The New Golden Age of Audio

The common thread, according to Paskalis, is the intimacy audio creates, which makes podcasts a natural “upper-funnel” bridge to the one-on-one relationship Bank of America is trying to establish with its customers who use Erica. But there’s a fine line to walk — “marketing” to people through a vaguely human presence and encouraging them to develop an ever-deeper level of intimacy and trust. Tune in to learn what Kitchell has to say about that.

How voice and audio are now a big deal for marketers:
“We are reimagining every experience that we’ve created for our 160 years in retail, 30 years in digital and 10 years for mobile, now in audio.”

The connection between Bank of America’s existing content marketing operation and Erica:
“All of that sort of lower-funnel, almost transactional content is the kind of stuff we couldn’t do at scale before. It would have been just too cumbersome. But now with Erica, we’re able to give folks that solution-oriented content. We marry it with our upper-funnel content strategy, which helps to promote Erica. And we have a virtuous circle within the audio space.”

The connection between Erica and standalone voice assistants like Google Home:
“Think of Google Home as a town square. Think of Erica as the virtual bank on the edge of the town square. I guess you can do some things on a town square, but the more intimate things you want to do within the confines of your trusted bank.”

The challenge of getting your content to show up in a voice search:
“The way the algorithms work in the audio environment, the length of time people are willing to listen to an answer, the crispness of that answer for audio listening, are all different. We’re working with Google and Amazon to really understand those dynamics. We are ultimately moving to audiences of one, and that’s a good thing. In the end, marketers are actually going to make better connections by tailoring their offerings to individuals based on how we can help them.”

The future of voice:
“Our fundamental belief, at least mine anyhow, is that everything we saw on Star Trek as kids, where you talk to the wall and something happens, is about to happen.”

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