Ads Don’t Have to Suck

When I first started hearing about podcasts, I was skeptical. Then I gave them a try, and I’m hooked. It’s a nice change of pace to learn without having to look at a screen. I love the convenience of listening while shaving and taking out the garbage. It’s the only effective multitasking in my life.

But when I listen to podcasts, I often find myself tuning out during the ads. So when it came time to create my own podcast, I had an idea for creating something more engaging—the kind of ad I’d be excited to hear.

For the past year, I’ve been developing a podcast called WorkLife in partnership with TED. It’s their first podcast that’s not based on a TED talk. In each episode, I dive into an unconventional workplace to explore something I wish everyone knew about making work more meaningful and creative.

We released the first episode this past week, exploring how Ray Dalio and his colleagues at Bridgewater have learned to take criticism—and dish it out. It’s been exciting to have people weigh in with their questions, reactions, and challenges. But what I didn’t expect was to get feedback on the ad. My inbox starting filling up with notes complimenting the ad:

• “The delivery of the ad blew my mind. How clever!”
• “OMG your integration of the sponsor. I was crying during the ad”
• “Genius ad strategy”
• “I even learned something from the ad”
• “I know this is beside the point, but I loved the commercial.”

At first I thought they were just being nice. Then I saw reviews online from total strangers. One wrote: “Awesome and creative way to highlight your sponsor.” Another chimed in: “Best ad segment I’ve ever heard.” And a third said the ad was “an incredible example of human compassion that we all can (and should) mimic.”

Podcast advertising is often designed to minimize misery. I believe it should be about maximizing enjoyment.

So I worked with the TED team and Pineapple Street Media to design a fresh approach to podcast advertising: an Ad Story. to design a fresh approach to podcast advertising: an Ad Story. They had innovative ideas for going beyond ads to find ideas worth spreading in each partner company. We teamed up with four brands that we admire for creativity and culture: one unicorn (Warby Parker), one recently acquired startup (Bonobos), and two big companies (Accenture and JPMorgan Chase & Co.).

We invited them to take a risk, relinquish control, and actually become part of the show. Because I wouldn’t be reading a scripted ad for 30 seconds. Instead, I would tell a story for 2-3 minutes. I asked them to open up their own workplaces to me—I would apply my lens as an organizational psychologist to uncover an insight worth sharing with our listeners. The Ad Story would be a mini-episode within each podcast episode, hearing from a few key people about an innovation inside each sponsor’s workplace.

The sponsors stepped up. In the past few months I’ve seen Accenture encourage employees to have open discussions about formerly taboo topics like race and religion, Bonobos give their ninjas the freedom to deliver world-class customer service, JPMorgan Chase & Co. go on a crusade to end inefficient meetings, and Warby Parker reimagine how we can all gain new skills on the job.

A key moment in advertising happened back in 2002. Larry Page printed out some Google ads, posted them in the office kitchen, and wrote in huge letters:

I was working in advertising at the time, and it was tough to explain to potential clients how online ads worked. We’ve have come a long way in the past 16 years. But podcast advertising is still in its infancy. And I think ads shouldn’t just sell—it’s possible for them to educate, entertain, and even inspire.

The best way to do that is to tell a story. In an ad, you don’t have a lot of space for storytelling. The short stories that hold an audience’s attention tend to follow Vonnegut’s rules: every character should want something, every plot should involve a struggle to get it, and every sentence should either reveal character or advance action.

Here’s a statistic worth remembering: in a presentation, 5% of people remembered a statistic, but 63% of people remembered a story.

That might even hold for an Ad Story.

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WorkLife with Adam Grant, a TED original podcast, is now available. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/worklife-with-adam-grant/id1346314086?mt=2