The Rise of the Chief Audio Officer

WARNING. This edition of The Influencer is intentionally short this week to save you time to read our latest report. We promise it will be well worth your time. 

We’ve all heard of a CEO, and readers of this newsletter likely know what a CMO does, but what about CAO? This week on Media Roundtable: Special Edition, we’re spotlighting our new, game-changing white paper: ”Chief Audio Officer: The Champion Every Brand Needs to Win in Audio.” 

We start the episode with a lightning-quick recap of our recent Chief Audio Officer Summit, where audio experts from brands including Shopify, Athletic Greens, Skims, Indeed, Netsuite/Oracle, Hello Bello, Instacart, quip, Bambee, and Babbel took the stage to celebrate, dissect and give insight into this powerful and peculiar medium we all love and depend on. If you’re getting FOMO, keep reading. 

You may have already seen news stories from PodNews, PRWeb, and Sounds Profitable about this landmark whitepaper, but in this week’s podcast, you can hear it all straight from the horse’s mouth.

Hosting this week’s episode is Oxford Road’s Jennifer Laine, joined by fellow Oxford Road CAO boosters Dan Granger, Giles Martin, Spencer Semonsen, Stew Redwine, and Steven Abraham.

“[Audio] is not the biggest channel… but the trust gives you the largest return on investment.”

  • Dan Granger, Oxford Road CEO & Founder

Chief Audio Officer: The person responsible for the success of a brand’s audio advertising program.

The core of this week’s episode highlights what makes the Audio channel so unique and why Chief Audio Officers are so crucial to the future of this industry:

  • One of a Kind ✨- A channel unlike any other needs extra care to flourish, from attribution (see our last white paper on how to level up your attribution) to creative. But those who truly put the effort in can unlock intimate marketing that scales.

  • Building the Moat  🌊- The crown jewel of audio ads is personalized, trusted endorsements–and they’re the part of your marketing plan no competitor can take from you. Host relationships are the key, and it takes a CAO to build them.

  • Embracing Fearlessness 💪- Audio content has the potential to break through noisy chatter, and the same goes for audio ads–if you’re just as authentic as the channel demands. To stay truthful to the brand and find partners who embrace and reward the same values, you need the guiding hand of a CAO who’ll take the right risks.

If you want to learn more about what it means to be a CAO, first listen to this week's episode by clicking below.

If you want to dive in deeper, please download the full CAO whitepaper by clicking HERE. 

We’ll be sharing the insightful, intimate talks from the CAO Summit over the next few weeks, but if you, yourself, believe you are a genuine Chief Audio Officer, and wish to participate in future events, connections, and special content, email us at   info@chiefaudiofficer.com to apply for membership.

Bianca Gorodinsky