Stories and Strategies Podcast
Episode 181
Guest: Bradley Davis
Published: June 9, 2025
Emily Page (00:01):
Some stories don’t start with breaking news. They start in the background, quiet, almost forgettable, until one day they’re not. This is one of those stories and it begins with a crackle.
Doug Downs (00:21):
You were out walking, same trail as always. The one that winds behind the neighborhood lets the world fade for a little while. You like the quiet the space to think. One day on a whim, you tapped into something new on your phone, buried in an app that you hadn’t opened in months. You hit play more out of curiosity than intention. And then you heard a voice. Not music, not news, just a voice talking, honest, a little rambling, like someone speaking, not at you, but with you. A stranger. Sure, but a familiar sounding one. You couldn’t say why you kept listening, you just did. And pretty soon that voice became a companion, one that walked with you, filled the quiet, ask questions you didn’t know you needed to hear, and then you started to trust it. It happened slowly. You found yourself quoting it in meetings, referencing an idea that it planted, repeating a line that stuck.
(01:29):
You hadn’t seen it in a tweet, you didn’t read it in the news. You heard it on a podcast from someone whose name you couldn’t remember, but whose voice you’d never forget. And then one day you shared it. Have you heard this episode? You asked a colleague and they listened and then they shared it too. And soon that quiet voice, just someone talking, was shaping how your team thought, shaping how you planned, shaping how you understood the world around you. Not because it shouted, but because it stayed. Today on stories and strategies we explore the powerful role podcasts play in shaping public perception and why PR pros can’t afford to tune them out. Because if you’re only watching the headlines, you are missing what people are really listening to. My name is Doug Downs
Farzana Baduel (02:46):
And my name is Farzana Baduel. Our guest this week is Bradley Davis joining us today from Oklahoma. Hi Bradley.
Bradley Davis (02:53):
Hi. Thanks for having me.
Farzana Baduel (02:54):
How are things in Oklahoma?
Bradley Davis (02:57):
Things are great. We’re having historic run in the NBA playoffs, so things are very good, very exciting.
Doug Downs (03:04):
Go Thunder.
Farzana Baduel (03:04):
Big deal.
Bradley Davis (03:05):
Go Thunder.
Farzana Baduel (03:07):
So Bradley, you are the co-founder and CEO of Podchaser, a platform often dubbed the IMDB of podcasts. You launched Podchaser in 2016 after recognizing the need for a centralized podcast database and successfully raised $4 million in venture capital to support its growth. Your innovative approach has positioned pod chaser as a leading resource in the podcasting industry.
Doug Downs (03:33):
So Bradley, most PR professionals, we think of media monitoring as covering traditional media, social media now maybe stuff that’s crawled across Google. Why do you think podcast monitoring remains a blind spot in most strategies? Is that just because it’s audio and it’s harder to track?
Bradley Davis (03:54):
I think that’s part of it. I think there has been hesitancy in general over its prevalence and cultural importance. Even last year, I think that’s changed pretty drastically post-election in the US and I mean the last stat I saw that over 70% of Americans over 12 have listened to a podcast. So it’s certainly prevalent. And then I think the second issue is just accessibility for data.
Doug Downs (04:21):
And the UK stats came out the other day, right? The
Bradley Davis (04:24):
UK
Doug Downs (04:25):
Starting to catch up. Canada, Australia, I think it’s one
Bradley Davis (04:28):
Four. Yes. So this is a global phenomenon. Everyone’s listening to podcasts and it’s an all time high for 2025 and there’s over 5 million podcast feeds. And a lot of those feeds probably don’t have much relevance to a PR professional and figuring out which to prioritize and how to access, it’s messy and it’s free, it’s open. And so I think the data accessibility has been a huge stumbling block and obviously now there’s a lot more tools to work around that. So I think that’s it. It’s what is a podcast? What is this and does anybody listen to them? And then, alright, this is important. Now how do I action on that truth.
Farzana Baduel (05:09):
Now Bradley, we’ve seen brands like Starbucks and Amazon and they’re just on it. They’re using podcast data to shape both paid and earned strategies. Can you walk us through what this third dimension of analytics look like and how it strengthens campaign planning?
Bradley Davis (05:25):
Yeah, I think there’s this interesting blending of earned and paid media and podcasting offers this unique opportunity where a brand can analyze transcripts from the past, say 30 days or 60 days. They can bundle that and those insights with demographics and metadata and then do a topic breakdown and an analysis of here’s how my brand is being talked about and here are the hot button topics, here’s the top three 5 million people are talking about the perception of my brand negatively, and this is what the demographic looks like. Then you can take that data underneath that topic and then target that audience for paid and influence them. And so this earned capability allows for a brand to look around the corner and see opportunities to shape narratives, which is really, I think unique and a cool way to look at it. And it’s not reactive, it’s very proactive. And this is, I think fairly cutting edge.
Farzana Baduel (06:29):
Agreed.
Doug Downs (06:31):
And that’s sentiment analysis. And is it different with podcasts because they’re long form? When I do sentiment analysis on social or even traditional media by comparison it’s pretty cut and dry. In a 40 minute podcast, even if I review the transcript, the sentiment can be all over the place.
Bradley Davis (06:48):
So the way we process that data is we’ll take a snippet and then we will zoom out five minutes in the conversation. And that allows us to not only look at the sentiment of is this positive or negative, but in what context is this being talked about, whether it’s a labor issue or a branding issue. And so that zoom out ability, you can’t do that on a tweet, it’s just a tweet. So there’s this qualitative attribute to podcasting that thinks unique, whereas Twitter and a lot of the other social feeds are more of a quantitative like, all right, this number of hits, it’s really positive, it’s really negative, but there’s not as much nuance to your point about being a long form, that’s the capability of long form.
Doug Downs (07:35):
And I’ve heard, I hear it all the time, there’s too many podcasts out there now. I think there’s about 6 million out there. Podcast index has about four and a half million. It depends on who you listen to. I agree with you though. We’re in the pioneering days, right? There’s been massive growth. There are barely 400,000 podcasts globally that are publishing on any kind of regular basis for PR pros, waking up and looking at podcasts, where are the opportunities? For some, it’s about starting their own podcast or guesting on podcasts or a service like yours, which is in part media monitoring that includes that sentiment analysis. Where do they go to do it now before it becomes saturated?
Bradley Davis (08:20):
And so we have a monitoring capability, but sort of our bread and butter is empowering guest pitching. We always say Making your own podcast is great and we encourage people to do so. It’s going to be about 10 times more expensive than you think it will be to be effective. And so if you have that budget, awesome, go for it. But it’s a lot easier to pitch a compelling spokesperson for your brand to get on an existing audience in a week versus months and hundreds of thousands of dollars per episode. So yes, that’s the opportunity. In our view. Guest pitching is very powerful. Our clients have pitched thousands of successful placements on podcasts and continue to do so every day. And you’re right, there has been some consolidation in the industry, but for the most part, these podcasts, you can email ’em, you can email the host, you can email a producer. It’s very accessible. And obviously a tool like Podchaser makes it easier to do that, and that’s the opportunity. You can’t do that with legacy media. You can’t just email the hosts of the CNN show. That’s
Doug Downs (09:23):
Actually how your team caught up with us. They sent us an email.
Bradley Davis (09:27):
Yeah, I think actually we were doing a webinar about guest pitching and we did a live pitch of pitching me.
Doug Downs (09:34):
That’s right.
Bradley Davis (09:36):
And it took him five minutes. It’s so cool. So yeah.
Farzana Baduel (09:41):
So I want to talk a little bit about politicians. So you’ve got Gavin Newsom, and then obviously Joe Rogan has always been a thing. I mean, he’s always had an immense audience, but I think there was some sort of shift that happened when he had in the run up to the election, he had President Trump on his show. And I think a lot of people kind of woke up to the power of podcasts. I think the rest of us have been tuning in for years and it’s part of our daily life. We always kind of knew how powerful podcasts were, but do you think that was a pivotal moment where actually there was a broader audience that leaned in and thought, wow, podcasts are consequential, they can change elections, elections can change the world, and all of a sudden podcasts just had this new framing from a nice to have to, you just can’t ignore it in the channel mix.
Bradley Davis (10:32):
Absolutely. I have a lot of thoughts on this topic. I think from our vantage point, the amount of political clients that we’ve engaged with in the past three months is 10 x what it was before. Wow. So you’re right in that the activation from political agencies, but also just agencies and PR firms general has developed substantially. There’s a stat, I think in 2024 that one in three Americans have changed an opinion, your view because of a podcast. And so you’re not only these influencers and podcasts, they’re not just talking about these topics, they’re shaping their audience’s opinion. I think short form video is another big reason why this happened. My theory, you form this sort of parasocial bond with your podcaster, the short, short-term platforms pick up on this sentiment on maybe the YouTube video you watched or whatever, or what you’re clicking on or what you’re interacting with.
(11:31):
And then you essentially get these clips of Theo v, for example, or whoever the comedian or podcaster is in your short-term feed. And it’s like a targeted ad, but instead of selling a mattress, you’re selling ideas and values and concepts and people love it. And so this is much more organic and natural feeling than a paid TV spot. And there’s just no better way to get to know somebody than an unedited interview of three hours of just being able to talk with no prep, no nothing, no edits. So yes, I think this is a really exciting and powerful platform to communicate from. And it started as this sort of fringe thing that I think is, you could argue I think quite easily that this is a better way to engage with voters than a debate on CNN, for example.
Doug Downs (12:28):
I know I’ve seen the stats that show podcast listeners tend to be, I think it’s two thirds, have a university education that make six figures or higher. That’s the today as podcasts grow, I think that’s going to change because they’re becoming mainstream either way. How important is it to understand the audience of the podcast and then niche your messages and the whole idea of messages, sorry, I’m from the world where you create three key messages and you do your interview. Can you imagine doing a Joe Rogan interview and having three key It can’t be done,
Bradley Davis (13:04):
Can’t be done. Yeah,
Doug Downs (13:05):
You got to have a million key message. And so key message out the window.
Bradley Davis (13:09):
Yeah, key message is out the window and vibe is in, vibe
Doug Downs (13:13):
Is in
Bradley Davis (13:13):
This currency of trust and vibe are much more important than the, I mean, you saw through the campaign these politicians just being lambasted for repeating their talking points. You can’t do talking points anymore because the distribution for clips like that is just too powerful and you get caught. So you have to be authentic. And you’re right, the podcast audience profile tends to be college educated, a little bit higher income. I think that’s going to revert to the mean as this becomes more gen pop in general. But I think it’s good to know that people who are listening to a podcast tend to be thought leaders within the community. And so you’re not only reaching 18 to 34 male, highly educated college, whatever, but also that community around that listener.
Farzana Baduel (14:00):
Just going back to the sort of people that listen to podcasts and tune in, do they tend to be sort of overachievers people who for instance, want to learn something whilst they’re washing the dishes or mowing the lawn and they just want to sort of soak in knowledge when they have to? Do, I listen to the podcast when I walk my dog and I sort of feel like I’m being really efficient with my time. It’s a sort of slightly tai a sort of approach. So I just wanted to ask if, do people just listen to the podcast but not actually do anything else? Or are most people like me sort of walking the dog and brushing my hair and God knows what?
Bradley Davis (14:36):
I think there’s a couple groups, and I think it has less to do with the listener and more with the content, but in general, it is this in-between time, whether it’s a commute or doing a chore where you are engaging with the podcast, but then also the folding the laundry and listening to call her daddy in the background. You’re not probably doing that to get up to speed on the latest politics, but you are hanging out with a friend. So again, that parasocial relationship is for more of those talk show formats. But in general, I do think the core demographic for the Legacy podcast audience is these kind of brainiac overachievers who are trying to stuff as much knowledge as they can in their heads. I think that’s going to change over time, but those, that anchor of that audience I don’t think will ever change.
Doug Downs (15:29):
You were saying key messages out the window vibe is in. What’s the vibe that you pre-established going into this interview? What’s the vibe that you wanted to get out there? Give me a peek behind the curtain.
Bradley Davis (15:42):
My vibe was, man, that’s a great question. Guy from Oklahoma who pretends to know about anything around data and podcasting. That’s a fun, I’m not actually from Oklahoma. It’s a fun juxtaposition. I’m in la No, I don’t know. That’s my vibe. Can
Farzana Baduel (16:00):
I ask Bradley, what is a vibe check? Because my teenage daughter is using it and I’m too embarrassed to ask her, so can you just let me in? And some of the audience who are same as me have got no idea that this phrase being bandied about what the hell does it mean?
Bradley Davis (16:16):
I mean, I am certainly too old to answer this question without being made fun of, but I believe a vibe check is based on mannerisms and the way in which a person speaks back to the point that Doug made about if someone’s clearly regurgitating an internal script, that’s not going to pass a vibe check. And so you pick up on a vibe check. I think within seconds just meeting somebody and shaking their hand, looking ’em in the eye, you can get that on an audio interview. But also especially on these video interviews as well. So
Farzana Baduel (16:51):
Is it like a chemistry test if someone goes out on a date and people often say within, I dunno a minute, they know if that person’s right or wrong, and that’s just that instant chemistry that they feel. So a vibe check is just extended outside of the romantic realm to business colleagues and everyone else.
Bradley Davis (17:13):
And it’s a good point because in a televised debate or traditional legacy media interview, you can’t get a vibe check because it’s rehearsed, it’s scripted. You don’t see the true person with their hair let down or whatever. But in a podcast interview in a relaxed setting, I think it’s much more organic. And so you can perceive so much more about a person in that setting than traditional media.
Farzana Baduel (17:39):
I think that’s really interesting because actually when I do broadcast media, I am not very authentic because I’m thinking I’ve got to come up with a soundbite. I to think about it well in advance, what that soundbite is, and I’m really worried about screwing it up. And also with broadcast media, especially when it’s tv, it’s literally like you have a minute, sometimes two minutes, and it’s so fast paced and you lose yourself. You are not actually yourself, whereas in long form conversation, it’s really hard to make the masks stay on. I think for a two minute news segment, you can put the mask on and keep it there and be this sort of robotic expert called in talking head. But actually when you’re two hours chatting, that mask is going to drop. And at some point you kind of forget you’re being recorded and you just start actually just being yourself. So I totally get why audience.
Bradley Davis (18:36):
Yeah, I mean we see this phenomenon with hedge funds. They want to analyze as soon as possible. Whenever a CEO from a public company goes on a podcast, the data they can derive from just small tells or small words or sentiment on a podcasting review are a lot more important in many ways than an earnings call. And so I think you’re totally right.
Doug Downs (19:00):
Can you give us an example of that without putting a client?
Bradley Davis (19:05):
Yeah. Well, if a podcast or if an executive from a public company goes at a podcast and is talking about a new product launch, they made tea. I mean, we’ve had the CEO of Microsoft and Google go on long form interviews very recently talking about the future of ai. And so if you’re a hedge fund or fund in general, and you have a multi-billion long-term bet on AI, for example, and the CEO feels very confident and comfortable about nuclear power and how we’re going to do all these things, those insights and the confidence behind these topics that seem casual, they have these massive multi-billion dollar impacts, I think on confidence in a buy for a stock, for example.
Farzana Baduel (19:50):
So really leadership becomes quite performative.
Bradley Davis (19:52):
Podcasting is unique in that it feels much more casual. And I think people who get really nervous speaking probably again within a few minutes of a podcast interview feel very comfortable. But you raise a good point that the importance of long form conversation from an executive is probably higher than it was in the past when you just had a script in an earnings call and you could just get through the thing and throw up later. So yeah, I think it could be described as performative, but I think maybe it’s just an indication that it’s a skillset that is maybe more important than it was in the
Doug Downs (20:27):
Past. Perfect. Bradley, thanks so much for your time today. Thank you. It was fun.
Farzana Baduel (20:32):
And Bradley, in our last episode, our guest Irene Longe, she left a question for you
Irene Lungu (20:38):
For The next Guest. I think in this conversation talking about PR and communication, we have talked a lot about ethics. So I would like next guest to take on this mantle and explain is it possible with the current demands of a dynamic and ever-changing society to remain ethical, how does one do that given the demands for quick information that societies asking from us as parent communication professionals?
Bradley Davis (21:09):
I’m not a PR professional, but I think yes, a couple things come to mind for me. AI makes workload and workflow a bit easier and can take a lot of the grunt work out of the equation to deliver more to your client. And then I think as far as podcasting is concerned, it’s pretty straightforward and ethical. There are shows that it’s pay to play, so there are exceptions, but those are very rare. I mean something like probably less than 3% of the shows that we deal with are saying, Hey, yeah, I’ll do it for 500 bucks. And so that I think is certainly an ethical dilemma when you’re trying to pay somebody to get on their show for exposure. You’re not disclosing that information.
Doug Downs (21:57):
We don’t do that. Just to be perfectly clear
Bradley Davis (22:00):
I’ll ignore the PayPal invoice that you sent me.
Doug Downs (22:03):
Okay. Alright, thank you.
Bradley Davis (22:04):
Yes, I think it’s certainly possible to remain ethical and especially in formats like podcasting, it’s based on merit. And so if you’re crafting effective pitches, you’re doing what’s right for your client and they’ll find success.
Doug Downs (22:19):
Brilliant. Thank you. Your turn, Bradley, what question would you like to leave behind for the next guest?
Bradley Davis (22:24):
I think PR has been branded the attention industry. I wonder if that is going away and I wonder what’s more important now? Is it attention or trust?
Doug Downs (22:38):
Oh, nice. And
Bradley Davis (22:40):
How you define those two things.
Doug Downs (22:41):
Right?
Bradley Davis (22:41):
That’s my burning question,
Doug Downs (22:43):
Right? So like attention being the top of the classic funnel, right? Impressions, views in podcasting downloads, whereas engagement, which leads to trust. That’s time. I’m getting really big on consumable time as the measurement, right? How many hours did you generate of consumption
Bradley Davis (23:05):
And what’s more important?
Doug Downs (23:07):
Good question.
Bradley Davis (23:09):
Dunno. I do. I think it’s going to evolve. I
Doug Downs (23:11):
Do. I’m all about consumable. I really don’t care about 10,000 eyeballs or earballs consuming three seconds of my stuff.
Bradley Davis (23:20):
Agreed.
Farzana Baduel (23:20):
Well, thank you Bradley. It’s been such a pleasure. And I just wanted to ask one cheeky last question.
Bradley Davis (23:28):
Please do.
Farzana Baduel (23:29):
What podcast do you listen to?
Bradley Davis (23:31):
Oh man.
Farzana Baduel (23:33):
What don’t you listen to?
Bradley Davis (23:35):
That’s a great question. I live in Oklahoma City and so I listened to the Down to Dunk Local.
Farzana Baduel (23:43):
Sorry, what was that? You said you listened to stories and strategies.
Bradley Davis (23:46):
Stories and Well, that’s my number one. So all of those episodes are my number one. I listened to down to Dunk. I listened to Bill Simmons quite a bit, which was surprising to me. And I would say the best podcast of all time is S Town. Okay. And I’ve listened to that
Doug Downs (24:09):
Multiple times. Why is it the best?
Bradley Davis (24:10):
And wait one more. S Town is the perfect distillation of the medium, it’s serial or serialized content that told a very human story that could only be told via podcast. And it was the perfect expression of the form.
Doug Downs (24:33):
Like it’s audio, it’s audio and all its glory,
Bradley Davis (24:35):
It’s audio only. It was a story that nobody planned for. They just followed this lead from this goofy guy and it turned it into this beautiful story of just a guy you’d see across the street and never think twice. So that was profound to me. And then telepathy tapes is the hot new thing that I can’t tell you how many times I have been around town here and people come up to me like, oh my God, I listened. I fully believe in telepathy. My life has changed, my values, my spiritual life. It’s all changed now. So that is my favorite one to recommend because I think it’s having the most impact on people.
Doug Downs (25:18):
Sorry. Telepathy is when I can push the message to someone else with my brain. It’s not that they can read my mind. I have the ability to push my mind into theirs
Bradley Davis (25:29):
Both.
Farzana Baduel (25:30):
Wow.
Bradley Davis (25:32):
Oh, so if you haven’t heard, have you listened to it? No. No
Farzana Baduel (25:35):
I haven’t.
Bradley Davis (25:36):
So it is nonverbal autistic children and this woman went out, she’s got a PhD in neuroscience. She went out and met up with these children, they tend to be adolescents or children, and did a series of experiments to prove generally with their mother that the child can read the mother’s mind and vice versa. And it is wild. It sounds so hokey. It’s
Doug Downs (26:06):
So sus to me right now.
Bradley Davis (26:08):
Yeah. So I’m the number one skeptic. I paid the money and watched the videos. It was the number one podcast in the world just a few months ago. It’s mind blowing. And they’re going to make a feature length documentary.
Farzana Baduel (26:22):
Oh my God. So telepathy. It sounds like PR 2.0, that’s like you need to do a lot, lot more CD to become an expert in telepathy. Wow. That’s right. Wow, Bradley, you have left us with a gem and we are grateful.
Bradley Davis (26:37):
No problem.
Farzana Baduel (26:38):
Thank you.
Bradley Davis (26:39):
Thank you.
Farzana Baduel (26:41):
So here are the top things we got from our brilliant guest, Bradley Davis. Number one podcast analytics are now critical tools. In PR and campaign strategy. Bradley emphasized that podcasting has become a major force in shaping public opinion. With over 70% of Americans over the age of 12, having listened to a podcast, brands like Starbucks and Amazon are already leveraging transcript analysis, sentiment tracking, and metadata to influence both earned and paid media in the podcast space. Now, he described how podcast data allows for deeper insight into brand perception and helps shape narratives proactively rather than reactively. Number two, guests pitching beats launching your own podcast. For most brands. Bradley shared that while starting a podcast is appealing, it’s often coster and more time consuming than anticipated. A more practical and high ROI strategy is guest pitching, placing compelling spokespeople on relevant shows with existing audiences. And of course, tools like Podchaser streamline this, making outreach more targeted and accessible, unlike traditional media. Number three, in podcasting trust and vibe, Trump traditional messaging key messages are out and authentic communication is in Bradley Explained that the long form unscripted nature of podcasts breaks down the polished mask, often seen in legacy media, allowing real personality and trust to emerge. This vibe Check has become a modern test of credibility, essential for connecting with today’s educated influence holding podcast audiences.
Doug Downs (28:24):
I don’t know if the key message is dead, I think I’m still going to need a message deck, but maybe what I’ll need in the future is a vibe deck at the same time for my campaigns.
Farzana Baduel (28:34):
Absolutely. I think chemistry is nothing new. It’s always been there. Chemistry tests, you have to like someone before you are ready to receive messaging from them.
Doug Downs (28:45):
Amen. Got to know you care. If you’d like to send a message to our guest, Bradley Davis from Podchaser, we’ve got his contact info in the show notes. Stories and Strategies is a co-production of these vibing partners. Zen Public Relations, JGR Communications, stories and Strategies podcast. If you like this episode, leave us a rating, maybe a review. It increases the vibe. Check out full episodes on YouTube. Directors cut. We leave all the swear words in there. Link is in the show notes. Thank you to our producers, Emily Page, David ide. And lastly, do us a favor forward this episode to one friend. Thanks for listening.