Jonathan Daly, Virgo Health and Golin Executive Director, Media & Corporate Reputation, reflects on the two most controversial former political leaders on either side of the Atlantic in recent memory offering their longest interviews to influencers, not trained journalists.

Boris Johnson chose to sit down for almost two hours with entrepreneur Stephen Bartlett on his Diary of a CEO Podcast in an attempt to rehabilitate a political legacy. Donald Trump has bet on the near three hours spent on former UFC commentator Joe Rogan’s show proving the knockout blow in his bid to return to the Oval office.

This matters.

Almost three quarters of a Diary of a CEO’s audience are either Gen-Z or Millennial. Those generations account for 56 per cent of Joe Rogan’s listeners, with his following skewing heavily male too. Now consider that around four in 10 people actively avoid traditional news and this trend is most evident in younger generations, according to Reuters’ annual Digital News Report. Those tuning in but opting to consume news through podcasts trust these sources at least, if not more, than traditional reporting.

While Trump has held multiple interviews with mainstream media outlets in the presidential race and Johnson’s tour to tout his memoirs saw him speak to reporters too, neither provided anywhere near the length of time afforded to the podcasters-in-chief.

Offering more access to these top-ranked podcasts than traditional outlets is calculated media strategy. This approach astutely recognises the value of reaching and influencing listeners who are increasingly tuning out of mainstream news reporting, safe in the knowledge they will face a fraction of the challenging questions that would accompany a multi-hour broadcast interview with a journalist.

These long-form podcasts sound like conversation, not interview, by design. Hosts sitting across from an interviewee looking to shape hours of content might be forgiven for failing to press weak answers or evasiveness with a Paxman-esque doggedness. And it bears repeating: they are hosts, not journalists.

To those tuning out from media-trained interviewees playing defence from the outset on the traditional morning interview round, that may appeal. But it comes with a cost. Trump managed to fit more than 32 false claims into his three-hour sit down with Rogan, the vast majority of which went either unchallenged or, worse still, encouraged. It took 79 minutes for Spotify’s top-ranked podcast host to even broach the most egregious charge facing Trump: the denial of the 2020 election result that led to his supporters storming the Capitol building.

Neither here nor on any of the multiple other points in the podcast when the former President alluded to the election being stolen, does Rogan offer anything in the way of real challenge.

Interesting as it may be to listen to leaders talk at length about Spotify playlists, their upbringing or the possibility of life on Mars, scrutiny undoubtedly suffers as a result.

Those opting out of traditional news consumption may end up placing their trust in podcasters who prioritise attention over accuracy, or holding power to account. What impact will this trend have? Next Tuesday’s election result may go some way to answering that question.

First seen in PRWeek on 30.10.24

By Nina Bhagwat, Group DEI Director  

Today we are launching our most comprehensive London DEI Plan ever. It’s a reflection on what we have achieved, what we have heard, what we have learnt, as well as what we will focus on for the future.  

We hope you will recognise this as a transparent outline of our progress and a way to hold ourselves accountable, not a corporate show and tell. Because while sharing this is vital to create change, our approach to DEI is far more focussed on our people and how we bring many hearts, hands and minds together to create a more inclusive culture internally. 

READ THE PLAN HERE

The road to creating this plan has been an act of inclusion in itself and we’ve learnt a lot about ourselves along the way – from forming our inclusion ambition and behaviours in all staff sessions, to focus groups and steering groups on the content to actually creating the copy and design.  

This is also for the first time we’ve reported our data. We are reporting our inclusion statistics from our annual BELONG survey and our representation data from our newly-implemented Self ID, voluntary DEI system. 

We are committed creating a diverse and inclusive culture and know a huge part of this is sharing data on representation and inclusion. Our BELONG inclusion data shows promising progress, but while we don’t have the full Self ID data picture yet, we have transparently outlined our progress in the Plan. We will be reporting this data annually for accountability and once we have a more complete data set we fully commit to reporting annually on Pay Gaps. 

Maybe not quiet, but humour can transform the power of consumer health communications.

Natasha Weeks, Executive Director and Consumer Health lead at Virgo Health and Golin, reflects on this year’s Cannes Lions.

People don’t sit up and listen to healthcare messages when they are preachy, scary or boring. So why do we continue to produce healthcare campaigns that are scaremongering, finger-pointing and overloaded with statistical data. Focusing too heavily on the problem can cause the very people we are trying to reach to put their fingers in their ears and ignore us.

Effective communication comes in many forms but reflecting on my experience at this year’s Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity – we should harness the power of humour to drive behaviour change.

Humour was a big theme at Cannes 2024. There were 13 new humour sub-categories, including PR. It featured in many panels, including the ‘Ready Laugh Again: The Return of Comedy’ session with comedian Kenan Thompson of Saturday Night Live. “Humour is all about connection,” he said. “Humour cuts through the noise. We live in a state of constant assault on our senses, but if something is funny, you’ll seek it out. It doesn’t mean you have to shy away from tough stuff, humour is one of the best ways to deal with rough things going on in the world.”

Health is no different. While leaning into levity as a healthcare brand is not always easy, when done right there is nothing to touch it. Our Specsavers audiology campaign, The Misheard Version, started a conversation about hearing loss that has been shied away from for years. And it was all down to the shared laugh over Rick Astley’s misheard lyrics. It’s difficult to do justice to it here without the backing instrumentals but “Your Aunt’s been naked” and “You wouldn’t catch nits from any other guy” did make people sit up and listen.

People avoid hearing tests because to many, it symbolises the beginning of the end – old age – and there is stigma around hearing aids. But the impact of hearing loss can be huge – from leaving employment early to loneliness. Hearing tests are also important because they can detect the early signs of chronic diseases, such as Alzheimer’s or diabetes.

Hearing loss isn’t funny, but our key insight that hearing loss is isolating and mishearing connects led us to a humourous idea that brought people together. Humour disrupts, connects, doesn’t judge and ultimately cuts through when serious messages don’t.

We weren’t laughing at people – we were all part of the joke – even our target audience’s kids were in on it. In using humour, we made hearing loss less heavy and created a simple reminder that we need to get our hearing checked.

And it worked. By shifting the conversation around hearing loss with a humorous, engaging campaign we were able to increase hearing tests by 66%.

Jury President Kat Thomas, on awarding the Grand Prix to The Misheard Version for Specsavers, said: “Healthcare is not a sexy category, and it was a very challenging brief, but they leant into humour in an all-in way to really tackle the stigma.”

Consumer health campaigns fundamentally need to engage audiences to prompt behaviour change, and humour is a powerful tool to do this. I look forward to seeing more healthcare campaigns utilise the power of humour – and take the stage at next year’s Cannes Lions.

We are so proud to announce that our ground-breaking work for Specsavers has won six awards at the 2024 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, including two highly prestigious Grand Prix. The creative campaign, which we worked on alongside our sister agency, Golin, also won a Gold Lion and three Silver Lions across the Audio & Radio Lions, PR Lions and Health & Wellness Lions.

In fact, the Grand Prix in the PR Lions made history for Golin and Virgo, as we became the first-ever PR agency to win PR Lions Grand Prix awarded for our creative idea.

In a bold move to address hearing loss, we transformed one of the most famously misheard songs into an unavoidable nationwide hearing test. Partnering with singer Rick Astley, we re-recorded his 80’s smash hit “Never Gonna Give You Up” with intentionally incorrect lyrics. Within eight hours, over 20 million people played the new “misheard” version, doubling online searches related to hearing loss and propelling it to a nationally trending topic in the UK on Google. Specsavers exceeded its hearing test booking target by an unprecedented 1220%.

WATCH THE CASE FILM HERE

Cannes Lions Audio & Radio jury president and chief creative officer at Colenso BBDO, New Zealand, Simon Vicars, shared the jury’s verdict, saying: “The Misheard Version by Specsavers is a brilliant example of creativity turned up to 11. A nationwide hearing test, disguised inside an iconic song. Creative to its core and recklessly ambitious in its execution. It powered business results and broke into culture. Thank you, Specsavers for making us laugh, for committing properly to this idea and for making our jury’s biggest decision an easy one.”

Al Wood, chief creative officer at Golin London, reveled at the work’s impact: “An incredible result. This was an earned-first idea that started in laughter, but ended up changing how Brits hear. It owes its success to so many people – and it means the world to see that collective work recognised and celebrated on such a global stage.”