iHeartMedia’s Gayle Troberman on Audio Growth, Podcasts & Consumer Insights

Ah, it's great to be here, man.

Sure. I always answer this question with... some people, particularly younger generations today, are all about planning, right? You have career plans, you have these visions, you're going to do this to get there. I've always been of the stumble, stumble well, follow great people and what interests you. And bizarrely, that's how I landed in advertising because I loved all of the TV shows about it. I thought it was fascinating, from Bewitched to Mad Men to back in the day, Thirtysomething. It looked like a cool creative field. I had to check a box on college apps. I was like, "Oh yeah, advertising. That sounds fun." And that kind of landed me in that major. I started in the ad business in New York. Then we did a pitch, it wasn't my finest work, but I guess we were smart enough to not win the Microsoft business way back when in the PR days. I met Mitch Matthews and a couple other people from Microsoft through that. Then in the early Microsoft years, they stayed in touch and convinced me to take a big leap. I had barely been on the internet and I was moving to Seattle, where I'd been once, to work on the internet and figure out initial marketing campaigns for all the internet startups at Microsoft, which was crazy fun.

Yeah, you know, the Microsoft culture, particularly I've been gone for a little bit of time, but it was just such an amazing culture of make big bold bets, resource them, measure them, be willing to walk away from the ones that aren't working or don't pay off. In this moment of the Great Resignation and people changing jobs, one of the big secret sauces at Microsoft, and I'm sure you experienced the good and bad of this, was that the company hired crazy smart, passionate people.

Yeah. In the early Bill era, it was a culture where you passionately fought for what you believed, the people who got to decide decided, you made the bet, you all locked arms and played it through, measured aggressively and learned. It was a culture of hiring really great people and empowering them. Those are core principles. I worked with Satya very closely for a minute in one of my eras there, and he very much is of that Microsoft culture. It may be a little kinder and gentler than perhaps it was back in the day, but it's still about crazy smart passionate people, resource them, empower them, and then hold them accountable.

Even as much money as was invested in some of those. They're really hard business decisions. It's always hard for all of us sometimes to walk away.

It was kind of the best worst job offer ever. Matt Seiler, who I love, called me. We had just switched agencies, so we had basically just fired them and hired Publicis. I had just resigned from Microsoft. It was a regime change. It was time. I was trying to figure out what to do with my life. Matt called me and said, "Hey, we've got this media pitch. You just let us go. We really aren't set up well for this. We're probably five out of five in the race right now. What if you came and consulted and ran this giant global media pitch for us and did everything you would have bought?" He said, "I'll get out of your way. We'll give you the resources. Come reimagine." I was like, "That's kind of crazy." There's a great story. My next door neighbor at the time was Ben Gibbard from Death Cab for Cutie, and he had just had a big breakup with Zooey Deschanel. We were both suddenly home all day. He was playing like three sad notes on the piano that would ooze into our loft. I was like, "I got to get out of here." So I agreed to come consult. It was really fun being on the other side of a pitch. It was an amazing learning because it looks so easy when you're judging versus what it takes to really restructure and reimagine integrated marketing around the globe across multiple agencies and an ecosystem. We did some really good work. IPG won a chunk of that business, not all of it. Then we turned it into a real job, but it wasn't quite a clear job. After a while I had shaken things up a little bit and realized it's easy to judge the agency world but very hard to live it. I think all clients should work at an agency before they sit and judge, so you know how much work goes into it. What's interesting in running an agency for so many years is often you win business not when pitching the idea that's really best for the client, but the idea that's best for the pitch. We call it pitch candy. This idea actually will move their business, but is the end buyer really motivated by long-term business success or do they just want to get in trade publications? Do they just want to get a promotion? Right or wrong, a lot of how the world works, you have some people at companies that really do believe in the business, but other people — am I really passionate about toothpaste, or am I passionate about being able to get a promotion so I can get a bigger house for my family? Those motivations sometimes impact what you pitch.

And you can operate predictably.

Sure. It was another one of those great job offers that wasn't a job offer. I love a good challenge. I had met Bob when I was at IPG. He called me one day. I was between things. I was going to take the summer off, chill on the island in the Northwest, figure out my life — someday I'll get to that. He called me and said, "Hey, I just took over here as CEO at what was then Clear Channel. I have this crazy idea I want to float by you. I'd love to pick your brain. I'm thinking we need to reimagine the company and the brand. Maybe we should change the name of the company and really rebrand from Clear Channel to iHeart Media. We've got the iHeartRadio app and the iHeartRadio brand, and it's really catching." He walked me through his initial thinking and said, "I'll call you at the same time tomorrow. Give me a day of your brain and see what you think about it." I called him, did some work, talked to him the next day. It's kind of what I love about iHeart. Microsoft had become very big and deliberate, with a lot at stake globally, and we'd become slower. Bob, one day he said, "Yeah, I thought about that. We debated it. I think I'm going to do it. Will you come figure this out for me? I'm going to get all of my leadership team in a room on Monday" — this was a Friday — "and we're going to go through a list of every decision, every place our brand appears, and what we do: keep it, change it, get rid of it."

We went through a spreadsheet of thousands and thousands of line items as a leadership team. Made every decision. Ballpark costs. The sign on top of the building, the billboard here, the elevators in these offices, every single place the brand appeared. We made a decision. Boom. We rebranded the company in something like six weeks.

Yeah. Exactly.

Yeah. I like a line job because it's where you learn. You don't want to do it every day, but you got to get in, particularly when things are new. You got to get in the weeds. One of the questions you asked me was about big learning moments. When I first took over advertising for the whole company at Microsoft, one of the things that blew people's minds — and to me it was the simplest thing in the world — there'd been agencies of record pitching one big massive important B2B campaign for 18 months. They just kept coming in and nothing was landing. They'd go back to the drawing board. We just weren't marketing in a big above-the-line way. I just started, it was my first week. They brought in some new agencies and the existing agency, and they did a pitch. The existing agency's stuff was fine, and they were like, "We have to go to Bill and Steve on Tuesday, so I guess we should go with that." I was like, "But there's genius over here in this other idea." They were like, "Oh, but it's not right for us. They don't get us. It's too off." I said, "But we have a whole weekend." I remember talking to Mitch, the CMO at the time, and I said, "What if I got in a plane and went and worked with them all weekend? Monday we'll come back. If we're there, great. We can bring both ideas. If we're not there, no harm. We'll go with the okay idea." I'm so glad I did it. I'm still great friends with Rose and Tai. A lot of the best moments in my career were when we broke down the walls between agency and client. They let me into the workroom. We stayed up till midnight, 2 in the morning. Then they'd be like, "Go away and come back at 8:00 a.m." We'd rip it apart and then give us some time. We worked together for 72 hours.

Exactly. That's the challenge we all have with creative ideas. That's why creative testing, I think, is so interesting.

Absolutely. I'm often asked, "What's the ROI of research?" I'm like, "What's the ROI of a seat belt?" It only matters if you really need it. So we're going to get into our next section called Culture Watch. As you know, this podcast is called The Speed of Culture, and Suzy is a tool that really enables insights and research at the speed of culture. We're going to ask you a couple of questions, one of which you've already answered. So we're going to jump into the next three in classic Gail Troberman form. She's making her rules up as we go along, and I can roll with the punches. So I'm going to ask you three questions and we'll touch upon the one that you just answered as well. Just answer quickly in 30 seconds how you feel about this particular topic, and then we'll dive in. Question number one: what do you think the fastest growing industry will be in the next few years and why?

I think audio is growing crazy fast right on a huge base, which is kind of the exciting part of it. Obviously I'm a little biased.

Broadcast radio is still reaching 9 out of 10 Americans because it's live, human, unscripted. It's not just a place to hear music. It's a place to actually have a conversation and not be alone. It's a really bizarre business most people don't understand. With the world's music in my hand right now on this phone, we've certainly seen people listen in their cars, on smart speakers, laptops, phones, watches, TVs. But listening continues to grow and to more types of content. In this moment, the promise of digital was that it was going to unite us all in a kumbaya, lovely, the world is connected. What we're seeing is the opposite. It's brought out our worst selves. It's become a place that makes you feel worse, not better. I think that's why we're seeing a lot of content that's live and human, companionship, conversation media seems to be growing everywhere, and why we're seeing this massive new podcast rocket ship grow.

Binge watching 20 shows on Netflix.

People think AirPods are going to be the future of the smartphone. It's a wearable device that's really taken on in a true utilitarian way for consumers. I forget they're in my ears. I wear them the entire day, and it creates such utility. I never thought, and it's all based on audio.

I think the obvious answer of the week has to be metaverse, but what that means? It's like saying "internet" back in the mid-90s. What exactly does that mean? I think we're all in a learning phase. At iHeart, we've made some announcements. We're going to take a lot of the success we've had in our events business — we do hundreds of events from the big Jingle Balls to small local events, music events, concerts. We're going to start bringing events into the metaverse so we can connect fans and artists and brands in some new ways, and we're going to start learning. We're going to go where consumers are. We've announced we're going to go into Roblox. We'll be creating iHeartLands where we can bring, without all the physical world costs of what it costs to put on a giant festival or a live event in the real world, even more interactive and engaging opportunities that bring the fan closer to the artist and the community around.

Yeah. Exactly. Creatively, in the virtual world, who knows? I think everything's possible. I think blockchain commerce is going to be real, and we're learning fast on the NFT space. That's the other place we've been dabbling. When you go to an iHeart event, you want to engage with the event. A simple thing like a QR code — who would have thought QR codes would become so important?

With a simple thing like a QR code.

Exactly. And if you can layer tribes, right?

It's so true. When we do so much work with the artists, their fan armies are insane. You're right when you say podcasting. A superfan of Stuff You Should Know, they listen to every episode over and over again. They subscribe, they follow, they show up at live events. The podcasters are becoming the rock stars building these new communities of listeners. So true. It's so different than watching a movie or a TV series. There is something about the connectedness of these audio tribes, and they want more. They're rabid. That's where things in the virtual world become so exciting.

A lot of our broadcast radio personalities too, they always say... people ask Ryan Seacrest all the time, "Dude, you're on Idol, you got your own morning show. Why do you get up every morning and do three hours of live radio? It's a hard gig." He's always like, "Because those fans keep me real." He'll be standing with Katy Perry and people will come up trembling, "Katy, can I get a picture?" And they'll be like, "Oh, Ryan, would you take it? How's that cold you had?"

It was an observation, right?

Exactly. We did end up working with JWT on that campaign, and we ended up winning a Cannes Lion for it. It was a B2B campaign. The insight was really simple. The world was changing because of technology, and all of the different siloed divisions of a company were finally going to have to work together. This was 10, 12 years ago. Marketing and IT, the CEO and HR, all of a sudden technology was bringing these people together to force them to make decisions, plan, communicate. That was the insight: we have to break down these walls. The campaign was called "Because It's Everybody's Business."

So true.

That's hard work. Anything that's hard work, people will skip over to the fun stuff.

What slows me down? Age. Other than that, COVID was such a learning moment for all of us as humans. One of the things I got back into was some of the amazing content out there. You were talking about the ability to just slow down and actually watch a great film. Actually pay attention and watch, not multitask, but stop and consume really quality content. That's something I want to keep doing. On the life side, we say we all missed human contact and connection. What we really missed — at least in our lives — wasn't all the travel and the giant events. Those are fun, but what I missed was just a few friends and a great meal and that conversation. We're really trying to keep that and bring that back. Just people you love at a dinner table having a meal and a conversation, and making time for that. That's the most important thing.

I'm obviously passionately curious about all things audio. I'd love to learn more from consumers about — I have my theories and certainly a bunch of our own research — but I'd love to hear more from consumers about why they listen. Why they listen to different types of content. I'd love to get to that idea: do you listen to be connected? Do you listen to not be alone?

Yeah. It's like, what's the role of audio in your life?