Ashley Flowers, Nick Viall, and Kim Komando Flip the Script: Host Insights from the 2025 CAO Summit

This week, the Media Roundtable is giving you an all-access pass to one of the most talked-about sessions from this year’s Chief Audio Officer Summit: Flipping the Script: Feedback From Hosts to Brands.

Our own Dan Granger (CEO, Oxford Road) sat down with three powerhouse hosts: Ashley Flowers (Crime Junkie), Nick Viall (The Viall Files), and Kim Komando (The Kim Komando Show) to share what they really need from advertisers to create great ads that actually work!

“Brands, I understand you want to be safe and risk-averse… but know your audience. My audience wants to talk about dating, and there’s a little bit of raunchiness and just a little bit of honesty… [an unconventional ad read] worked with that audience. It’s memorable; it made them laugh. It also connected what the brand was trying to get across.” – Nick Viall (The Viall Files)

The panel delivered a playbook of what works—and, crucially, what doesn’t—when engaging top creators:

Do: Make the Most of Onboarding: Ashley urged advertisers to engage with hosts earlier in the process to maximize the benefits of their collaboration.“If [intro calls] gave us time to be more creative and do more custom things, brands could tap into so much more—our fan club, our newsletter, our CRM. There’s so much they don’t even know is available.”

Don’t: Lose Track of Your Key Message: Nick cautioned against overwhelming listeners with too many offers or extraneous selling points, encouraging brands to distill their copy to its most coherent form, acting more like an elevator pitch than a seminar. “If I had 10 seconds with you, can you understand what we’re providing and who we’re helping?”

Don’t: Overly Script the Host: Or, in Ashley’s words: “Please do not try and write true crime ads.” While this message might’ve gotten a few laughs from the audience, the message is nothing to joke about: forcing ads into a specific narrative often “misses the tone” and “limits who our audience actually is.” Her rule of thumb? “I always change it. I’ll help you guys out, but just don’t waste your time.”

In summary: hosts know their audiences better than anyone else. The brands that trust their hosts to personalize their messaging to their audience will see the most significant returns. The brands that don’t will be left with lackluster reads that likely miss the mark.

To see all the insights that this star-studded panel had to offer, tune into the episode below.