Live from SXSW Part III: Brand Leaders on Balancing Brand Values & Business Objectives; Elon Goes Full Tony Stark; NFT Hits The NY Restaurant Scene

In a world where, according to Edelman’s Trust Barometer, corporations are more trusted than the government and media, what do you do with that trust? At SXSW, we assembled a powerhouse panel to answer that question.

“Brands have been trying hard to be influential and now… you’ve got the influence. The responsibility is now on a brand to take a stand.”

-Jory Des Jardins

This week, Oxford Road’s Founder and CEO, Dan Granger joins media veterans, Jory Des Jardins (CMO, Countable) and Natasha Simko Morgan, Ph.D. (Head of Enterprise Marketing, Indeed) to discuss the increasing challenge of aligning brand values with media spend.

Tune in to hear:

• How to actually measure brand purpose
• What you need to give up to  align with your brand values
• Apple’s calculated security move

Brand-advertising alignment can be a frantic mess, or it can be a thoughtful step in your brand evolution. Click below to understand the difference.

Listen to the Interview

The Classifieds

Kiwi Finds Friendship With Bald Eagles

Armchair Expert Umbrella’s newest podcast will inspect the idiosyncrasies and cultural benchmarks of the United States from an immigrant point of view. Kiwi journalist David Farrier and co-host Monica Padman will spend each episode looking at a specific topic related to American culture to dissect its origins, influence, and the emotional components of its staying power. While the show is comedic it promises to be insightful, educational, and deeply human and is repped by our friends at Public Media Marketing to launch this May. Similar shows with the same content have done well for clients in the B2B space, especially those with a more male-skewing audience, though Padman’s other two podcasts have also been extremely scalable for female skew as well. For more information just hop on down to the link below, no flight required.

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Kristin Cavallari is All About The Dramaaaa

Every kid, growing up, has a vision of what they want high school to be. For many MTV viewers in the early 2000s Laguna Beach was the clearest example of what cool, privileged, connected high schoolers were like. Dear Media is producing a new podcast to be launched this July  hosted by former high school sweethearts and Laguna co-stars Kristin Cavallari and Stephen Colletti. Looking back with a mature and distanced perspective, Cavallari and Colletti will deep dive into the show’s impact and love triangles, behind-the-scenes melodrama, and never before heard gossip. This opportunity is highly recommended for those interested in reality television, millennial female demographics, or personality-driven narratives. Shake off the sand from your beach towel and surf down to the link below for more information.

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In Case You Missed It

It’s The Tesla of Social Media Platforms

The biggest news in the marketing world is Elon Musk inking the deal to buy Twitter for $44bn. While the real-life Tony Stark says he would focus on “new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots and authenticating all humans,” many speculate (based on very public comments he’s made in the past) that Musk aims to loosen Twitter’s content moderation policies and deregulate speech on the platform. Ironically, reactions to the news are as polarized as Twitter feeds themselves. Many are concerned that Musk’s moves will re-open the platform to hate speech and fake news, while others see it as a win for free speech. Either way, it poses unique potential challenges for advertisers regarding brand safety and the future viability of Twitter as an advertising platform in the future; to which Musk says he may eliminate all together. Is this a win for free speech or a slippery slope?

We’d love to hear your thoughts.

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eMarketer Invites You to Peruse the Proliferation of Podcast

It took Podcast 17 years from its inception to hit the $1b revenue mark in 2021. But according to eMarketer’s US Podcast Advertising Report that came out this week, spend on the platform will double in less than two  years, accounting for nearly one-third of digital audio services ad spend.

The eMarketer report goes on to share more key stats on the state of our favorite medium like how much money advertisers spend on podcasts now and in the future, which networks will receive the most podcast ad revenue, the staggering growth in how much time people spend listening to podcasts, and much more. The full report is behind a paywall but The Influencer has you covered. Schedule some time to review our takeaways on the full report by emailing us.

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As Long as You Spell My Name Right…

If you don’t have something nice to say about a podcast, you may just give them 2 Million new listeners. On the Friday episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, the podcast pioneer says that despite highly publicized misinformation controversy earlier this year, his show gained 2m new followers. While Spotify doesn’t publicly share data on the JRE, a source told the Hollywood Reporter that there was no such spike, but that the show has shown consistent growth since the podcaster joined Spotify in 2020. Either way, with all the negative press, it’s clear that the negative controversy did not hurt, and may have helped build the show’s audience even further.

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This Week in Great Podcast Reads

Sustainability From the Inside Out

Many podcasters preach the benefits of self-empowerment and personal growth. The hosts of High Vibin’ It are not only proponents of these virtues, but practitioners, right down to the brands they sponsor. Spreading the positive vibes on the inside might mean helping the world outside, by making it a more sustainable place with brands like Grove. Host Kelsey Aida speaks on this with fervor in a recent ad read, praising several of her favorite Grove products, and advocating their mission of eliminating single-use plastics. If you’re looking for a podcast that endorses holistic solutions with powerful messaging look no further.

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