Michael Smith
101 Great Minds on Music Brands and Behavior
Michael Smith, Chief Marketing Officer, NPR.
Michael Smith, the National Public Radio (NPR) 's CMO, oversees the engagement of new and diverse audiences for the company's programs, platforms, and brands. In this position at NPR, Michael manages consumer products, trade marketing, communications, PR, creative services, audience research, and brand extensions and licensing.
Throughout his career, he has developed and produced more than 80 TV shows and launched and branded many TV networks and streaming platforms. Additionally, Mr. Smith has built several successful marketing campaigns and expanded TV brands into consumer products and experiences.
Michael has a keen interest in the intersection of media, technology, and culture. He possesses a rare combination of creative and strategic aptitude and loves to construct "What's Next" rather than manage "What Is."
“To succeed, we must stay in step with changes in technology and culture.”
— MICHAEL SMITH, CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER, NPR.
Uli Reese: What was the first brand that made an impact on you?
Michael Smith: As a kid, one of the first was the ABC television brand. I was a huge TV fan and was struck by the image campaigns that ABC did to get people excited about the brand itself rather than just selling a particular show. In the late 1970s, one of them was around a very popular song called Still The One, and it was about how ABC was still the number-one TV network. They used that theme song with footage of people around America, signaling to be number one, and then intercutting the stars of the shows with regular Americans. I loved the way they made ABC feel more than the individual show. It got me excited about the people who turned the TV I liked into this cool idea. I wanted someday to have something to do with that.
Reese: And you did! But why do you think audio has become as dominant as visual now?
Michael: It’s the fact that new technologies all incorporate audio. Fifty years ago, the technology to get news content was reading a newspaper, but that paper couldn't talk to you. Audio is so much more available on the devices we use, and the popularity of podcasting is technology driven. You can walk around all day wearing wireless earbuds, and it’s revolutionized the opportunity to use audio. When I was growing up, if I wanted to have audio around me, it was a transistor radio on the countertop, but it was limited in where it could go. Now I've got a smartphone and earbuds, I can go anywhere, and I think the demand will only grow.
Reese: If you look at the present and future of sonic at NPR, what are your thoughts on the opportunities and challenges?
Michael: What will endure is our role as a complement to the commercial media infrastructure and being the resource that provides things the commercial system doesn't provide. That’s coverage that isn’t politically polarized or coverage of stories by marginalized groups that often don't make it into the mainstream media. Our social mission at NPR will continue indefinitely. The thing that's changing is how we reach people and who we reach.
Technology and cultural changes are the two things we must constantly be ahead of.
Stories that needed to be amplified in the United States in the 1970s are very different than today because the country is so different demographically, ethnically, and culturally.
Reese: What’s your take on the rise of the creator economy?
Michael: People sometimes put fancy terms on things to make them seem more special than they are. If you go back 50 years, you could enjoy your free time through more professionally created entertainment experiences, or you could have your more informally created experiences. You could go to a movie theatre or sit at home and play Monopoly with your friends. That was an entertainment experience because those people who are funny and who you're having a good time with were, in a sense, influencer creators. Today, it's a modern version of that. You can watch a highly-produced House of Dragons on HBO or TikTok, and that's the creator economy. Technology has facilitated the ability for people to do something that they've always enjoyed, which is being entertained by their friends, family, and other people. It's just now you can see ordinary people all over the globe, and be entertained by them too. In audio, we have the highly-produced side, which is what we do at NPR, and now there's the other side, which a lot of start-ups, like Clubhouse and others, are experimenting with where anybody has a microphone. This user-generated side of audio hasn't grown the way it has in video, and it remains to be seen if it becomes as big.
Reese: What do you think of TikTok and its influence?
Michael: It’s audio and visual driven, and that immersivity is going to become the standard. If we look at it years from now, it'll be people being immersed in multi-sensory experiences, such as the Metaverse, AR, and VR. TikTok is capturing something that’s been long-held behavior, and they’ve optimized the way we experience it - a lot of us just missed it was happening. People would channel surf or flip through a magazine or records in the stacks, so that kind of browsing behavior is something we’ve always done. The insight the TikTok product team had was realizing it was a key human need.
Reese: Gen Z live now in audio-only environments leaving many CMOs on the backfoot. What’s the answer?
Michael: It’s still early days, so be patient and see how it plays out because if you go back to when television first started, the discussion was about how we do as well with ads on TV as we do on radio. In the early days, TV advertising was in the middle of the show, and the host or actors would do some sort of description, but that was tricky because it meant you had to pre-sell the ad in advance, so you could only have one or two advertisers per show. So then they put breaks into the show, but they had to create the advertisements in advance and film commercials, and that evolved into the world we have now. But that wasn't the original thought. It’s early days with Alexa, but maybe as the technology evolves, when you say, “I'd like some Pampers," the voice that speaks back to you will switch over to the brand's own voice.
Reese: But that's where brands freak out. They say my brand died on Alexa because I went into a system where I had no visual identity, and somebody else had to talk on my behalf…
Michael: Take a breath. Like television, the technology will evolve, and maybe Amazon will allow people to upload their brand voice. People forget where we are in television and video advertising; it's been 60 years of optimization and development in the TV space, and we're only in year two with audio. In 2021, it was all about Clubhouse or BeReal. It's always been like that. I'm sure in the 1940s; it was all about the spinning wheel color TV! Eventually, it settles into the more dominant thing. At NPR, we take a more measured approach. We don't have to be there first. We'll be there when significant audiences are there, and then we’ll get into it.
Reese: Do you have any closing thoughts you have for your colleagues?
Michael: The one thing that's clear is that humans are spending more of their leisure time engaged in entertainment experiences. There’s a big opportunity for brands to connect with people. The challenge is that these kinds of experiences are fragmenting and changing thanks to technology, so that means how you show up is going to become much more nuanced and complex. Part of the challenge will not just be about what to say but how to say it.
Note: The interview took place in New York, USA on the 4th of November 2022.
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