The Hitmaker Formula with Bob Pittman

And I think this is a note taker and it's something that you probably want to like rewind I did at least because what Bob talks about through his career, he's a hit maker. He is the hit maker MTV six Flags, A O L. I Heart, etcetera, etcetera, goes

on and on on. Bob talks in really simple terms about things that are not simplistic, and so it's a really good episode to truly think about what he's saying and think about how this person has taken, you know, media companies from nothing to a O L. I think he said when he left was of the internet market in the United States and definitely for all of us a household name. I think this episode was very grounding

in terms of the practice and what we do. It very clearly brings it back to the reason I got into marketing in the first place, and that's to find ways to connect with people and deliver on a need through the power of communication. The constant push poll I I was having as we were going through this conversation was we've gotten so hung up on the delivery mechanism that in some regards, I think we forget what we're delivering.

And when Bob breaks down to your point, Alexa, the simplicity of putting a clear message in front of consumers that delivers on that need and doing it over and over and over again, and then you'll hear he says, the most effective tactic we have is word of mouth. Nothing that relies on technology or a platform or a channel. It's the companionship in the communication and the connection and the interaction that people have that moves them to take action.

It's what products today are built on. It is peer to peer. It is putting the product at the center of a community. And I could not agree more. And one of the things everything you said I agree with. One of the things that I would punch out in addition is that Bob wasn't saying, g RPS is the

way this is tried and true. He was actually saying, question that break that that's breakable, But what you're talking about that's unbreakable, and that I believe is what Bob was talking about is solidified, almost re verified the work that this industry and so many practitioners and listeners of the show are doing. So before we give away the whole interview, get out your notebooks. We're going to class

with Bob Pittman. But before we get to Bob, Laura, we're joined here with our partners from Yield Come out for part two of our four part series talking about how to make attention actionable. We're here with Lisa Bradner, GM of Analytics and Teddy Jotty, head of Product. So, Lisa, Teddy, if making attention actionable is core to yield most value proposition, how quickly are you acting on the signals that are

driving consumer attention? You'll know One of the ways that we are able to make attention actionable is we are sub fifteen minutes. So if we see somebody in a session doing something, we can turn and act on that in under fifteen minutes. We're continuing to work to push that number down lower and lower. But I hear people say real time, and what they mean is we're going to batch process it and get back to you in

twenty four hours. That ain't real time, and that's often not quick enough to really get the data year after. So how are you competing in the marketplace in that respect when we have so many different options, as you know, media buyers to think about who we line up with to target our audiences in the marketplace, how do you think about the difference in coming to yield mo versus potentially going to another data platform yield most points of difference?

I mean, you know, it really isn't our tagline about making attention actionable. Uh. Number one, it's the breadth and up of the data we collect. We're collecting over seventy signals, a number of them proprietary to understand what's happening to It's the real time tech that allows us to store and process that data because a lot of people, even if they could collect all that, they wouldn't be able to process it in any kind of quick fashion. And

then three, it's the ability to optimize off of that right. Um, you know, a lot of people talk about attention as an index or kind of a you know you've got more attention, yea, you've got less attention boo. We don't look at it that way. We take that signals and say, how do we optimize the media dollars you're spending right now? We want to get you a bigger bang for your book. We know that coming out of this year, cmos are going to find their media budgets flat to cut and

their growth targets tend up. So they can't just anniversary last year's media plan. We have a client say recently, he said, how am I going to take my MM them from two thousand and nineteen and apply it to two thousand and twenty one when two and twenty happened in between those rights. It's nonsensical. You can't go back to that because we are in a very different world and tell our listeners what m m M stands for a Lisa market mixed modeling one of the classic old school.

So we'll look back six months and three years of data and tell you that newspaper is the number one channel to drive your business from here to attorney. It's amazing that we're still talking about that it is it is.

It doesn't make sense when you're saying that I can actually turn a trigger signal to you in fifteen minutes, when you think about fifteen minute turnaround time, I can't help but think that puts yield Mo in the driver's seat when it comes to not only making actionable decisions, of course, but also finding opportunities or windows that present

contextual relevancy. We think about contextual all the time, and for a couple of reasons, with the death of the third party cookie, audiences are just going to be harder to find and follow across the open web, really across everywhere. But also we believe that we may be over analyzing and overspending on all the audience layers to get to

what we're trying to get to. And so when we think contextual, it's not just oh, you're on a car site looking at and we're going to serve you a car ad It's about all the signals we can read in that moment to say, who is this person, what are they looking for, what are they reading, what's on

the page? Where on the page is that everything that's going on, and understanding what they're signaling attention to can help you serve the next ad and the next and the next add and really understand in that decision tree, should I go left or should I go right? But I think Laura, the notion of versus reach and frequency

is interesting, right, we still need reach. Right, If you are a billion dollar brand and you have to add a hundred million dollars to your top line sales this year, I might find you the perfect group of people who really, really, really really care about your product. But if they're only five of them, there's only there's only so much they can buy. And this is for me where audience strategies start to break down because we're so maniacally focused on No. No,

this is our audience. These are the people buying our product. We want to help our customers find additional audiences that they may be overlooking, find places that their audience strategy may be missing because of data degradation, or just unveil new opportunities for audiences they haven't thought of. But it turns out our great opportunities for their products. I totally agree. One of the biggest mistakes I see today advertisers make is they um kind of overly obsess on audience strategies.

They spend all their money on platforms that they can track users, they can measure, and it makes sense, especially coming from a world where mixed media modeling or you know, doing these big buys and waiting six months later to see if it works super frustrating. So having the ability to track and see how your returns come out is a huge innovation. But the world is changing and um, things are becoming less trackable and they're becoming more expensive.

So you know, browsers are limiting this because of privacy controls and that's a good thing. And places like Facebook are becoming super expensive for brands because you know, it is trackable. Um And so I think that smart marketers are taking a step back and realizing there there are other strategies to achieve that reach and to get my message out. And these strategies like contextual that can allow

you to infer an audience based on the content. And it just feels better too, you know, And it's not like a stroll or following you around the internet on a you know, a sports side. It just feels more appropriate when you're that you're reading content and the ad just looks like it should be there um and and combine that with with AT tension analytics, the ability to see in real time, does this add resonate with the user?

That can be a very powerful strategy that's future proof and works um potentially better and um and and more scalable than than traditional audience buying. Lisa Bradner, Teddy Jwadi from yield Mo, thank you for being our partners, Thank you for coming on Atlantia, thank you for having us. And we're back with chairman and CEO of I Heart Media. Welcome to the show, Bob Pittman. Hi, Bob, thank you

glad to be here. Laura and I were looking through your career and we were thinking through this and we're like, how did he make the bets he made? You know? I think careers and most of life is getting hit on the head with meteors uh that things just sort of pop up. And I think the difference that people have is whether you say yes or know. And I'm always up for a big adventure and so a lot of the things I did at the time seem to make no sense, but they all turned out fine. And

but I'm very careful. I will only go do something that has something to do with a consumer because I think my basic skill set is that I that I focus on and understand consumers. When I was younger, I I claimed I was a sociologist. And so you know, whether I'm trying to sell them a house, or sell them a pay TV service, or get them to listen to watch MTV or by a O L, it's all the same human being and the same laws of consumer

behavior are at work. And I think if you understand those then it allows you a great flexibility of of you know, jumping to a lot of different situations. Do you think that marketers today need to be more sociologists or less sociologists in the consumer space? Yeah, it's interesting. I do a podcast called Math and Magic and it's and I've always talked about programming and marketing as math and magic the perfect blend of it. You have to have the analytics, you have to understand what the table

looks like, you understand what the framework is. But you know, if I tell you, oh, I know exactly who this person is, I've found them all you Okay, Now what are you gonna do? How are you going to motivate them? Just because you found them doesn't mean you can motivate them. That's the magic. And I think you need both, and I've tried to be a practitioner of both. I never graduated from college, but I did do three years of

it and my major with social methods of research. And I started my career in radio, and I was one of the first radio programmers to use research. Before that, it was sort of golden gut or I looked at sales or the record companies told me what was a

good song? Are we listening to the request line? And I started doing what we call call out research, and we still do all these years later, for fifty years later, still doing a variation of that, in which we survey the consumer about what songs they like and how they like them. The old days, it was do you love it the like it? Do you like it so much that? Or do you not neutral? Do you dislike it? Do

you dislike it so much you'll change the channel? Or do you like it but tired of hearing it so much? And and you know, from that we would develop how you balance your music and put it together on a

radio station. And I did that always when I was at a O l uh and every place I've been, I concept, test everything, and I test my liners and I don't know if you recall, but there was a time at a o L when we went to unlimited pricing and it was dial up and people got nothing but busy signals, and we sort of had our J

and J Thailand all moment. We had one chance to get it right and uh so we tested what would work with the consumers, what did they believe about us, what were they looking for, so that when we had that one chance to make a statement, we'd say the right thing. And and also helps define For example, at at a o L, we understood two things about consumers. They tend to want to go where everybody goes. You know, if you to a new talent, you very quickly find

yourself saying where does everybody go to get there? Whatever? And we their safety and going to number one. But if you just say you're number one, it sounds braggadocious. The other thing we knew was that what was we saw and it was quite different than everyone else. We didn't think this was about a keyness. We thought about ease of use and the future is gonna be easy to use. People as a slur said oh hey, oh well,

that's the internet with training wheels. They didn't understand that was what the consumer wanted to hear, that it was easy. So our our line became so easy to use, no wonder it's number one. We can find both of those thoughts. And I think that's a combination of math and magic.

That we understood the math of what they were looking for and how they were there, and from that craft at an approach which was okay, we're going to use the easy, We're going to use the number one, pull them together, tied the two together, and you know, as you know, by the time I left a O L, we have fift of the traffic of the inner at in the United States. Went through all this concept of

math and magic. You know, in an industry as ours where seemingly everyone has doubled down on data and in many cases it's become sort of a commodity in many regards and many people are using the same data. Can you talk to us about the magic element? Where do you go, Bob for the magic time and time again, whether it was figuring out why MTV why then in that moment, and what it would be to pivoting. You know, however, many years now into my heart and being a mover

and shaker within the podcast industry. So it's a really good question, and I think it's it does start with me with the math part. And the math part is not exactly the math that everybody uses today is not just clicks and numbers. It's math of understanding what verbatims people say when they're talking about something. For example, years and years ago on as a radio programmer, we said we play less commercials because that's gradically correct, and I go, yes,

but that's what everyone says. And so I think the important thing is understand the language, Understand the way the consumer frames the issue and what they're looking at, and talk about it from their point of view, not from our point of view about how we built it or what we think it is as a professional. Um. And and I think on the on the magic front, it is really opening your mind. Um. I read some you know, a great student of of creativity and and and you

know you read a lot. And I believe this that you don't come to a creative idea by stepping through some business school kind of points of view. And then here's the answer that the way the way you get the creative idea is you load your head with all the information, you mull it over you and then you forget about it, and one morning, when you're in that alpha zone, when you're sort of almost awake or sort

of in and out of sleep in a way. Or for me, it's when I'm taking a fifteen minute hot shower in the morning and I'm just zoning out, ideas pop in my head and it's a joke in my family forever. I've run out of the shower and quick, give me the pen and just write it all down. It just appears in my brain. And because I know that's how it comes. When I work with agencies, I don't want the big presentation. I said, you really, just

save all those account people. I don't need to see them. Uh, this will be a more more profitable account for you. I want you to get about three or four different teams to look at exactly the same stuff. Do not have them talk to each other. Do not have someone review their work to figure out what you're going to present to me and then come and present it. And what I'm doing is I'm maximizing the odds that one of those people had the epiphany. And it's those epiphanies

that make the difference. You know. The line H A O L so easy to use, no wonders Number one turned out not to be the line the agency was suggesting. It happened to be in a briefing note they had about the line they wanted to create, and and and as soon as I see it, that's it. And I think that's Matt. When you see magic, you know it.

That I want my MTV came about because George Lois and um and they open who is his partner, had been promotions director at w NBC Radio with me who I had given the account to to come up with this idea of you know, how are we going to advertise MTV? And we had this problem that the cable operators didn't want to carry us and they wanted us to pay the money. We didn't have it, so we needed some way to use consumer pull to get the

consumer to to demand it. And they had originally this this uh commercial of America's becoming a land of cable brats and blah blah blah blah blah, and in there it said call your cable company and say I want my MTV. Well wait a minute, that's that's the line I want my MTV let's read craft. So to me, it's alla is this iterative process that you can edit, you can play with, but it starts with that creative epiphany.

I mean, you look back over your career. Were you doing these big, swinging innovations or was it more incremental innovation building on itself. I never thought I was doing anything big. People have said I was a disrupted I never thought it was disrupting anything. I thought I was simply solving a need. Okay, I can identify we need this, let's go do that. We need this, let's go do that. The consumer wants this, let's serve that. But I never thought, wow,

I'm going to disrupt everything. I just thought I was following consumers, or I was looking for a solution to a particular issue. I did a Math and Magic episode with Fred Cybert, who did the on air look for MTV, which at that moment in time, you guys are too young to remember, was the what was this incredible breakthrough look?

But the reason we did the look, as Fred and I explored, was because we didn't have the money to do what everybody else was doing, which was looked like Star wars logos, you know, coming from outer space, like the intro to Star Wars. Um So Fred hit upon the idea, said, you know, Bob, if we do our version of that, we don't have much money, so ours will look cheap. But if we do something entirely different than no one's ever seen before, then it will just

look creative. And and he was right, And that's what led us to do such a radically different look was because we didn't want to look like anything else, so we couldn't be compared. And people realize we were spending ten of what our competitors were spending and creating that. Do you think marketers today ask the simple question that

you just asked, what is the need? Because I you know, I talked to marketers all the time, and we've overcomplicated, and we've also and we've also naval geys to a point where we don't we can't even ask the simple questions. I have a pretty strong opinion on it. I'm a research guy. I love data. Um, I think we've gone way too far. And I talked to marketers and they're I've got I want to target. I want to go

to the target. And you look at every bit of the research and I pull this out for people to see sometimes because you get a little lost I go. You do realize, of course, that most of your buyers are not in your target audience. If you think about the target audience and about all the research supports, that target audience means you have a high density of buyers within this group, but most of your buying is done outside the target. So when you super target to this

target that you've figured out, you've eliminated everybody else. If you look at people, if you look at the results of companies, and then let's go back to like two thousand and eight, two thousand nine, ten years ago, and they shifted their money tremendous amount of money to to digital and social where they could absolutely target most of those companies. Almost all those companies had stagnant sales, stagnant revenue, no revenue growth. And how they're doing all this super

targeting and missing everybody else. I look at the example of Mark Pritchard at PNG, which is I mean, guys, she's such a smart guy, and he you know, they cut out radio and outdoor almost disappeared from PNG. I think, I think, you know, they weren't even in the top two hundred three or four years ago in radio, and suddenly Mark looks at he needs to cut back his marketing spend. If you remember this moment in time, sales have been somewhat stagnant, and so Mark, unlike most people,

say well, it's gonna cut everything. Ten Mark really looked at everything any any any you know, if you mean conversations with him, and he said it publicly to um, you know, he'll said, well, let's see where where did we take our money for before and how well did that perform? And wait a minute, now that I really look at it closely, a lot of those digital's not performing. I think the number one he took two hundred million out of digital put money back into radio and outdoor.

And I don't remember you know, you know remember this, But as soon as he did that, his sales took off. And I think they had something like five or six record quarters of sales. And he moved from not even being in the top two hundred radio advertisers. So I think he was number one or number two last year. And uh and and you know what if you find, of course with radio, is that yes, it hit his target. But and he only paid for the target, but he

actually got everybody else. And I think a lot of companies forgot that in the broader reach media, that you paid for the target, but you got this extra for free. So people really did hear about it when we went to digital. And by the way, I started all this at a oh well, we convinced people to come to digital advertising. But the problem with digital advertising, it's very powerful in many ways, but the problem with it is you only get the target and no one else. Here's

your message. You've gone dark with those other people. I remember when around six Flags steam Parks. When I got to the company, this company was stalled at about seventeen million in attendants, have been for twenty years. And as we began to look at it, we looked at the markets and they say, well, we really get a high density of buyers from the market and what they called the outer market. They said, well, we don't advertise out

there because it's hard to reach those people. But I looked at it and it was like that was all the growth and the growth potential of the company. We're

already fully penetrated internally. So I figured out ways to do cheaper advertising, some national advertising and things like that, which reached this outer market which they said wasn't quote unquote efficient, and we took the Now we did some other things too, but we took the attendance from seventeen million to twenty five million, and and it was unlocking these people that by mark geting rules that didn't work. I also did something there which I bought a ridiculous

weight level. I bought fifteen hundred grips a week, hundred a week, almost impossible to get. We were the number one advertiser in every market. And we did this for about ten weeks in seven markets. And my agency said, Bob, you're wasting your money. I go why? They said, your twelve plus frequency is not increasing? And I go, what about my twenty plus frequency? What about my thirty plus? Freaks?

Who said twelves the magic number? And what I wanted people to do with buying the silly frequency was we were a tarnished dead product. I wanted people to think everybody was talking about six flags. So how did I how was I going to accomplish that? If I bought enough frequency, I knew that the consumer would get confused and they would think every time I turned around, I'm hearing about six flags, they think people are talking about it, so they began talking about it. Then I primed the

pomp of word of mouth. And to me, that's the most effective advertising get a conversation going today in marketing. Still today, I don't think we win unless we're in the conversation. And I think every product has to get people to talk about the product. I gotta be at that dinner table conversation. I have to have someone telling somebody. And so the way I used that there was massive

a frequency. And again I think a lot of these tricks get lost from people saying and I've got precisely seven point three clicks, it's going to be the magic number. And I go, you're kidding yourself. You are It is not that precise, and you you human brain and no computer can capture all the variables that are necessary for success. And when we try and do it, it's I promise

you a full's game. Um. And and so for us, for me as a marketer, yes, I want to know all that information, but I'm realistic about what it can do what it can't do. One of the things you know, you're just alluding to to scale, and we know my

Heart reaches nine and ten Americans. But what we're really enamored with is the audience relationship with the platform, with the hosts, with each other, and thinking about, Bob, how close you are at the community level locally fifty stations around the country talk to us about the magic in power of local radio at scale. Sure, let me let me spend one second, because I think it's poorly understood, although I think you guys understand it pretty well. That

you know, radio is unlike any other media. Most media is about a program, a piece of information, a piece of quote unquote content. Radio is not. Radio is companionship. If you think about, well, your music, I said, of our stations don't play music, how do you explain that? Uh? And they and they say, well, I'm you know, I'm hearing all my favorite songs. I go, I sort to hear my favorite songs. You know. The minute we put a a tape recorder, Availa Bullet to Uh, we could,

we didn't have to listen to commercials anymore. And my own mixtapes. Uh, why did radio do so well? Why is it continue to be big? It turns out, of course, what radio is his companionship. We're keeping people company. We're writing to work with them every day. In that empty seat, that's Ryan Seacrest there. He's a really interesting person. He makes your drive to work pretty interesting. Is if you had a great, uh, you know, a buddy writing to

work with you. And so our job is to talk to the listener as if we're their best friend, and they should think they know us. Ryan Seacrest has this wonderful stories he tells about how he knows he's working. He said, if he's out with some stars TV, movie stars and the and a fan sees them, he said, they rush up to the movie star and they go, Wow, can I get my picture taken with you? And then they turned to Ryan and say, hey, would you take my picture? They treat Ryan as their friend and the

movie star as a star. And he said, the minute that changes, I'm dead. He knows it. And I think the wonderful thing about radio and what we do is that we are having a conversation constantly with the consumer. They listen to the radio broadcast radio on an average of about seven times during the day. They're always checking in to see what's going on like they would with a pal, and they're looking to us to give them

that relevant information. And for us, advertising is the This is probably the most native medium for advertising, because what does advertising tell you to do when it's done well, it tells you what's out there. Uh, you know, I don't think we as a as a as a concept. I don't think we ever sell anybody anything. I think what we do is we try and connect people, connect people to a product they may like by explaining the

product in a way that they understand. And if someone's using radio advertising, their goal ot to be either through the weight level, through the creative they use where they use it. They want to get the consumer talking about the product. And I don't care what the product is. There's everything hasn't has a conversation about it. If you're

clever enough, you'll figure out how to activate it. Are the local stations kind of this hidden jewel that I heeart has Do you think about that, especially in today's world where people have scattered from cities, gone out to the suburbs, the local community is really key, Like are you thinking about using those local stations in a different way or how important they are to the kind of overall asset of I heart. It's really fifty brands absolutely.

We we treat them by the way we treat the eight hundred fifty brands, like Pixar treats their movie brands. And our Pixar brand is iHeart Radio. And if people know one of our radio stations at an iHeart Radio station, the quality score goes up about twenty points, just like I imagine animated film goes up about that if you know it's a Pixar film. But I would say, as opposed to being a hidden jewel, it's sort of hidden to the advertising business because that's not what they talk

about all the time. But it's actually the foundation of what we do. Um that everything is built on that radio station has a relationship with a group of of of consumers who are in the tribe of that radio station. That radio station speaks to them. It's an organizing principle. It's part of My favorite radio station is the one my favorite radio station is you know is a Kiss FM.

My favorite radio station is whatever, And so it's part of your life and it defines who you are to a certain degree, and we take that responsibility very seriously. We're actually regulated by the Federal Communications Commission, the federal government. We have standards on what we can and cannot say, and we will lose our license if we violate that. So we are the safest media. We end and broadcast television, which has the same restrictions, are probably the safest media

out there. Uh. In terms of that, we also take the response, but we're actually licensed to serve the community and we actually believe that. So when something like Hurricane Sandy was barreling towards New York, See one, hundreds stopped

playing music and talked about evacuation. After the hurricane hit Panama City, our stations down there were the only media on the air, and most of the cell coverage was down, so we became critical to tell people where you go, where you get your blankets, how you get help, where the medical care is, where you can get temporary housing. When the floods hit Houston, I was listening to our

station on by our radio. I was on l A and listening to it, and they would have people on the air saying, well, I'm on top of my house here, and they go to describe your house and where you are, how many people are there? Now? Are there any disabled people there? And they were saying, okay, who's got a vote? Because if you remember, the government didn't have enough votes, so they were enlisted private people with boats. They were putting people together with people with boats so that they

could get people evacuated. And that became serving the community. Now in good times, were playing music for having a good time. We're doing whatever, but when they need us, we're there. During COVID, we've done some very important work with getting information out and helping people get through it. And with the the unfortunate and tragic killing of George

Floyd Um. We had a last year we were looking at our radio station or portfolio and saying, you know, we got some stations we're not we're not doing enough with We need to do something bigger, and we got them all over the country. We get something really one big national idea, and we're looking at opportunities and realize that the black community had zero, zero, not one, not even one news all news service, the talk services they talked except no all news service. Where's the ten ten wins?

Where's my CBS news radio eight? Um? And so we set about building one, and then COVID came along. Ad sales go down, we cut costs, We put it on the shelf. George Floyd killing happens, and Tony Coles, who was the executive internally who was really developing this with a couple of other folks, reaches out and he said, Bob, I know we've cut cost. I know we fur a little people. I know every penny counts, but the country

needs this and they need it right now. So we go, you know what, right, talk to the board of directors, We all talk amongst ourselves and we say, no matter what it does economically, we're gonna launch this. We're gonna launch the Black Information Network. And we as part of it, we said, you know the problem with news being ad supported is that they then will need to get a

rating because it's all costs per thousand. Right, And if and I was I was sponsible for CNN part of my portfolio when I was CEO of Time Warner when Fox came along, and we had lots of discussions about whether we should also do sort of opinion news, take a position, and at that moment we decided to know we're gonna be really balanced news. And as you know, Fox ran away with the ratings. So we know that if you if you want a rating and news the way you do it is you basically do clickbait headlines,

you do clickbait news. You you get people's blood pressure up. You sort of sensationalized stuff. Don't tell them the whole thing, So slap that story a little bit to get them riled up because think it's a rating. And we wanted to figure out a way not to do that. So we hit upon this idea and we reached out too. Then we were limited to ten companies to come be founding partners with us. Let's develop this service as a authoritative, fair and balanced news source that always covers the black

community the perspective. And so we came up with a model of we found these bounding partners, fantastic companies that shared our mission, and we together came together to go to the Black Information Network and launch it. And oh, by the way, from the time Tony said let's do it till the time was on the air, I think was four weeks. And you know, when I was talking, some of these bounding partners said, yeah, I like that. I don't know when are you talking about launchets in

two weeks? The two weeks Wait a minute, We we never operated in two weeks and it was but we all came together and moved at a speed we knew are normally moved. But to me, that's the power radio. We can do things immediately. We can do it quickly. Hurricane Sandy's heading this way. We can drop the program literally in a second and start talking about something new. We don't have to get camera crews out there or

do anything else. We were connected. Yeah, I I well, I actually think, by the way, congratulations on that, because I actually think it is a big deal. You know, when I think of my heart and I heart audio, I also think of you as a talent network as well. You're almost a talent network. Have you and your kind of leadership team talked about what the future of talent in audio sounds like, looks like, etcetera. Yeah, it is.

It looks like the entire community because we reach Americans, and our view is if we reach ninety percent of Americans, we ought to be that that diversity ought to be represented with us on air. And uh so we look for people from all walks of life. And and not only am I talking gender race, I'm also talking liberal conservative, I'm talking progressive. I'm talking about young old um suburban, rural urban that we need to cover it all. And when we make decisions, when we talk to the community,

we need to sound like the community. And if you're gonna be authentic, you have to be real. It has to be up the community. And so that's a really important thing for us, and we continue to strive and work on that. And we also work on developing talent um. We have talent coaches that help sort of people reach

their potential. We have so many radio stations that we can use and such a career path that it's hard to imagine somebody wants a career on the air, you know, being someone's friend, being uh, this kind of personality that could say, oh, I'd rather be anywhere else, that this is the place to be. We take it seriously, uh. And we also know that no matter who we have on the air, we need to be building the next

generation and we need to be listening to them. You Know, the biggest advantage I have and the biggest drawback is I've been around a long time. I started MTV when

I was twenty seven. I'd already had a great career at at NBC Radio, starting at age twenty programming their stations out in Chicago, and then went to w NBC and New York program them and but so I have a lot of pattern recognition, a lot of experience to bear, but I also understand that I'm not at the moment, and since I'm not at the moment, I need to

listen to the equivalent of Bob Pittman. At I worked for a man named Steve Ross, who is this great entrepreneur who built Warner Communications and the time Warner and I was the young guy that beating him sort of fresh ideas, and I somebody I forgot who it was talking about the Mentor program where they actually do the

reverse thing. They have young people mentor their senior executives um as opposed to the senior executives mentoring the young people, and they mentor them so they know what's really going on, what the world really looks like today, not yesterday. And I think that's so critical to the work you do, the work we do, and all of us that are in media communications advertising where we're trying to reached the public and have a dialogue with them and have a conversation.

What you said about pattern recognition is so interesting, and I love we love to talk about audio in general, going from radio to podcasting. What has the podcasting space allowed you to do potentially that that radio has limitations in but also areas of where it can bring the future of audio. Sure, it's a great question. Let me before I go there, I'm just gonna do one thing, because we keep talking audio. They're really two pieces of audio,

and they actually are radically different. They're they're mirror images of each other. One is the music, just my music, my music collection that used to be a box of CDs or LPs or forty five um and today it is your streaming service Apple Music or Spotify probably And uh, but when I listen to my music, I'm escaped in the world. I'm putting myself in a one to one relationship with my music. I'm putting putting a cone of silence out. I don't know what. I want to know

what's going on the outside world. I don't want information. I don't want to joke, I don't want whether, I don't want the time. I just want to go and it makes me feel a certain way. Radio is the opposite of that is companionship. It's when you want to know what's going on in the world. And so I think you think about those two is very different pieces.

And and by the way, every time we get close to trying to do something in the music collection, we tried to do on demand music on the I Heart Radio app and he was like, that's not yea, what what is that? You know that I'm looking for radio here and uh, I'm looking for that companionship. And so when we look at podcasting and why we've been watching it for years start trying to understand how big it could be and what how it could grow. Is I think podcasting is sort of Netflix. Uh, and what do

I mean by that? I think Netflix is t be on demand. Uh. That really the TV networks probably should have started it because initially it was built on just a replay of stuff you would see on TV, except I can have it on demand. I could get it when I wanted it, and uh. And then that is really when I look at radio, like TV had a limitation of how much they could put out there because it was linear. I've only got twenty four hours in a day, seven days a week, So I do the math.

I can only have so much programming on the air. But there's programming like that that could be on that network if I had time for it. That was Netflix. I think in our case, I think a podcasting is still an extensive companionship. And what we know about podcast is podcasting is completely host driven. It is you don't have a great host, I don't care what your content is, You're not gonna have hit podcast. And so for us, it was the same radio experience, except it was on demand.

It was not necessarily in real time. But every show that's a podcast could really be on the radio. Uh, and sometimes some of our podcast actually are the radio shows delivered on demand, and uh, we have uh just said okay, that's our that's an important part of our future. Yes, we want to keep radio going. But there's a whole new on demand feature. Let's don't let Netflix happen somewhere

else has happened with the broadcast networks will be a problem. Rather, let's do it the broadcast network should have them, which is basically started their streaming services themselves with all this other content. And that's what we did. And today we're the number one podcaster. We've been the number one commercial podcaster, and we have a lead of about two to one over the next largest commercial podcaster. I think podcasting continues

to grow. This has grown much faster than streaming music did. So I think we're looking at something the consumer wanted. We're looking at a service that's that you know, we build the infrastructure to deliver um and I think it continues to grow and be an increasing part of the important part of the media landscape. And by the way, what you do in terms of engagement with a advertiser

and podcasting you couldn't do anywhere else, you know. But I'm sitting here going like, what business is Bob Pittman in right, Because I'm sitting here thinking about the fact that you're a town hall, your local community center, You're an IP generator, you're a creative discovery engine. Like, there's all these businesses and it just so happens that you know, a broadcast, radio station or streaming platform. Is how you put that work out in the world, or put those

conversations out in the world. It's really interesting to think about them. I'm sitting here imagining, you know, your sales team's pitch deck, and I'm saying, like, is it an audio company? Because when you start to really pull apart the businesses that you're in, it's really not audio or talk radio or music or it's really about the community and the creators at the heart of it. And that really unlocked all of these different businesses. Um to me that I heart media then becomes we will also tie

it together. I mean, you bring up a very good point, because I guess we really don't even think of it as audio. We think of it as companionship. The best way we do it is having audio conversations. But when the we did all these big events and then the lockdown happens, and we realized the consumer is feeling very isolated.

So we work with Fox and say, you know what, we think we can get these big stars to do this living room concert one night, shoot their stuff on iPhones and first of your iPhones, so it's gonna watch iPhones on TV. And we we get Elton John the host it. You know, Alicia Keys kicked it off. We had all these great performers in that in that one show, and we did it instead of doing the award show, which got canceled because we obviously couldn't put people into

a theater and do an award show. And we used that slot with UH with Fox to do it. And we really didn't know what we were going to do, but we knew companionship is very powerful and I Heart knows how to do it. So the the I Heart UH Radio living Room Concert with Fox and it's interesting. We raised I think the total was sixteen million dollars in that night, and it's important just to demonstrate the

power of it at that time. And I think it still maybe the highest rated Sunday night entertainment show on TV for the year. Who we produced that it's TV, but we didn't say think it's TV versus radio. We thought it's companionship. It's us connecting with this audience and this community and UH and you're right, it so happens were audio, but the essence of what we're doing is

something that's probably more refined than audio. Where do you take this because we're not out of COVID, I think we all think, right, it's going to take a long period of recovery. Live sports is is in question. Moments where community has rallied in mass is in question in general physically on broadcast, etcetera. How are you thinking about taking companionship or are you thinking about taking the idea

of companionship even further, even further than what you're describing. Yeah, I think a lot of it is about, um, how we use it and what they gotta go back to, what's the need right now? Uh. When the protest came up over social justice, racial equality, uh, you know, following the killing of George Floyd, we brought instead of you know, say okay, it's hard to get out there and do what we would normally do, we did these virtual town halls. Uh. There was even a moment in which the Breakfast Club

chatted with Rush Limbaugh. Um, you know, Charlemagne the god in the Breakfast Club and Rush Limbaugh talking about this that there was a moment, you know, in which the country needed a conversation, and so we had to rally to provide the conversation. And we did them in local markets, we did some national ones, uh, and we did them in sort of all flavors. And I think that's what we have to do, is is just listen for the moment.

And I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. There may be something tomorrow which we need to change whatever we're doing, and we will and we can. And I think having that attitude if we will and we can, is really what makes the company great and which makes us invaluable to the consumer. And over time, I think a consumer values us because of the cumulative impact of what we've done. And I think that's what's exciting about the company. And that's exciting about the work we do.

And by the way, when we deal with our advertising partners, you know, yes, we'll sell you some spots, but that's the least interesting thing we can do. What we can really can do is talk about what are you trying to do and how do we come buying your smarts and our smarts, what you know and what we know, and your assets and our assets, and figure out how to make this thing work? And uh, and I like it one because of the service we do. I also like it just because I'm a very curious person and

I like making things. And there's nothing more interesting than me than getting involved with one of our clients who's got a particular need and brainstorming and coming up with these ideas. Because I think all of us in this business, probably everyone listening and certainly you folks are. We're turned on by creating, and uh, it just gives us satisfaction. It's like that's what I wake up in the morning

to do. And I think we have this bed with this huge reach, all these markets, all these product lines where we sort of don't run out of territory. We can There's a lot we can create and if someone comes to us with a brilliant idea, we can just say sure, we can do it. Well, we'll say yes and then figure out how to do it later. Does the industry sometimes gets held back in what you just described getting turned on by making things that people need?

Isn't that our jobs people need? Like it's that freaking simple and it's explained stuff to people. You know, what's the biggest problem with all the products that we're all involved with. They don't know enough about it. We know so much about it because we make the product, we failed to comprehend that the consumer doesn't know anything about it. In the in the old days when I was a radio programmer, and one of the first things I observed was at the time a disc jockey was saying, I'm

sick of playing this record. Is about the time the consumer goes, what's the new song you're playing? Yeah? Yeah, we are way ahead of the consumer, and we have a body of knowledge the consumer doesn't have, and we as creative people. The job we have is how do we I go back to how do we connect to people? With the music industry, we see our job it's connect the music to the fans, the people that will like it.

With an advertiser, our job is to connect that message to a consumer who will be responsive to that message and explain in a way that gets them excited about

it as opposed to turned off to it. Bob, we know that you're in the subscription business, and throughout this conversation, just thinking about the word companionship and the emphasis on the relationships that you have around your I P. Do you see a world where my heart continues to move into subscription and starts to look at different options and going direct to consumer, not as a as a replacement of ad supported, but potentially finding new ways UM to

give consumers experiences directly UM, experiences so unique UM that they would want to pay for them because they want to stay engaged in that conversation with that community, with that talent. For example. Yeah, you know what's interesting I did at a O well we want the great success stories and subscription UM and we had when I left about thirty five million subscriptions stay Oh well, and uh we we, unlike anybody else in the internet, wade money

on our our subscription revenue. Um, I do. But I think it's we got to be careful with subscription. People jump to the conclusion of I'll do subscription and everybody will want it. Actually, they only want subscription if it makes sense. And when when I say it makes sense, is is it cheaper? Is it more efficient? Is it

more effective than what I was doing? You know, Netflix was a huge hit with a subscription because it was so much cheaper to pay that one price for a subscription that it was to buy all the product a la carte. Um. But I've seen people in the podcast business gone, I'm gonna start charging before podcasts. I remind them, I go, podcasts are free today. Like what business can you tell me where something was free and people start charging for it and the consumer goes great, that's a

great idea. Uh none, um. And so I think, you know, if we could find a sub scription business where we were doing a service to someone by providing a subscription, not providing a subscription because to be good for us, By the way, who wouldn't want a recurring revenue stream every month, hitting a credit card the time and time again. But I think you have to be realistic about it, that a business need is not a substitute for a

consumer need. And if I could find something where I was serving the consumer by giving them a subscription, I jump in a second. But I think too many people today as I look out there are trying to cram a subscription down the consumer's throat and they are to be a surprise that the consumer doesn't buy it. So I think the really successful on is I mean, I I think Netflix had a great model. Well, I think

Disney Plus is great. Who doesn't know those brands, who doesn't know what Star Wars is or what Marvel is or what Pixar is and putting it out all the gay I go, I got it? And what I don't want to pay each individual one? And they're all there, sign me up. It's a service to the consumer. And I think we have to be respectful of consumers and say, if it's not a service, don't kid yourself. I'm just thinking about all of your festivals and how unique those are.

Is there an I Heeart festival subscription that I want to pay for five concerts? We can brainstorm. But yeah, just thinking about the service the service note like really absolutely, and I think those are the kinds of service. If I go, I'm gonna go to every one of them. I can't keep track of them, and it cost me exit. You give me a good deal and I subscribe and I'm a member of the whole thing. That's a service.

And I think you're exactly right. But I think any But you know, we're just in a world right now. We were talking about people sort of over analyzing analysis, you know, paralysis, analysis, paralysis, and now we're getting into you know, sort of subscriptions. Everything not for everybody, most cases, is not. You're exactly right. You have to find the opportunity where people go. Yeah, that's great. Please thank you

for doing that for me. What would people be surprised to know about Bob Pittman that they don't currently know? But look, I'm from Mrs Sippy, Uh, preacher's son, Um, not a college graduate. I'm not one of those fancy educated people. Um, it's uh. I used to ride motorcycles a lot. I got to into my sixties and I decided I'd ride motorcycles a little too recklessly. And my reflexes aren't quite what they were, so time to give that out. I'm still flying fly helicopters and airplanes. Um,

have been flying for fifty years. I actually got in the in the media business because I was a plane nut as a kid and I needed money to pay for flying lessons because I could solo when I was sixteen, and the only job I could find in a small rural Mississippi town was as a radio announcer in w c h J in Brookhaven, Mississippi. So so those are it. I go to burning Man every year. Uh, and except for this year sadly. Um and Uh. I love to travel and uh that's probably it. Other than that I'm

a boring guy. I think we doubt that we want to do a quick speed round. Question. Uh, what's your best learning from burning Man community? Um? Open your mind? Um? And Uh, freethink is is an improvement over life? How do you freethink with your teams like in a corporate setting? Yeah? I think the pretty think is there no bad ideas. You may we we may not do them, and we may eliminate them eventually. But every time you start thinking, you start the wheels going. When I was at MTV.

We did these great promotions. I don't know if you remember them, of the Lost Weekend with Van Halen, for the John Cougar, Mellencamp, Pak Your House paink, the House Pink promotion, the one night stands. Every one of them began as a joke like let's get let's buy a house. You go, wait a minute, we could buy a house that could be fun. Or we were talking about the Lost Weekend and we were joking about some of our employees that would have their lost weekends and that joke

turned into the Laws Weekend with Van Halen. And so I think when you I remember that because every idea, once you to start ideating, stupid crazy ideas can turn into very important ideas. And uh and I think sometimes we try and start with an important idea as opposed to just start the ideation, just start talking. There is

no bad idea. And Burning Man is this incredible acceptance of everyone is you can be anybody you want to be a Burning Man accept at asshole and uh and and you're accepted and nobody's nobody's judging, nobody's putting you down. You have this freedom to be. And I think that freedom to be is important in the creative community because I think when you start in a box, you're never

gonna leave that box. Uh. If you can sort of see the world broadly and and just understand that around every turn is going to be something to a wow, where did that come from? That's gonna be a whole effect, and you open your mind to it and don't judge it. I think you won. Your life's a lot better. But I also think your business ideas get a lot better too. Bob, what's the next bet you're placing? Gosh, I have no idea.

I'll know it when I make it. I'm one of those people in my personal life in business life that if I hear something, Greg, go ahead, I'll take it. I'm not much of a a you know, uh thinker about it and you know, let's spret about it and worry about it. I think that we intuitively know the right ideas when they hit us, and we should see some and move as quickly as we can on. What are you most excited about in media right now? Podcast?

Fair answer? Okay, I have to ask this question. What would MTV have been like if social media had existed when it had just started? That's a great question. MTV was drew even so much by the conversation and about the camaraderie of the listeners that sort of brought into the MTV culture that I think it would have been able to start its own social network, which would have

been massive. Uh. And if it didn't have its own social network, it was certainly would have been the number one topic on social and it would have been the companion. And if you look at social today, even it's replaced the phone. Uh. Years ago, people would watch a football game together and they'd be on the phone saying, what did they do? Look at that? That's crazy. Now they're on social doing the same thing. We're sharing our comments.

And for the radio, in the old days, the personality would be doing stuff on the air and people would call the phone the request line to talk to them. Today they call him on social and it provides a feedback loop. And I will say, in our case and radio, it's gotten better as a result of social. I think MTV would have gotten better as a result of social

to have that instantaneous feedback to whatever you're doing. So, Bob, we do a little game at the end of every episode called kill by d I Y what would you kill in the world? What would you get rid of? I'm more of an enabler, believe it or not. I love to listen to other people. I was always a

people watcher. I still am, and I'm an idea watcher, and I love just watching what other people are doing and then figure out how I can join the bandwagon and help them along, whether it is uh, you know, had an idea for a sipping tequila, something so smooth you could sip it and uh, And I found Bert too, Gonzalez, and my great love has been watching Bert make this thing, this huge hit, and enabling her and helping her build it, but freeing her to go do it and reach her potential.

And so I think, rather than me making stuff, I really am one of those people that love to help other people make their ideas. When I was a young person, I made my ideas. As an old person, I help other people make their ideas. And what would you buy? What would I buy? Gosh, I don't know what I would buy out there. I'm at that age and you'll you'll hit this age one day where you're trying to get rid of stuff. So when it comes to gift giving time and say Please don't give me anything. I'm

trying to get rid of stuff. Take something, but the gift. Just take some of my stuff. So I think I'm sort of past to buy stuff. I'm I'm I'm in that mode of let's slim down and what would you do yourself? What's the thing that you would love to to make ice cream? All right? What flavor? Vanilla? What? I don't believe that it's simple? I like it. Thank you for spending so much time with us and giving

us inspiration and companionship. Thank you so much. And by the way, thank you for all you're doing too, and thank you for this podcast. So I took a ton of notes during that episode. One of the biggest takeaways for me is something that I think a lot of marketers overlook. We are simply filling or solving a need. And that was one of the best and most important things that Bob said to me. Well, he talks about following the consumer, right Like he when we asked how

do you place your next bet? It was very simply and very directly, you have to follow the consumer, follow the consumer, and you have to fill a need. I'm solving a problem. He talked about being a sociologist, and I really think, you know, maybe more marketers actually need to think of themselves as sociologists. So it's following the consumer, but it's also being ahead of them and understanding what is that need? What are those simple needs? And then

how do we get to them? And Bob, you know, Bob goes against kind of what I'll say is modern marketing, modern marketing, kind of Shun's reach in frequency, Shun's TV, Shun's g RPS radio, Shun's radio, Shun's outdoor shuns, all of these different types of media that actually are extremely effective when you are filling a need, when you are talking to a specific audience. And I think that Bob, you know, laid that out really really clearly, and then talked about how he used word of mouth and how

he created or at least entered into a community. All of those things are things that we talk about. But when you sit down and you look at a at a media flow chart, usually you're going with whatever your media buyer tells you. When I loved that he was talking about, you know, his g RP cap and he was like, who said, who said that's the cap? Why?

Who said twelve was the magic? Number who said twelve was the magic number exactly, and I think that more often, you know, taking it from Bob's advice, we have to question those things and really use media. And Laura, this is something that I think you and I have tried to do in our work together, is use media to not just be a vehicle to tell a message, but be a vehicle to really create a swirl and a presence and punch out a brand in a way that you know, a lot of brands are just you know,

doing their points. There are two g rps a week because they're playing on the same field, but you're not. We're in a different game, folks. So I think there's huge opportunity with everything that Bob was saying, even though in some ways it sounded really traditional, but it's not. I love what you just said and thinking about swirl as a KPI. I don't know where I heard it. I don't know when I heard it. I don't know why I heard it. I don't know how I heard it,

but I heard it. My friends are talking about it everywhere I'm looking, listening, engaging, It's being talked about, and so as a byproduct, I start talking about it. This idea of creating a swirl. I think is a really interesting point in that you can't create a swirl in a spreadsheet. You know, It's a really interesting concept when you think about impact in that capacity and the idea not just being a part of the conversation, but the

idea of being the conversation. And I think Bob has been able to leverage the power of brand to drive different outcomes. I totally agree. And the debate, because there is a debate are you investing in brand? I mean, I'm as part of this group and the bunch of cmos, we're talking about how much are you investing in brand of your budget? How much of your budget are you investing in brand? People came back huge advertisers twenty on this, some people thirty on this. We'll tend because worth this

and that brand isn't a line item investment. And I think this debate about brand having our o I and brand having effectiveness to your business top line growth or bottom line numbers has got to stop. Bob proves brand pulls through. It pulls all the way through the bottom line. So it's not a percentage of your messaging or your creative or your media mix, it's not a percentage. Brand is all the way through that relationship and in fact, to your point, is the thing that is the most recognizable.

And with that, thank you Bob Pittman. Yeah, thank you Bob Pittman for dropping by and giving us a masterclass and marketing. And for more from Bob Pittman, be sure to check out his podcast Math and Magic, available wherever you listen to your podcasts. Laura hit it with a list of all of our friends and family at my Heart who have been so good to us and helped us get back on air. Big thank you to Bob, Conal, Carter, Andy, Eric, gayle Val, Michael jen. We appreciate you. Thank you so

much for this opportunity. We'll see you in two weeks. Gay