By By Debra Zimmerman Murphey
Welcome to Tobin Communications, Inc.’s new “PR Podcast” series. Through these audio interviews, we’re asking experts to provide compelling viewpoints that we hope will get you thinking differently about how content and communications are leveraged in today’s competitive – and often time-sensitive, cyclical or trend-affected – information environment.
Today, we focus on the impact of audio, which takes on so many definitions and applications for the au courant media consumer, from the ubiquitous streaming tune and NPR’s Weekend Edition, to iHeartRadio, an effort so successful it inspired Clear Channel’s recent rebranding to iHeartMedia. Audio is convenient (the eyes may be doing other things) and a jumping-off point for many ways that consumers interface with brands, companies, organizations, people, newsmakers and opinion-leaders. Even the popular TED Talks are available in both video and audio.
In Maury Tobin’s podcast interview with veteran media strategist, Mark Ramsey, you’ll find out that the takeaway for those in public relations is to stay mindful that listening to audio programming of all kinds, particularly through smartphones, now dominates much of the activities of a mobile-centric society. In fact, eMarketer predicted that U.S. adults will spend 23 percent more time with mobile devices on an average day in 2014 than the year prior.