Graham Brown: Welcome to The Age of Audio, my name’s Graham Brown from the award-winning podcast agency Pikkal & Co. The Age of Audio is a series of conversations with thought leaders and changemakers in the world of audio. Podcasts, Radio and Social Audio converging with big data to create engaging and authentic content for a new generation of listeners.
Pascal from Noiser.
Pascal Hughes: Thanks for having me.
Graham Brown: Let's talk about Real Dictators. I love the show. There's something interesting about it. Fascinating, almost that we can be intrigued by these fundamentally bad people. And is it we're trying to humanize them or is there curiosity with the macabre and podcasting to be a great tool to do that. Tell us about Real Dictators first, the genesis of that. But before we do that, Pascal, what's your favorite Real Dictator episode wise?
Pascal Hughes: Yeah. Thanks a million. Yeah, I think at the moment, because it's live at the moment, the Hitler episodes are probably my favorite because I think everyone feels like they know the Hitler story a little bit. And so, but the more we dug into it, the more we realized that actually the common understanding that many of us have, almost everyone, has actually come from Hitler's own propaganda. He sold these lies about his life story. And so many of them still exist today. And so the more we pulled at the string, the more we realized that the real kind of academics on his life have really brought some really fascinating research, even very recently in the last few years, that really unravels the myths about his life. And so I found that particularly interesting, like about his war record, about him having servants when he was a young man. Whereas he used to always say how impoverished he was ultimately. So that's to me the most interesting thing, partly because it's on at the moment. So I just listened to him this morning, for example probably why that one.
Graham Brown: Yeah, the quality is amazing. And you’ve obviously as a team done some great research. How does that make for dinner time conversation? Because you want to talk about this kind of stuff and I can't imagine, it's a taboo subject really, isn't it? You can talk about people like maybe Papa Doc Duvalier, because people don't really know him. Kim Jong-il was maybe slightly humorous, but Hitler is a real taboo subject for a lot of people. So how does that go down when you start talking about your work? It must get a rise out of some people.
Pascal Hughes: Yeah, definitely. And it's a balancing act because there's some really fascinating subjects and stories. Whereas often we want to really make people who are listening, who are actually involved in some of these stories, not feel like we're just reveling in the gruesome reality of these situations. So really wants it to be solely factually accurate, but also not revealing anything just really just be very factually accurate. And so we did that by interviewing lots of people, as many people as we could really who survived these regimes.
Graham Brown: You need a lot of people. I imagine it's a lot of audio sources, isn't it? It's not like you're just doing a single narrative or you are having to collect a lot of…it's almost like a journalistic style, putting together a feature, aren't you?
Pascal Hughes: Yeah, exactly. So we pieced together these stories and often some of these dictators have, they're very flamboyant. So the moment I'm doing one on Gaddafi. He's a really flamboyant guy dressed really like, who often wore ridiculous clothing. And so like at the moment, we're writing it, we're producing it. And we're thinking this guy's like, he almost comes out like a rogue, but we really want to make sure he doesn't come across like a lovable rogue. I actually want to really make sure people are really aware of how bad he was to his people. And so we interviewed a few people from Libya and they really helped to dispel the myths basically and go like this guy wasn't a guy in a peacock feathers type thing. He was just a terrible human being. So it's a balancing act.
Graham Brown: Yeah. You can imagine if you were doing like a mafia documentary that you could easily by virtue of the fact telling their story, the backstory, you humanize it in a way. And therefore effectively people who are gangsters and bad people and criminals can be sensationalized. And in some ways like lionized. You can see like every Godfather movie is like getting an understanding through the story, understanding why they are like this? Why is Michael Corleone a bad man who committed to murder? Then you sympathize, you do dislike them, but you also empathize with them as well, which is a risk here isn't it, of doing this kind of work is that simply by telling this story and focusing on the back story, then you risk people connecting with them. They say, actually, I understand him a little bit, and I imagine you can't avoid that, can you?
Pascal Hughes: Totally. Totally. And actually, there's one thing with the team. We have a final pass where we basically all read through the script and we go, are we actually lionizing this person? And if so, what can we do about it? Because often we're on quite tight deadlines, but at the same time, we want to make sure that we do people justice, who are badly treated by these people. I think it's been really heartening recently too. A lot of American universities have reached out and wanted to use this as part of their teaching in the history departments. I think that for me is some degree of validation that we're not accidentally lionizing these people, but it's definitely something that we're really conscious of. And we don't want to make any mistakes on that because it's easy to do.
Graham Brown: Who of all your dictators is probably the most misunderstood? Reading the list out, you've got Stalin, Kim Jong-il, Papa Doc Duvalier, Mao Zedong, and then you've got Hitler as well. And you've probably got a few more in the pipe as well. We've all heard the Hitler story in the Stalin story maybe. What about the other guys or any sort of surprises in there, people that sort of amaze you by virtue of the fact that they're unbelievable in their lives.
Pascal Hughes: So many of them and the amount of research, we often go through extremely dry textbooks, academic textbooks that bring out the stories to life, but frequently, but we’re this kind of thing has happened to them and then these world-class academics are like yeah, this really did happen. I'm like, wow. I think the thing which we're like... yeah. I mean the Kim Dynasty in North Korea, some of the spurious claims that have been thrown out are just remarkable. Some of the famous ones that came out were like Kim Jong-il getting eight holes in one, I think it was the first time he played golf and then he was born on a volcano. Two months after I read that script for a few months, I forgot the details, but it's like so spurious in terms of their claims. And yeah, sometimes it's like a challenge, like taking out the fiction and the myth and finding out what's true. We try sometimes to break the fourth wall and say things like this is tricky to navigate because there's so much myths, so much propaganda, but we always try and get away through which hopefully all the academics so far, at least will be happy with, which is great.
Graham Brown: You've done a fantastic job. Where does that start? How do you take on a project like that? Is that brought to you by a publishing house or a network? Or do you come to them with the idea or is it reformatted from an existing series?
Pascal Hughes: Yeah, I think for Real Dictators, I initially thought it'd be a really niche idea. So I used to be a TV director and I made a show years ago when I was an assistant director for discovery channel. It's all about dictators. And I felt that so much was being left on the cutting room floor. And so what we were left with and the 30 minute documentary was just like a bullet point list basically. And it was almost like a tabloid. There wasn't much depth. So when podcasts started coming around, I'd written a few podcasts before, but I thought, okay, Real Dictators. I remember being really frustrated that there were just unbelievable stories left, right and center on the cutting room floor in the TV industry when I did that TV show. So for me, it was very much like let's give it a go. I thought it'd be really niche. And then that quickly became quite a big series, very much organic growth. So that was just out of interest. I think for us, our big thing is, do we think it's a cool story or an interesting story? And if everyone on the team says yes to it, we go for it. And that's our commissioning process. We don't really think too much of what other people are doing. To be honest, I respect everyone in the industry. They are amazing with what they're doing, but we typically just think, do we between us think it's good? And if it is good, we run with it.
Graham Brown: And that is wholly owned by yourselves, right?
Pascal Hughes: Yeah
Graham Brown: The IPO. That's a hit for you guys. I imagine that now, because not a lot of, if you look at the podcast industry, the different models, there's a lot of people who get commissioned content from the networks. And then you also have, for example, the brand owned content. And then the sort of the partnered content when you get a comedian or sports player, for example, but to have something wholly of your own like that and have something of such scale and recognition as well, that must be for you a real win, right?
Pascal Hughes: Yeah. It's definitely something which I used to make podcasts for other people when I was still a TV director. I found that often those theories did relatively well, but they were coming out of the other people's hands. With Noiser I thought I actually really want to just do stuff and keep ownership over it and get it out there under our banner. We do commissions for people as well, but at the same time, there's something really special about feeling ownership over it. And yeah, thankfully, so far it's been going really well. And it looks like we're doing a lot more this year, too, which is great. But yeah, if you can do it on your own I think go for it. The whole kind of like, commissions are fantastic, but equally the advertising industry is growing like wildfire and there's so many more brands coming into the industry now that it's much more viable now to have your own original with advertising in than it was two, three years ago, when I first started making shows.
Graham Brown: How do you sell let's say brands, as an advertiser, for example? Does that work? Are they, is that a real niche area? Again, imagine Real Dictators is probably one that you're not going to get a lot of brands lining up for.
Pascal Hughes: Yeah. That's the tricky thing. Often with these kinds of big history pieces or crime pieces, brands don't queue up for it necessarily, or you have to reach out to the right brand. And actually, I spun out an advertising company from this exact situation thinking this is about intrigue. And this is about people who want to learn and be immersed in history. And so they went to brands with a new angle on it that actually, this is about people. This is for brands wanting to target thinking, questioning people. And suddenly that opened up the door to loads of advertising from many of the biggest companies in the world, because they wanted to target thinking, questioning people. So it's less about dictators and more about our audience and who is listening.
Graham Brown: Did it take a banner hit like Real Dictators to open the door to advertisers? Do you think they would have got it without that on the table? Because it seems like that was a key component of the success. Isn't it? It's like, okay. I can feel it now, what it sounds like and what it would be if we had a different subject, for example. Would you have done that without such a door opener?
Pascal Hughes: So I think it was definitely a really helpful door opener. And I think I'm finding even some of the shows that we provide adverts for, which are much smaller. I think now the doors are open to all these agencies and loads of brands. We say, Hey, you want to advertise on this podcast, but we also have these other similar podcasts or similar audiences. And so I think it was, yeah, it definitely was a door opener, but very much the door frame was open from then on. So I feel like, yeah, so I think it was helpful, but now thankfully we're there now. So it looks like…
Graham Brown: The market's evolved as well, right? That's the key part of it. So let's talk about advertising. So really there's a number of different models in advertising, everything from the branded podcast, which is really like a sponsorship to the inserts, the read-throughs, et cetera, the mid-rolls, the pre-rolls. Where's the money at the moment? If you were to bet which you have done by setting up a business, a second business on advertising. What formats are currently working and where's the growth?
Pascal Hughes: Growth's really happening across all the different types of advertising. And so I think for me initially, we were relying on just host read adverts and that's great. I thought really the key for a lot of podcasts is just getting inventory filled with adverts. And so for me, the key thing was having this waterfall system where if you've got an available ad slot and an advertiser doesn't fill it with a host read spot. Then you can still have a second by the cherry and have spot ads coming in and people bidding for those spots. And worst case scenario, no one doing that, then it would be at least filled with, in our case, 13 different programmatic suppliers. So for me, it's all about, the key is to have the waterfall advertising model, where you're always going for the highest possible CPM. But if for whatever reason you don't get that you have different backups in place. And so I think that's really where I think the industry is going. I think it's been really great to see a really big move by some of the bigger platforms towards embracing advertising. I was a little bit unsure about a year and a half ago, like whether some of the bigger platforms would choose subscription models or choose a different type of monetization approach. And it's just been great. I think for the entire industry, the advertising is going so well and doing well because it means that the sector is going to keep thriving. It's more empowered and really, it just means that people are able to get more opportunities. So I still think definitely, always try and get a sponsor on board. If that sponsor doesn't work out. The host reads, I think typically, is still the best as long as the CPMs are high enough. And that's something in the industry, which we have to ensure that our host read CPMs stay at a decent level, which they are at the moment, which is great. But spot ads are really growing, which is slightly more targeted programmatic advertising.
Graham Brown: How does that work in practice? The programmatic would be pre-loading onto Spotify, for example, because Spotify and other networks are going to want to do that themselves aren't they? They want to insert their own ads at some point, maybe throwing a curve. But I imagine if in the future, if they're serving up a lot of content that has advertising baked into it, won't that be an issue or is there some arrangement already with these networks.
Pascal Hughes: I think as everything, almost everything now is going towards dynamic insertion. It does mean that automated adverts are much more valuable because they can change as different deals end et cetera. So there's a lot less baked in happening. I'm not sure exactly all of Spotify's inner workings. My company Adelicious has partnered with Spotify and so we plug in programmatically via them as well as offer people host reads, spot ads, sponsorships, et cetera. So, what they’ll do in the very long-term I'm not personally sure of, but certainly we're all in at the moment with programmatic ads.
Graham Brown: Where does the content commissioning happen in, if you look forward into the future of podcasting a couple of years when advertising is really established and certainly is in the U.S. at the moment. And I think we're picking up in the UK a couple of years, maybe behind the U.S., Asia two or three years again behind. We look forward to that market where people have to create content, obviously in the same way that you made content which is either we're going to produce a hit show because then we got real estate for advertisers, or we go to the advertisers and say, what do you want? Where would the commissioning journey start? Do you think, where's it going to come in the future? Who's going to be creating the real leading content in a couple of years?
Pascal Hughes: People commissioning content will always have a really big place in the industry. Because they're much more likely to be able to offer scale because in their existing network, they can have as high as this new podcast coming along. And so for a new podcast coming along, if you don't already have a network in place, then it can be a little bit tricky to know exactly how to scale the audience, to ensure that because advertising was always in some way linked to monetization. So I think with these people commissioning work, I think that's going to continue and more networks that acn commission because they can pretty much guarantee a certain size of audience based on having such a big existing audience. So I think that will continue. And certainly, there should be more options for people to go themselves and build their own networks which I think is great.
Graham Brown: I wonder if it's going to follow a Netflix style model where obviously, when they started getting the numbers and they had the revenues, they would invest in their own content because the margins are so much better than licensing it from other people. And then that model was then Netflix would find agents effectively in some matchmaking process with production companies and the production companies, obviously that favored companies and so on. But that model was all subscription-based, wasn't it? Obviously advertisers weren't involved in that. So that was interesting. I wonder how this is going to play out.
Pascal Hughes: This is very much like for me a year ago. I was very much thinking, are we going to start seeing the Netflix edification of the industry. To some extent you will have these companies having premium kind of only available on their own network type show. And building out their own on brand podcasts, which are exclusive to them. How are they? Really I think it was very telling for me how big Spotify in the last few months have gone into advertising that actually they want to monetize like everyone and many people as possible. And that for me was really good to see because it empowers the open ecosystem that we had in podcasting for the last few years, as far as I can tell at least to keep growing. So you don't absolutely have to get a commission. You don't have to, from my TV days, if you didn't get a commission, then the ideas will not be made. You couldn't just go and make it regardless. And so I think these kinds of exclusive shows that will only be on certain platforms will continue to grow, but it is also fantastic for the industry. I think that equally, so will advertising. Basically everything's growing and I think that's really good.
Graham Brown: The flip side of that though is that what I'm seeing across the board, like you're getting these amazing shows like yours, that you're producing that are getting millions of downloads. And then you've got a lot of people who are still relying on this man speaks to man model. Interviews about how did you get here type thing. And then their audiences are stuck in the hundreds and they're not growing, even though they've done like 20, 30 episodes. But I think what's happened is like, I've noticed a shift. If you look at the Amazon model, you go back to Amazon publishing a few years ago, when Amazon opened the floodgates on self-publishing and created Kindle and then CreateSpace. Everybody had to go at self publishing because it was just so easy to do. There's a bit of a barrier to entry, but it was doable. And you could have a book on somebody's wireless device within a day effectively. And the interesting thing about that was that in the beginning, if you published a book, you had an audience because there was a real demand for stuff to fill your Kindle with. And then what happened was, people worked it out. The prices of Kindle books went up to meet almost the published, paperback prices and at the same time, as well, Amazon said, okay, like all these guys who were the long tail, we won't send them so much traffic anymore. We're going to send it to the banner publications. And so what happened was, is that the algorithm polarized, right? And we're starting to see that now with Spotify and Apple, in that they get much less to the bottom 90 in their rankings. And so I think what was happening as a result of that is it's getting easier to produce, right? Anybody can knock out a podcast now, which is great. The flip side is it's getting really hard to promote, and that now is creating an interesting dynamic where you are almost getting the music industry happening all over again. Where you have, first of all, you need some form of airplay to discover your podcast, you need these conglomerates that are really just a silo of knowledge about marketing and data and success. When it comes to, how do you take a format and blow it up. That's on the record label. And then you need like the MTVs, which are like Spotify and so on. What are you seeing from your side in terms of the promotion side? You talked about having the knowledge side of things. What's changed in the last few years?
Pascal Hughes: Yeah, well, it's a really good question. And certainly from my perspective, a few minutes ago, I've been talking about everything going really well and growing. And actually, I bet so many people listening will be thinking well, that's actually not the case. My colleagues are far better read on that than I, to be totally honest about how discoverability is improving. But certainly from my perspective, there does continue to be a discovery issue. And as you said, if you're not being promoted on the front pages of Twitter or Apple, it is quite tricky to know where else to go. How else do you get discoverability happening? And, yeah, that's something which my big thing on this is that this is not an all contained answer for it, but I really believe in promo swaps for everyone. And I think you always have from a lot of podcasts have this situation where people would just drop them off and months and years go on. And I really want to... that they respect and are similar to them. That's something I've been developing within our network. And it's really impactful because obviously saying, you've got a podcast about whatever. And so do you [inaudible] quite similar? Do you guys want to chit chat and do a bit of cross promotion? I don't know. It might seem a bit analog, a bit manual and there's no doubt better solutions for it, but certainly my solution has seemingly been working within our network where I've seen both shows promoting each other as both of them rising and that doesn't rely and doesn't require the big platforms to be on your side or okay stuff or whatever. It's is very much the most impactful way outside of
Graham Brown: By the host for the other podcast and visa versa. Is that kind of how it works for you?
Pascal Hughes: There's two ways. There's the RSS feed drop where an episode of the other person's podcast literally gets dropped into the RSS feed of the existing podcast. But that can be, there's only so many times you can do that before people just unsubscribe because they get so many kinds of other podcasts being promoted to them. So the way I've been going about it is really just doing earlier when I mentioned about this kind of waterfall system of higher advertising going down to programmatic costs underneath that we have promos. And so literally whatever it is, we try and help facilitate these conversations at least where they might play a trailer. The host may talk about the podcast positively, we might have a guest speaker. Just whatever way it might work for them to convince their audience that the other shows are really worth checking out. And that for me, I think is I don't even think I know it's impactful. Because obviously one of the companies I get to have all these chats. I know how impactful it is for them. It's just better for everyone. Yeah.
Graham Brown: Yeah. One plus one equals three in this world, doesn't it? And it's almost very similar to, I think back to the early days of blogging. I'm talking about 2003, 2002, anybody who has started a blog, the successful ones rose to the top and then they would start cross promoting. And that became a big thing. And there was a period of two or three years where that became really intense really before social media took off before Google really dominated the consciousness of people. It's a very similar thing, even like you're talking about RSS feeds and the blog, same thing happened. So it'd be interesting to see if that kind of parallels there. I love that idea as well. It's even from like your TV days, I'm sure that just seems natural. Doesn't it? That you have your, not your advert, but your feature, your drops and all that stuff coming up, check out this program in 40 years.
Pascal Hughes: Absolutely. Yeah, definitely. And it's definitely something where you don't, in that situation you need the TV channel to be involved. And it's very much like everyone's looking at making sure that top person they're on their side and they have the ear of that person. Whereas what I love about cross-promotions is that really it can happen at any level. So we just have cross promotions going. We've started doing it all the time. Because when one cross-motion, say we have X amount of thousands. Can we have an agreement where we both do [inaudible] for X amount of people? When that runs out, we just go, we just plug someone else in. And it's always similar podcasts. We think the audience will like it. It means the audience does get bored. I love it. It's just, it's very empowering for each podcast. There's endless scope there because there's so many podcasts out there. And if you have one podcast and it's really big and one that's quite small, it doesn't necessarily mean you can't do it because you can agree to have you say, well, if you got one show that has a hundred thousand weekly listens, you got one show that has a hundred listens. You could just say, well, why don't we do a hundred listens? When that runs out, it's like for like, and so that way, we do cross promotions with much smaller shows and we just do it for roughly the right one. I've done it for like the right amount. And it's not the perfect solution, but I [inaudible] so we just put it, [inaudible] inserted via our technology. So it's really easy. You put it in like an advert and then it just, you just say how many numbers, how many listens you want to get to it? So it's pretty straightforward. Yeah.
Graham Brown: Yeah. Awesome. What was the last podcast that you listened to that wasn't your own podcast?
Pascal Hughes: History [inaudible] have done really well.
Graham Brown: What is it about history podcasts that, what is it about these sort of six hour epics and why is history and like the real nooks and crannies of human psychology, like Real Dictators appealing on podcast. Why does it work? What do you think?
Pascal Hughes: I think people love learning for starters. And secondly, there's something really special about immersing yourself in a particular time in history. You're learning quite a lot and just feeling like you're in that time.
Graham Brown: What's the weirdest podcast you've listened to?
Pascal Hughes: Oh man! There's a podcast show called Supernatural. Listened to that for a bit and that was pretty strange.
Graham Brown: All right. What do you know about podcasts now that you didn't know when you started out?
Pascal Hughes: I didn't realize how big it was going to get, and I didn't realize how quickly there'd be 2 million podcasts, which sure has happened today and how just [inaudible] it would get. People wash up, people go driving and they listen to podcasts. So yeah, I didn't quite realize how the scale of which it was going to become my niche thing to being what everyone does.
Graham Brown: Pleasantly surprised. Very good. Do you have a podcast idol, somebody that you look up to and would like to be like in the podcast world? Or are you there already?
Pascal Hughes: We've got a long way to go. I think for me, the guys at Wondery seeing them create such varied content, but really high level. I really do respect that. Equally at the same level, I also idolize people who have really niche, strange podcasts. I can listen to about 15 people, but there are 15 people who love vintage tractors. And it's all about vintage tractors. Genuinely they are my idols too. Because I love how niche they get and figured out this perfect audience for their passions. And that's cool.
Graham Brown: That's really a podcast about vintage tractors?
Pascal Hughes: There's a podcast about everything.
Graham Brown: It's fascinating. Isn't it? Yeah. That's awesome. Have you ever had a really bad idea for a podcast? I've had lots.
Pascal Hughes: So many, sometimes in Alan Partridge, the TV series [inaudible] TV shows that's me most like Monday mornings over a coffee
Graham Brown: Monkey tennis or something.
Pascal Hughes: Yeah that's me every Monday pitching. I really like that. I think my team will probably vouch for that very strongly that I come with lots of enthusiasm and they have to pull me back.
Graham Brown: Yeah, that's good. Well, lucky you work with them, right? Otherwise you might have monkey tennis. Might work. You said there's a podcast for everything.
Pascal Hughes: That'd be amazing. Genuinely.
Graham Brown: You've been listening to The Age of Audio with me, Graham Brown from the award-winning podcast agency Pikkal & Co. To get access to all the audio conversations and book content for the age of audio, go to www.theageofaudio.com. One more time - theageofaudio.com