Episode 250 / Idil Cakim / Audacy / Senior Vice President, Research and Insights
Intersection of Creative and Metrics in Radio / Audio Content
Idil Cakim, Senior Vice President, Research and Insights at Audacy, says about her career and experience: “if there are three seats you can imagine at the research and marketing table - agency, publisher, and provider - I’ve sat on all three equally by now.”
Her experience has taught her that crystal clear communication is more important than having vast knowledge on a topic, while her recent work on audio ads has uncovered interesting insights in how creative connects with data to drive results.
Communicate Clearly to Move the Needle
One of Idil’s former managers taught her to get to the point of a presentation by slide 3. People will only take away 2-3 key points from meetings, so make your content extremely clear and ensure they can go home with that one highlight you need them to retain.
Her trick to sticking to her own data driven marketing tip is to fight the urge to show “all that you’ve got'“ and always ask herself if she can make the point sooner.
Combining Traditional & Digital Media
Radio advertising can be surprisingly effective at driving digital downloads. Idil’s work has focused on understanding exactly how creative elements lead to analytical insights that are easy to quantify. This is why her Shiny New Object is the connection between creative and sonic elements and performance metrics. With Audacy, they’ve discovered that content is queen and that people are driven by their favourite content - which means they will go the extra mile to download an app, interrupting their day, when they hear a radio ad. The two media can work together and drive results.
Listen to Idil talk about her favourite marketing advice for students, how to succeed in data driven marketing, and more about sonic creativity and analytics, in the latest episode of the podcast.
Transcript
The following gives you a good idea of what was said, but it’s not 100% accurate.
Idil Cakim 0:00
Rule number one, say what you need to say and be done. People cannot consume all of that. And they will just remember one. If you're lucky two highlights, you just need to boil it down to that one big headline.
Tom Ollerton 0:11
Hello, and welcome to the shiny new object podcast. My name is Tom Ollerton, the founder of automated creative, the creative effectiveness ad tech platform. And this is a regular podcast about the future of data driven marketing every week or so I have the absolute pleasure and privilege of speaking to one of our industry's leaders, and this week is no different. I'm on a call with Idil Cakim who is senior vice president and insights at Audacy. Idil, for anyone who doesn't know who you are and what you do. Could you give us a bit of a background?
Idil Cakim 0:48
Sure. So I lead the research and insights function at Audacy, we are the second largest broadcaster of radio and podcasts in the United States, and a media and entertainment company. So my team is responsible for all things related to audio, and Audacy as it relates to thought leadership, helping with ad sales, and also really elevating the profile of audio and why any marketer should include audio in their mix.
Tom Ollerton 1:28
What were your roles before that? How did you get to that?
Idil Cakim 1:30
Prior to that, right. So I had a long run at Nielsen on the media measurement side and working with advertisers across categories on custom solutions. So Nielsen is perhaps best known for its ratings. But then there's there are a lot of customized things that we can do for clients. And I've mostly worked on agency and research provider side, and and then came into the publishing side of things. So if there are three seats, you can imagine at the research and marketing related table, agency, publisher and and provider, think I've sat on all three equally by now.
Tom Ollerton 1:32
So what advice would you give to a smart driven student who is doing all the right things, but wanted to follow in your footsteps?
Idil Cakim 2:26
My number one advice, and I see very few people do this, and I have fallen into the trap of not doing it. Number one advice is to interview back. And I'll explain what I mean by this. Sometimes when you're so driven, and you're so dedicated to your career, and you just want to get that job and you want them to honor it to you. And you're saying, I have a pulse take me please, I'll do anything. You forget who you're going to work with, what kind of environment you're getting into, forget to check whether they are likely to mentor you, which you absolutely need at any stage in your career. Whether they are likely to invest in you, what kind of projects you might be getting. So instead of yes, it's important, obviously, to answer questions that you're getting, say in an interview process. But it's also important to use those research chops to interview back and maybe look for some proxy elements around like, do they value people? Do they value? Insights? Do they have time for their family interview back a little bit?
Tom Ollerton 3:37
Can you tell me how you arrived at that opinion that come from hardware and experience?
Idil Cakim 3:42
A little bit, ya know, hindsight is 20/20. It's so nice to be in a position to say, well, in the past 20 years, my experience shows that this is better, something valuable. In looking back and assessing for myself, like what made me happy? What made me regret certain decisions. What made me say, well, it was still worth weathering through in, no job is going to be perfect all the way because no environment is is just perfect and stable. At any given moment. Things can change for because of external purposes. But I think it's really important. If I may say, Oh, I was able to succeed, and look back and say, okay, my education helped my hard work help. But you can't negate the importance of having a good boss, a good mentor, but helpful people along the way. It could be also a colleague who is generous with their time and their knowledge, when they're parting advice with you. And that all comes from a good environment. So I think you have to be in a good environment to flourish. And while you may not know everything at the on site of you know, first experience or coming into a job, you may have certain clues like if there are books on the shelves If people are getting training programs, if there's budget for team building exercises, I mean, these are all clues as to where they put their value.
Tom Ollerton 5:10
So do you have a killer bit of data driven marketing advice that you've find yourself sharing my stuff? Like, is there a silver bullet, or look, if guys of you, if you keep this close to you, then it will serve you?
Idil Cakim 5:22
Well, there's no end to editing. That's my headline. And there's nothing that is more important than crisp communication. So whichever one you want to put, first, you're as good as your communication, there may be a tremendous finding that you've uncovered after months of work, or something that you have seen, because you're privy to, you know, 3000 different data sets, and you're sitting at the junction where they're all meet. But unless you're able to communicate that in a way that is compelling, and clear, and simple, it's not going to land well, and it's not going to find its value. So I find myself constantly editing what I write what I publish, what I even email internally in the company, keep editing, and focus on clear communication.
Tom Ollerton 6:19
That advice, so can you lead me into a little bit of the how you do that? Right? So you, as you say, you sit at the intersection of 3000 data points, you've got the insight, really, yes, everyone needs to know this. And then you write it down? And then you do like, come back to it a day later? Or how do you make sure that you've got crystal clear communication? How do you know when you've got it right? And how would you get there,
Idil Cakim 6:39
I think if you went back to your work, after you've had the luxury of being away from it for a week, you would still find room for improvement. But the trick is to constantly force yourself to say it with fewer words and fewer slides. And I remember the turning point for this, and it came to me. And unfortunately, after I had already, like published a book by a major publisher, and have put a lot of words out there already myself. A boss taught me to get to the point in slide three, and say, if the presentation and months of work that you have put in had just stopped here, would you be okay with the client walk away, having learned something from you? So that was rule number one, say what you need to say and be done? So I'm constantly asking myself, Okay, could this point be made sooner, highlighted more, but earlier, and usually, I'm asking my team to just say what they need to say within five, six slides, and put the rest into sort of a more detailed outline. So it's out there if for anybody who wants but the story has to be told right up front. And I remember getting coached on that and being surprised. You know, how months of work by teams of people got summarized into just a few slides. And you might have to fight the feeling that you've got to just show all that you worked on. But this there was this other precious bit. And there was this other detail that's so important. People cannot consume all of them, they will just remember one, if you're lucky, two highlights. And you need to just craft it so well that they take it all home with that just that one highlight. Unfortunately, that's what it comes down to when you're so busy, and you're receiving information from everywhere. You just need to boil it down to that one big headline.
Tom Ollerton 8:32
How do you train people to do that? Because I've worked in agencies for years. And that is not the mentality, right?
Idil Cakim 8:39
Well, you have to fight that urge to show all that you've got. And you have to turn that into putting all that you've got into that one little spot training, I love the word you used. Training is key. And I think you do it through practice, you do it through collaboration, we oftentimes sound our, say we're writing an article, or say we're putting together a deck, both types of posts will go to several different colleagues from different backgrounds whose heads are not as close to the project as possible. And can give honest feedback saying this is where I tripped up this is this didn't work for me, this wasn't clear for me, and not be so precious about editing. And then you train your mind. And you sit down and say if I just needed to say it and be done with it. If I were in an elevator, and I have five flights to go through, and that's it. What would I need to say? And you're constantly you find yourself moving things from the tail end of the story, where you do the big reveal to the top of the story where you have to hit it big and capture the rooms attention. So it comes through practice. It's constant practice. And it's training like you said.
Tom Ollerton 9:57
This is like poetry to my ears but right, we need to move on.
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Talking about your shiny new object, which is connections between creative and sonic elements and performance metrics, some very long, shiny new object, but I'm curious to know, Can you Can you unpack that, as they say and help us understand what that is and why it's your shiny new object?
Idil Cakim 10:58
It's my shiny new object because it connects, I want to connect the dots between what has remained sort of elusive to measure previously. So a couple things to unpack there. Audio. And within Audio, we have radio, we have streaming and streaming radio, and we have podcast streaming and podcasts fall under digital perhaps more easily. And then we have this amazing giant of an industry under radio. And they all have their own different measurement tactics and ways. They don't necessarily readily speak to each other. But with Analytics, you can make it all sing beautifully together. And then you have the creative power, right. And we're so historically I think used to saying, well, creative rests in the power of some people's minds. It's just that's how it comes to them. They have so many years of experience in the industry, they just they just shoot it and it happens. And they say it and it falls beautifully. But there's logic to what they're doing. They know probably what elements will resonate well, with their audiences. There's so much that goes into creating something that's beautiful, that resonates, that stays with people. Now take that creative element, take the complexity of metrics that speak their own language, but somehow have to orchestrate well together? How do you get to walk from all of that, to the metrics that matter to management? The metrics that matter to people who are going to ask the hard questions? Did this medium work for me? Which channels worked harder for me? So those are different types of questions. And gosh, you have this like creative 30 second piece here. So the shiny new object, and this is what we're working on. We've just published on this on our website Audacy inc.com is an analysis of how first of all different types of audio work towards these performance goals. And within that, which creative elements were driving those performance goals? Is it the fact that we mentioned a content partnership? Is it the fact that we spoke about our original content? Or is it that we announced an event that we were organizing, where people from around the nation flock, you know, and to listen to the latest from artists. So which of these elements and moving parts contributed to those important outcomes? I think the analytical challenge is something that data scientists and analysts and researchers is something that they are used to. But bringing creative elements. And putting them side by side with those hard numbers is something that I'm most excited about and weaving in the Sonic elements that are not present in other media, something that I'm excited about.
Tom Ollerton 14:02
So tell me more about the report what you're trying to achieve with it?
Idil Cakim 14:06
The work that we did came from just an internal question of how are we going, how are we being impactful about using our own media when we're promoting the Audacy app? So we asked the question, okay, we're putting in this much money into or, quote unquote, it was remnant media, but this much value into our radio promotions, this much into podcasts this much into streaming, which levers should we pull? And how can we be smarter about this to drive the most number of downloads at the most efficient level? So that was our question. And then, when we delved into it, we saw that all of them were contributing in their own way. And we found some efficiencies in radio. So that was interesting, because radio is typically seen as a mainstream and traditional medium and here you have this streaming app. So wait, you're using the old medium to drive the new medium? That's interesting. So we said, what can we say on radio that compels people to take this action to switch modality, which is something so difficult? Actually, behaviorally, you're going to hear it on the radio, you're going to drop what you're doing, you're gonna go to your phone, you're going to swish around, found your settings and download the app. That's a lot to ask from people. And they did it. They did it. And we, our hypothesis was that they were following their favorite content. And that indeed, turned out to be true when we parsed the elements that went into the ads that were driving most of that activity. So
Tom Ollerton 15:45
let me see if I understand you correctly. So you had remnant inventory. So that was like ad space that you could use for free, basically, within your own platform or your own media. And then you ran different types of ads on different platforms for different audiences to drive downloads of the app,
Idil Cakim 16:00
it's not free, per se, it's still a value, it's up to us, or given to an internal team, saying, well, there's no advertiser running at this time at this place. And then we could use it to promote our own app.
Tom Ollerton 16:14
Exactly. Right. Okay, it has value, but it's not being used. So use it. So was there an equal number of impressions served across all of those different units? Was there an equal number of impressions per type of ad, or messaging, and so on? Can you help me understand the test?
Idil Cakim 16:28
All of this is on Audacy inc.com, as well under insights. I don't recall off the top of my head the amount of impressions, but it was, there was more on radio than on digital channels, and this one analysis to begin with. But the question that we're asking is not just, oh, I'm putting in more, am I gonna get out more out of it? The hard question you're asking is, which one is converting more smartly. So it could be that one hypothesis we had going on was that, oh, maybe a digital channel, in this case will work strongly for us will work better for us because they're already on a digital platform. That did happen. But we found because radio is also a more cost effective channel or value effective channel, we found that radio worked quite a bit. And we have a lot of people who are, this is where the creative reveals why people are taking the action that they're taking. We have a lot of people who listen to us not just for for their favorite music, but also for their sports teams for events. They get excited about their favorite influencer, and they want to have that voice thread throughout their day. So they are willing to take an extra step, and make sure their radio content is with them throughout the day. So it's a huge benefit to their daily life. And that's why they were downloading it.
Tom Ollerton 18:09
What was the nature of the testing within the the unit itself? Were you running the same message on all platforms? Or people? Or did you multivariate test? Or how much data did you get back other than which was the best format and unit and place?
Idil Cakim 18:24
So we looked at 92 different creatives across 24 campaigns, but all thematically geared towards the app download.
Tom Ollerton 18:33
Did you did you test like different messaging themes, or styles or different artists and so on?
Idil Cakim 18:39
Yeah, I mean, we worked... So it's a historical look, that's it has its advantages, as in, you know, you're able to see what happened as, you know, and so you're doing that hindsight look. What we found was, for instance, content, partnerships, sports and related announcements, announcements about the various leagues. And our events. Those are the top three that I can recall right now, were really powerful in getting people to download the app. There were other things that definitely helped. It helped that we were saying this is an ad supported medium, and the app is free to you. But it was mainly the big takeaway, why I go back to my big one headline, content is queen, the great content that they were finding in these pockets of our of our platform, and the appeal of being able to follow that content through on their mobile app was what was converting them.
Tom Ollerton 19:34
And so what did you learn that you can pass on directly? What was the kind of the biggest aha moment where you're like, right, okay, I didn't know that.
Idil Cakim 19:43
I didn't expect to see more room for growth on their radio. So the analysis showed that we could have, you know, been a little bit more aggressive with that value placement, if you will, in that scenario. So you're, you know, it's a model at the end of the day, so I should caveat it. It's a predictive model. So in that in the scenarios that we ran, we saw that we had even more room for growth, we could have put even more value on radio and and gotten an even stronger outcomes. That was one Aha, I was delighted to see the common theme of you know, favorite content follow through impacting results. In the hierarchy of things like people didn't, we also spelled the name Audacy, it's not a it's we also said Audacy app is free. And we explain some other benefits that they would get from the app. But people veered towards content that they knew and trusted and wanted to have with them throughout their day. So that I wouldn't say it was such an Aha. But it was a verification of what we had been anecdotally seeing, and also verifying through other researchers through the power of our content.
Tom Ollerton 21:06
I would love to go and talk about this. But unfortunately, we're out of time. If someone wants to get in touch with you about the report, or any of the things that we've discussed today on the podcast, where would you like them to get in touch with you? And what makes a message that you will respond to?
Idil Cakim 21:20
Um, absolutely, they can email me. It's my first name dot last name@Audacy.com and Audacy insights, or Audacy inc.com Has all our information.
Tom Ollerton 21:33
Brilliant idil. Thank you so much.
Idil Cakim 21:35
You're welcome. Thank you for having me.
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