, thank you very much, which all speakers should. So podcasting becomes, and I wonder if I'd be good at that, but you've continued to do it.

(07:01):

There are so many people that jump into podcasting and jump back out about seven episodes in

Tyler Chisholm (07:08):

The stats around the number of podcasts out there with less than one or less than five. It blows your mind actually, how does podcasting help your business in a very organic way? And I'll tell you a little bit of the story. So I got into podcasting almost on a like, oh, you know what? I don't really love writing newsletters, blogs. I'm like, I was shooting all over myself. I should put myself out there more. I should be more part of my community. I should, I should, I should. And then all of a sudden I made a mistake. That was really a good mistake of saying to a friend of mine. He goes, I think I should start a podcast. He shows up at my house next day and goes, here you go.

(07:39):

Gives me the inbox and the mic and the stand. And he was in the music industry, did some sound engineering work. So he's like, Hey, and I'll edit them for you. Kind of like, here you go, Tyler, step up. So I was like, okay, I'll start a podcast. Had a little bit imposter syndrome, had a little bit of like, ah, who am I then? So I played it safe. I talked to a few people that I knew that I thought were doing some cool things in Calgary, and this was a time probably 20 18, 20 19 where the story in Calgary wasn't as positive as it is right now. We were five years into the oil and gas downturn that was supposed to last six months to a year, lots of layoffs. Downtown was hauled out, our emerging tech ecosystem was still emerging. There was lots of pockets, lots of concentrics, lots of circles that weren't overlapping.

(08:19):

The Venn diagram was more silos than it was a Venn diagram. And another friend challenged me around the fact that he goes, amazing things are happening here, but no one's talking to each other. So that all conspired into me going, you know what? I'm going to put myself out there. And what we do as an agency is we help clients tell their story. So I said, you know what? The parallel here is simple. I'm going to help other people tell their story. This is not about me. And the second I got myself out of having to be all knowing, which is a ridiculous concept, and just being really curious about the guests and curious about their businesses and how it fits and what they think about economic transformation. Not even in Calgary, we anchored it in because specialized in niche down, but very quickly became an Alberta Western Canada conversation around change.

(08:59):

And in the first six months, it was this whirlwind of like, oh wow. Hey, this is pretty fun. Wow. I just talked for an hour with someone I thought I knew and just learned a whole bunch of new things about them. So my mind and my sense of connection and community and wanting to get to know people just got lit up in a way that actually surprised me. So it was deliberate, and I'll stop there, give you a breather to jump in. I'll tell you a little bit how it tied into the business, but that was very organic for me and I fell in love with it really quickly, which is why it was more than five or more than 10 episodes.

Doug Downs (09:31):

What's going through my mind is how you and I have the same almost life philosophy of create the stage upon which the actors play.

Tyler Chisholm (09:42):

Oh, I like that. Very nice.

Doug Downs (09:44):

I crafted it over some years.

Tyler Chisholm (09:47):

I can give you five stars on that one, my friend. I like that. It sounds Shakespearean almost. It did. It sounded, I expected you to just start looking and gazing up to the right as you spoke,

Doug Downs (09:55):

holding a skull of some kind. Clearly, absolutely. With some candles burning in the background. But let me drill down to that and kind of hammering that point. Wonderful, philanthropic, but does it help business? Does it help me sell my widgets?

Tyler Chisholm (10:10):

A hundred percent. It did. Sometimes the best selling is selling without selling anything. And I'll give you the journey. So in the first six months, it's the people that know you, they go, oh yeah, listen to your podcast. This was great. And even a couple of them were like, and I, one buddy specifically Barry, I've known him for years, very successful business guy.

(10:27):

And he goes, Tyler, don't take this the wrong way, but you're actually smarter than I thought you were. I was like, okay. But then almost immediately he started referring business my way, and I've known Barry for 10 years, but he started listening to the podcast and he's like, I love this version. This is a curiousity. This is a you that I didn't know. And all of a sudden instantly started referring business then it was people that kind of knew me, but at a distance and nuclear motive. And that's the interesting thing about we never positioned this as a clear motive podcast. We did that very deliberately. The world did not need another marketing podcast, but the belief at the time was our world did need somebody talking about economic transformation in Alberta and willing to go into the corners in the pockets where they weren't in the media, they weren't mainstream, but they were doing cool shit that was going to have a positive impact on the world we live in.

(11:10):

So I took that as a bit of an altruistic approach, and I've held it to this day. And through that, all of a sudden, the reflection, the afterglow and the guilty by association people were like, oh, you own a marketing company? Yeah. Can we talk about that as well? It was such a great way to put myself out there, being true to our mission of elevating and telling our client stories, creating the stage, but never, ever, ever selling clear motive as part of the process, which feels hard for a lot of businesses to kind of get out of that cycle. But if you're going to create content, that's me, the world does not need more of that. I don't know your thoughts on now.

Doug Downs (11:48):

No, I completely agree. People don't want to be sold to. I think Seth Godin has said, we face 5,000, 7,000 messages a day, something like that.

(11:59):

And most of them are somebody trying to get me to do something to try to get me exactly, get of words, change my behaviour in some way. What right do you have to change my behaviour? I really like that idea of people trusting your brand and ultimately deciding they've worked themselves through the funnel and they're ready at the purchase point.

Tyler Chisholm (12:21):

We don't like to be sold to, but we love to buy. But I also, the argument or the next level is that we also like to buy into things that connect to us. I was all about Calgary. I'm more bullish on Calgary than I've ever been, but when you talk to the people in our community that are the ones doing the cool things and you get to talk to 'em about the cool thing that they're doing, you get a positive, the rose colored glasses go on.

(12:43):

And that is something that was very, I think created like, Hey, I want to be part of that space because very positive. I do nothing negative because the news handles that for me. I don't need to do that. But we still have realistic conversations always with the band of like, okay, if this is where we're getting in our way, how do we move forward? So there was some values and some positioning through that that was true to me, which is also a reflection of how we work as an agency as well. So a lot of those brand attributes got to be seen in the real world, not listed on a wall. You know what I mean?

Doug Downs (13:11):

I do. Did you start with a following already? The start in podcasts is so hard, and it's one of the reasons people quit at episode seven. Typically, statistically this is a marathon and it can take one, two years to build any semblance of an audience.

(13:30):

Did you start with an audience already? What was that journey like for you?

Tyler Chisholm (13:33):

I would say I started with zero for the sake of the conversation. I started with leveraging the guests community, using the agency behind us. When we put it together, we did the assets, we did the show notes, we did the pullouts, we did everything we could do to present it to the guests to allow them to share it to their network, and that's how we built our audience really slowly. But a magical thing happened, and I'm going to call it magical. At the risk of sounding facetious, covid happened and everyone was available and everyone wanted to talk and everyone felt isolated. So all of a sudden I went from maybe having 15 episodes to doing another 50 in the next six months. It just exploded because within a few weeks of covid, I've switched to remote.

(14:14):

I was doing in-person studio work. We went online, tried a bunch of different platforms, landed on Riverside, which you landed on, as well as the platform we're using today. If anyone's curious, we've tested a lot. They all have their glitches. Riverside is the best of the glitches and the one that's most reliable. And it really, if it wasn't for Covid, I don't know where it would've landed. And we a hundred percent leveraged that. I don't know what even the thing is today about each individual has X amount of people in their network. That's how we built our audience. And then we started, once we got to 50, all of a sudden it changed, and then half to 60% of our monthly downloads came from old episodes. Once we got that library, it exponentially went. But if it wasn't for and because we went all in on Calgary and all in on community, it was really easy to take a Doug and go, Hey, 500 people know Doug.

(15:00):

I'm going to have a podcast with Doug and make it really easy for Doug to share. So we didn't do any paid attribution. We didn't do anything that a traditional sales campaign might look like. We just went out and leveraged the organic, and LinkedIn was a hundred percent our best platform for that. As you can understand, we see people, we know it's a reflection of our community on our LinkedIn profiles.

Doug Downs (15:19):

Excellent advice. And you niched here, at least geographically with the focus on Calgary. Other niches could be, I sell blue widgets, therefore I want to talk about the world of only blue widgets, and I don't care about the red widget world, which is hard to say. I got it, I'm following. I get it. I get it. How important is it to niche, I suppose, overall for marketing in 2024? And how important is it to niche within the podcast world?

Tyler Chisholm (15:48):

I think it's no different than anything you want to put out there. Who's your product? Who's your ideal customer profile or your ideal listener profile, if you will, versus what is your offering and what are you putting out there to the world? I'm going to asterisk that, which selfishly I would do this if no one listens because I also chose a type of guest that I find really interesting. The business community, the movers, the shakers, the innovators, the tech startups, the VCs, the private equity, the clean tech disruptors, the biotech. So I have so much curiosity for that, but it's always got a business filter and it's always tied back to if we diversify and we get everybody off the bench, that's going to improve the world that we all live in together. So selfishly, that was valuable to me, even if it wasn't valuable to anyone else, but my theory was that it is valuable and I was right, but what gave me the energy to kind get through, to hit episode eight, to get past the seven, the wall of seven, was the fact that I was loving it and I was having conversations with people and I would always be like, huh, I never thought about that that way.

(16:49):

And that was happening two, three times a day during Covid, I'd record. I think my most was I did six or seven episodes in three days of hour long episodes. And every one, I was like, I wow, cool. And then as you know, maybe because all of a sudden it all starts coming back around and now you're talking to someone, you're like, wait a second, Doug told me this. What do you think about that? And I started to become this trampoline of information that I've been able to gather and I have a very good ability to pull something in, frame it in my own way, and then push it back out and go, Hey, is this what I actually heard? So that started to evolve for me even as a communication skill through doing the podcast, it allowed me to practice so many things inside that 50 minute window or hour window.

Doug Downs (17:28):

Tell me about the negatives.

Tyler Chisholm (17:31):

What have been the I didn't think about that or podcasting. First thing was purposely going out, and this is probably also a victim of maybe the time of being six years ago, oh, we're going to post all of our podcasts on all the different platforms. Oh my god, how do we track anything now it's all over the place. What a disaster this is. That was an error. Like no, that was wrong versus putting it on a single platform and then having that distributed out across, whether it's Spotify or Apple, iTunes being our biggest or Apple podcasts, not doing that at the beginning. So missing some metrics and it was kind of secondary because it didn't impact the audience. It just impacted us of like, what's actually going on here? We created a mess for ourselves. Let's bring it all together, host it in one spot, and be able to at least have a snapshot of what's happening from a performance perspective.

(18:16):

That was the one just error, just didn't know ignorance, let blast forward and test and learn. Other than that, I can count on one hand the amount of no's I've gotten and I've done between the two podcasts, I've done over 500 guests, 510 maybe, and hardly anyone has said no. Everyone is open. The referrals getting better at just giving what tool we used, and now AI has evolved, so we have better tools to do transcription and all those things have more been learnings, not necessarily wrong steps. Most of the tools we use now weren't even available when we started, actually, I don't think any of them were.

Doug Downs (18:47):

And what do you do with your content? How do you split up this pie and disperse it in different places? From the transcript alone, you've got blogs that you can write. You've got social media pieces, pieces you can put together.

Tyler Chisholm (18:59):

What do you do? We don't do blogs. We very much focus on, we do a couple of different approaches. So it comes back, comes through my team, they take it and they go, okay, let's pull out how do we summarize this episode? How do we turn that into a series of social media posts that can go out there? Does that show up? And we do a monthly newsletter, so do a monthly roundup. So, hey, here's what you missed and here's going on. Just reminding people, because just remember whenever you're promoting it, just because promoted it six times, if someone hasn't seen it once, seventh is still the first time for them. Yes. So always remember that there is a little bit, if you feel like you're oversharing, you're probably doing the right volume. Like, oh my god, how many times did we share this? But for the people who haven't seen it, it's zero.

(19:36):

So don't forget that they're kind of soundbite heaven that by your own content, you can get fatigued by your own content, but you are not the audience. You kind of don't matter once it's created, get out of your own way here, let people find it.

Doug Downs (19:47):

Metrics for success downloads is kind of the key.

Tyler Chisholm (19:51):

That's an easy one. How much can you bench press number, isn't it? How many downloads you got there, Doug? Doesn't mean how strong you are. A hundred percent. It does. It does. How do you look at your podcast and say, yeah, yeah, this week succeeded more than last week or over the last 90 days we've moved in the right or wrong, we a hundred percent manage all of our social media engagement. So LinkedIn and Instagram are two of our biggest. LinkedIn by far because we're local and because we're focused on Alberta, it's so community oriented.

(20:18):

When you get a good podcast or you get some good fodder going and then the dialogue starts happening and you get to communicate with people that sometimes you know, you just get to know through social media. Then when you meet them, it feels like you've been friends for a year. You've been conversing with them and debating on things. So ours is very organic that way because we were so niche and so focused. So that would be relevant if you had a blue widget community and they were engaging with you and having dialogue with you. To me, that's a success metric. So we track all that. Impressions, engagement, shares, conversations, comments, and of course we look at downloads, but then something happens. Apple changes the way that they actually monitor what was the download and what wasn't. All of a sudden your downloads look like they dropped by a third.

(20:58):

And then I get discouraged because I do a good number now and again, I'm like, oh, what happened? Did we completely shit to bed here? Or what's going on? And then we do some research like, oh no, apple's changed. So I'm like, well, what is it more accurate now or more accurate before? No, it's more accurate now. Okay, well say, I don't want to think that, Doug. That might be discouraging to me. So we're going to park that. But that's where you got to have more of a broader perspective, and this is part business, part personal passion of my way of giving back and engaging with my community and that one, I get to measure that in feels, and I know that that's not always why people will start a podcast. If there's a little bit of that there for you, I think it'll be easier to stick it out past number seven, if there is that, maybe qualitative feels, I'll just call it the feels.

(21:43):

The feels, the analytic people are rolling their eyes. What do you mean the feels? You know what I mean? Well, you mentioned a couple of others. People coming to you and saying, Hey, I heard that on the podcast. Or you saying, Hey, I had a conversation with so-and-so and their perspective on the blue widgets is this a hundred percent. As a marketer, it gives me a very broad perspective. It comes in very handy, especially in the early days of client, client discovery. As you know, in business, there's only so many versions of so many problems and this other industry, oh, that's unrelatable. I'm like, well, yeah, but look at how they conquered this thing. And I love finding different perspectives from other industries that, okay, you're in mining and you're in forestry, or you're in health tech and you're in energy. I'm like, yeah, but this is how you solve this data problem or this is how you solve the sharing a new idea with a new customer who doesn't even know they have that problem yet.

(22:34):

My wife was at an event last night with, it was a women's networking event and it's probably about a hundred people. She came home, she's like, Tyler, half the people there have either been on your show, know you and wanted me to say hi to you. And I'm like, five years ago, that would've been two people in that room. Does that have a value for me in my community as a business owner? That's absolutely right there. Something I'm proud of. That is. Last question, what advice would you give either CEOs or other marketing professionals, marketing entrepreneurs who are thinking around starting a podcast for their brand? First thing, maybe don't start a podcast, start an audio series. I've made this recommendation to many people. Start with six. A podcast is like, oh, you started and fails. Like, no, no. It's a form of content. It's a channel.

(23:17):

It's something you need to experiment with. It's something your audience maybe is if you're niche enough and focused enough and depending, I think there's an audience for everything, but that audience might be 50 people, and if 10 of them become your client, that could be the best, most successful marketing tactic you've ever put out there. Understand that that is just perfect. I get approached by a lot of folks who are kicking around the idea, and I can hear it when they're unsure about it. I think you've just given me the episode, Tyler, where I can send them the link and say, listen to this. Amazing. Cool. So for that and your time, thank you for this. Really do appreciate it. Oh, my pleasure. Thanks for having me on. As you know, there's two sides of a mic on a podcast, and I'm often not on this side, so it was a fun experience.

(24:02):

I love supporting it. It's such a cool medium and used well can be a superpower for your business, and it could be a lot of fun.

Doug Downs (24:09):

That's the real secret right there. If you'd like to send a message to my guest, Tyler Chisholm, we've got his contact information in the show notes, check out his podcast Collisions, YYC. There's a link to that in the show notes too. And Tyler, let's put another link to your other podcast, which I hadn't planned for. What's the name of your other one?

Tyler Chisholm (24:28):

It's called They Just Get It. And that was the one that I got started on way back when, and now it's become like my playground for whenever I meet someone who's just doing something like, I'm like, what do you do? You're, you're a pet psychic. You fly water bombers for a living. You just paddled 700 kilometers on the Yukon River.

(24:44):

That's crazy. Let's have a podcast and just chat about it. That works. And it's so fun. It's like where I do all my guilty pleasure of like, oh, this is just so one. Most of the people I have on there, I doubt their guidance counselor told them that was the thing they were going to be doing when they grew up. So I have them on there and we just have a chitchat about it. It's super fun. It's where I started by looking around in Calgary going in 18. There was a lot of negativity. And I said, but there's people that seem to just have it figured out. My buddy Billy, who ran Village Ice Cube, my friend Carlene, who ran cs, my friend Chad Hughes, who ran Land Solutions, like these individuals that were doing awesome things in a time when every story in Calgary was negative. I'm like, okay, if these people feel like they've got it figured out, let's go talk to them. That's how that one got started, which is really my journey and got me into podcasting.

Doug Downs (25:25):

I get it. Stories and strategies.

Tyler Chisholm (25:27):

Touche.

Doug Downs (25:28):

Co-production of JGR Communications and Stories and Strategies, podcasts. If you like this episode, please leave a rating, possibly a review. Those mean the world to us. And lastly, as always, do us a favor forward this episode to one friend. Thanks for listening.