Video Killed The Radio Star

Welcome to The Beat by Rockstar CMO. I’m Ian Truscott, a CMO, trusted advisor, strategy consultant, and Chief Bottle Washer at Rockstar CMO. In this newsletter, I’d like to share a mix of what’s caught my eye, topics from our podcast, and our street knowledge blog.

Hi there!

It was inevitable that if you are on the mailing list of a newsletter by someone who is a child of the 80’s, does an audio-only podcast, who flies in the face of email marketing best practice and chooses the subject line based on song titles and writes about podcasting — you were going to scroll through your emails and find yourself contemplating opening “Video Killed The Radio Star” and, if you are familar with this tune by The Buggles, have an ear worm that you may not shift for the rest of the day.

I apologise for that - and thank you for opening.

But that’s my gift to the world before I dive into a bit of a rant.

On my walk today I flicked on a well-respected B2B marketing podcast I am trying.

After listening to the ads, it became apparent that this episode was a repurposed webinar.

We are a couple of minutes into the content.

The usual webinar platitudes are being platituded, someone was on mute, etc…

and…

Can you see my slides?

Ummmm….

No, I f**king can’t - I’m listening to an audio podcast.

Now, I sometimes feel like I am the only holdout for audio-only podcasts.

Both in the podcast I host and produce and how I consume them. It is very much not a television event; it’s radio, for when, usually, I am a long walk or doing something.

BTW, I can’t listen to podcasts when I am working - can you?

And when you have an audio podcast, the advice when going to video is that this is a different medium, and you need to optimize for that (etc.. etc) - all splendid advice.

But, what seems to be lost in this conversation is - what about the other way around?

For me, audio podcasts that have added video have almost always lost something.

The need to create good video harms the audio. It may be simply the production quality (it’s way easier to edit audio-only content than to edit video) or that podcasts who want to publish video feel the need to live stream, so there is barely any production.

I understand the motivation, as there is no algorithmic champion for discovering podcasts like there is for video - it is the way to grow an audience.

And if you want the Tube to pimp your content, you can’t just upload the audio and a pretty picture.

(Even if the damn tube says we are switching off Google Podcasts plug your feed into YouTube podcasts instead)

I also wholeheartedly glug from the jug of “content repurposing” Kool-Aid.

However, a good audio experience is not a visual experience without pictures.

Repurposing is not putting the same content on a different channel; it is repurposing the ideas, research, and work and then telling the same story optimised for the channel.

So no….

I can’t see the slides.

Cheers!

Ian

Ian Truscott | Chief Bottle Washer Rockstar CMO

I hope you enjoy this week's rant - thanks for reading this far, and I hope you like the links below. And please, say hello, reply to this email, find me on LinkedIn or my personal website.

This week’s podcast…

A couple of fabulous episodes this week - audio-only - made that way :-)

This week’s street knowledge

What caught my eye this week:

Get your Monday Marketing Mojo Working

Could you be any more early 80’s?