Drawing on a career spanning local radio, The Last Word on Today FM and the founding of podcast production company Audiobrand, Patrick shares how audio has evolved from traditional broadcasting into a powerful channel for brands, organisations and individuals to connect directly with their audiences.
The conversation examines what makes podcasting different from other forms of media, from the time and space it gives stories to develop to the intimacy created when listeners choose to spend 40 or 50 minutes with the same voices. It also explores what makes a successful branded podcast, why understanding the listener should come before microphones and production, and how AI is changing the way podcast content can be created, repurposed and promoted.
For PR professionals, the discussion also challenges the idea that bigger audiences always mean better results. Sometimes reaching a smaller, highly engaged audience through the right podcast can create far more influence than appearing on a platform with greater reach.
At the centre of the discussion is a simple question: if podcasts can hold an audience’s attention for longer than almost any other medium, how can PR and communications professionals use that attention to build genuine trust and influence?
Transcript:
Jack Murray 00:01
Welcome to Inside Media Relations, the podcast for PR people, series about getting their stories
covered. I'm Jack Murray. In this episode, the power of podcasts, building audiences, trust, and
influence. Podcasting has become one of the fastest-growing communications channels in the
world, but the best podcasts do far more than entertain; they build audiences, establish
authority, and create lasting trust. Today, I'm joined by Patrick Hahie, founder of Audio Brand,
one of Ireland's leading podcast producers.
Jack Murray 00:35
Let's get inside media relations. Patrick, you're very welcome to the show.
Patrick Haughey 00:40
How you Jack?
Jack Murray 00:40
How are you getting on?
Patrick Haughey 00:41
Very well, thanks to yourself.
Jack Murray 00:42
Yeah, good. Thanks for joining me today. I want to start today's conversation back at the start,
down in the sunny southeast. Oh my God, we're going. We're
Patrick Haughey 00:49
going back now, Jack.
Jack Murray 00:50
When God was a child, so you black and white. Yeah. So you started in you started in local
radio in Waterford. Yes. And what I suppose? Tell me about like I grew up in a house in the west
of Ireland where like talking the radio current affairs were kind of writ large. What got you kind
of what what got you into radio? What got you thinking? Oh, that's something I could do. Was it
after school? Did you go to college? What like how did you start off?
Patrick Haughey 01:19
Yeah, it was it was actually a transition year placement, and so Water for Local Radio WR was
my local station, and I managed to get kind of a week long placement as sort of you know
shadowing the late great Billy McCarthy, who was, as you'll know from local radio, you've got
your stalwart presenters, current affairs presenters. They're on from generally like 10 to 12 in
the morning or something like that. The entire Billy was unbelievable, though. It's amazing. And
Jack Murray 01:46
just just to point out to people, like he was a former priest, yes, larger than life,
Patrick Haughey 01:51
married to a man, got you know came out like former priest and highly intelligent. Just knew his
audience. Brilliant empathy. Brave guy. empathy, everything like that. It was amazing, and so it
was actually one of the biggest strokes of luck in my life to actually get to to basically shadow
him for a week. And I'll actually never, as long as I live, I'll never forget walking into the studio,
like you know, like this room, except it's got the radio desk, and it's got all this lovely kind of
branded soundproofing. One window looking out onto the street, and Billy was sitting in his
chair. And you walk into the studio, and suddenly the sound is entirely different. Like you know,
it deadens because of the the the soundproofing. Everything's absorbed, so already you feel
like you're in some sort of cocoon, and then Billy is there talking in front of a microphone like
this, and he's chatting to people, chatting to people like local politicians or callers or whatever.
And my job was to sort of answer the. At that time, there was no text messages. Again, black
and white. There was no text messages, so my job was to answer the phone to people who
were phoning in with comments. Okay, kind of like you know, and the phone did not stop for
two hours. It was people phoning, phoning, phoning, giving a comment, reacting to what was
said, wanting to share a story, and it was just this. In day one, it was like you can sit here in a
room like this and talk by yourself, and you're connecting with 10s of 1000s of people who all
want to be part of this experience. Yeah, and it was the most. It just like so. I caught what they
call the radio bug from day one. It was like this is magic. This is like there's nothing else like
this. So I kind of became you know did research from throughout the the week or maybe it was
two weeks, and I obviously made an impression because when his kind of long-running
producer was on holidays, I was asked to come back a few months later and produce. You know
what I mean? Like you were. What
Jack Murray 03:48
age were we?
Patrick Haughey 03:49
I was about 16, something like that, 1617, But I was, I just loved it straight away, and I
obviously had was half decent at it because I was into it and I wanted to learn, and that was
kind of like the start. From that point, it was like, okay, I do not want to do anything else
because what I loved about it was you're learning about tons of things every day, a little bit,
but you're not. You don't have to go too deep on anything, and that kind of suits me. You like,
I'm interested in a lot of stuff, but I'm not like, I don't get go too down a rabbit hole on anything,
and that's kind of being a producer. You need to know a little bit about a lot of stuff, but more
importantly, you need to know and have relationships with the people who know about a lot of
a lot about the things. So, but it was
Jack Murray 04:32
it was quite a kind of a lining of like a sliding doors moment you could call it to to get it. Like I I
remember my first interaction with Billy around like I was working in politics at the time, and
like somebody preparing me for the technical nature of Billy, and we had like we had
candidates in Waterford, and one of them, Ollie Cleary, who you probably would have dealt with
an awful lot then, was like you know if you if you got on that show like it was you know. You
were setting the agenda in the southeast, and but he was-he was-he was different, though. He
was, yeah,
Patrick Haughey 05:05
yeah, because he had that. He wasn't-he had the the news sense, and he had the news
approach, and he could ask the hard questions. But he was also brilliant with human stories,
personal stories, and like you mentioned earlier, he had that empathy because he had been
through stuff. You know what I mean? Like being, you know, being a priest and leaving the
priesthood and coming out as gay and all that-that carves character. Do you know what I
mean? And so this was like
Jack Murray 05:27
late 90s. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So it wasn't like it was kind of like you know, people listening or
watching now will think, oh well, that's there's nothing unusual about that. It was oh, it was
earlier. It was
Patrick Haughey 05:37
even earlier because I I was there 89 probably exactly when it started, because I was there in
the mid 90s. So, and that was you know that was was all out by then. And he, so I think he had
an empathy carved from life experience, and you can hear that. Do you know what I mean?
And I think I really admire that in presenters, where and it's it's what's great about the media in
a lot of ways is that you know you don't sort of study a specific course, then get a specific
placement, and then become a professional broadcaster. Often, it's the people who come to it
later in life actually do a lot better because they have all this life experience that you can bring
to conversations and stories, and the empathy and the listening and all that. It makes a huge
difference. I think I was probably very lucky as well in the sense of around that time. So when I
went to that made the impression on me. I finished school. I went for some reason. I went and
studied arts in Trinity College. I studied like French and philosophy, and I left that and I went to
really practical stuff. Really practical stuff. Four hours a week lectures, which did not suit me at
all. So I've got all this cavernous amount of time that I'm trying to sort to to cope with. So I left
and I said, "This is. I was sitting in a lecture theater in Trinity, listening to Beowulf in the original
Anglo-Saxon, going, "This just does not feel like me. Yeah. So I left and I just I went to a media
production course in Liberty's College.
Jack Murray 07:02
Okay,
Patrick Haughey 07:03
and day one, there's a digital recorder. There's a camera. Go out and make stuff. So I was out
doing vox pops, making little films, and day one is like, okay, this is definitely me now. It's
brilliant. And luckily, around the same time, there was actually a massive amount of investment
in radio in the early 2000s.
Jack Murray 07:19
Yeah,
Patrick Haughey 07:20
there was licenses being given out in a lot more quantity than there ever had been before, and
they the first regional radio license in Ireland was given to the southeast, and Beat 102 103 was
the the station they wanted. So basically, so this was
Jack Murray 07:39
like the second wave, exactly,
Patrick Haughey 07:41
exactly. So you had the first wave when all these pirate stations became licensed, and then one
in every
Jack Murray 07:48
county, kind of, yeah, exactly. So
Patrick Haughey 07:49
WR would have been a pirate station of you know or unregulated, and then 10 or 15 years
later, the second wave, as you say, iRadio Beat One or Two One o3, some other local stations,
youth stations. So, beat one or two or three. Red FM, yeah. You're right. FM, exactly. And I was
lucky enough to get a to get two jobs in that station as part of the startup team, creating a
show called Beat Talk with Niall Power, which was the the the talk show of the station. Okay,
have to have 20% news and talk, no matter what the audience is, so we had to create a talk
show that was designed for 15 to 25 year olds, basically. So, like you know, 150 items done
really quickly in two hours type thing, which was serious baptism of fire. It was just me and and
the presenter, but I also produced an agony ant show called Heartbeat with Diana Luke, and
kind of became a reluctant co-presenter because I have no, you know, training whatsoever. And
Diana was like experienced counselor, and so that was a real eye opener. Again, like with
sitting with Billy's studio, watching the phone hop, the the idea behind Heartbeat was that
Diana's on air, and you will, if you have an issue, whether it's like a relationship issue, or just
something you want to get off your chest, you can phone in and talk to her live on air. You
know, do you think that might work? Like a lot of people would be skeptical. From night one, we
the phone did not stop, and we had 500 text messages, which was incredible. And with
Jack Murray 09:15
like, were these people anonymous, or were they? It depended. It depended, but
Patrick Haughey 09:18
generally they'd be they'd be anonymous. Like they were fun, like 15-year-olds, 18-year-olds,
20-year-olds, boyfriend issues. You know, worried about worried about school, worried about
their friendship circle. And Diana had this amazing power to make you feel it was just you and
her.
Jack Murray 09:34
Yeah.
Patrick Haughey 09:34
So there was these phenomenal conversations taking place that everyone could listen to, but
that felt like you were literally a fly on the wall. Like you, no one else was listening to this, only
you, and no one else was talking to Diane, only you. And that again, a real insight into the
power of radio and audio. And take that
Jack Murray 09:53
grounding then of like no budget, like seat of the pants.
Patrick Haughey 09:58
Yeah,
Jack Murray 09:58
like you have to do everything. And while that can be very stressful, that ability to develop
yourself as a kind of a Swiss Army knife, I would imagine, is a good is a good skill. Really good
way to put it. Yeah,
Patrick Haughey 10:09
great way to put it. And it is that because you're you there's no training, there's no like there is
degrees,
Jack Murray 10:17
yeah,
Patrick Haughey 10:17
but there's no degrees for that. You know what I mean? You're just thrown in, and you very
quickly have to learn how to, like you know, say with the talk show coming in at 9o'clock in the
morning, and you have two hours of silence to fill in that afternoon, and so and you need to fill
it with approximately 15 to 20 people who you don't have yet, so you basically need to very
quickly figure out what your audience is going to want to hear, what's going to entertain them,
what's going to engage them, inform them, give them a bit of escapism, because you want that
you know light and shade mix. Then you have to find the people to actually come on and talk
about it, and you have to do all that within about four or five hours. And so that's we're doing
that for three years. It's quite an adrenaline
Jack Murray 11:04
buzz, isn't it? Yeah, it's
Patrick Haughey 11:05
incredible. Like, and I'll actually never forget my the first show because we I was part of the
startup team before we launched for about three months. We were there building everything,
designing everything, getting our guests, everything like that, and we had the brilliant first
show, and it was on launch day, so we're going to do our first show. Two hours went really,
really well. Absolutely delighted with it. The launch party was on then, so we're off down the
pub having drinks, everything like that. Going to bed. Woke up the next morning, going, "Oh
Jesus, I have to do all that again. I have to fill a whole other show today, and then tomorrow,
and the day after, and the day after, and that's a real. You learn discipline. You learn just
process. You learn like just pure grit and determination. And most of all, you learn how to form
relationships with people who are really good on air because you're nothing without them. And
in the same way, like say in the in the the PR and comms world, the value of the the value that
that PR and communications professionals hold for producers is second to none because you're
calling us with these great guests with these great stories, and we're there going, okay, we
need all the ideas we can get. You know what I mean? Yeah, that's you're phoning people like
me at that point,
Jack Murray 12:21
and I would imagine at local radio, like when you get to like when you're on a national
frequency, you like you know the exchange is different because you have something really
valuable. Yeah, it's less so at a local level. Like it's you know you're you you really have to use
your own ingenuity and your own creativity.
Patrick Haughey 12:38
Oh, and so and so because of that, it's the best place to start, and then I remember going to. I
had a little bit of stop gap in between with with David Mike Williams's, so I left after three years,
and said like Dublin's where it's at.
Jack Murray 12:49
Yeah,
Patrick Haughey 12:50
you know what I mean. It's less so now. It's you know what I mean. In some ways, it is. In some
ways, things the world has changed, but back then, mid 20s, if I want to move up in the world
of media and I absolutely love it, I'm going to have to go to Dublin, so I got a job with on the the
big bite, which was David McWilliams' TV show on RTE. It was
Jack Murray 13:08
it was it daytime,
Patrick Haughey 13:09
daytime, yeah, daytime, and they'd have panels of people on talking about issues. I watched
Jack Murray 13:14
back some of it just to prepare. Did you? Yeah, I did. It's on YouTube, and like I like I was I was
looking back, and there was a, and like it's kind of like was that was that so far ahead of its
time or what? What like like it was just that like when you look at like one of my weird passions
now is I I I careful now I I actually Sky plus the afternoon show and I watch it very interesting
and my wife goes why do you watch that and I go because I love television and I like formats
and stuff like that, but that was very that was very early. That was before even the late Keelan
Shanley had a kind of a mid morning show. That was even before that. Like yeah, you're right.
Patrick Haughey 13:50
And it was Tyrone Productions. It would be John John and McCargon's production company, and
yeah, great producers. And there was some. There was some really. I learned there was some
really really strong producers there, and so I think the format was actually quite very innovative
at the time. And David was great again. Like Billy, he he does have an empathy. He's good at. I
remember he had someone on. He was talking to about about cancer, and they were going
through cancer, and he and he said, "Like, does does cancer hurt? Like, I just thought actually
that always struck me because it's it's it's kind of like such a simple question. A lot of people
would feel, well, actually, I don't know how cancer feels, but I can't possibly ask a question, like,
and show that I don't know, or I'm certainly not going to show it. I'm not going to ask it in such
a simple fashion, but actually, they're the questions that people at home are often asking, or
they just feel they just land. Yeah. So you you got
Jack Murray 14:49
into TV then, and you were like exploring a different medium, and you were working as part of
the research team. Yes, exactly. So
Patrick Haughey 14:55
doing similar work, but going from going from. Lining up 14 to 16 items per day for a two-hour
slot, I went from that overnight to getting one item to work on for two days.
Jack Murray 15:11
Okay,
Patrick Haughey 15:12
now that was a big that was a big shift.
Jack Murray 15:14
But that brings its own challenges too. Oh,
Patrick Haughey 15:16
it was a bit like the Trinity four hours a week. Now I want to go and do. Yeah, it was. It it didn't
suit me in the same way because what you do is start to overthink stuff, and you start adding
more people onto the panel. Oh, we're missing that angle. We're missing that angle, and so you
end up with 14 people talking about something because you've had two days to work out all
the nuances. Of course, you don't have to cover them all, but when you have all this time, you
do. So I took quite a lot from that as well, like and and kind of that it did bring its own
challenges from that perspective, and
Jack Murray 15:47
and it's fun. Like that is a funny one because like I remember that like you know I often joke
with a friend of mine about the media and a lot of our friends in the media, and we talk about
people who are really successful that their dysfunction works for the job. Yes, and there's a bit
where, like, when I was in the PR job, I was a complete adrenaline junkie, and you'd be kind of
you'd be riding the roller coaster, but then you'd come to the day where you'd be in the fallow
bit, and you'd feel like, oh, what's going on today? Yes, and it doesn't feel great,
Patrick Haughey 16:14
yeah.
Jack Murray 16:14
And then when you're really busy, you're like, I'm a little bit too busy now. Yeah,
Patrick Haughey 16:17
it's it's that sweet spot, isn't it? Yeah, it is. Yeah, I feel the same even today. Like a lot of my
work is out recording with people on site or doing a lot of training as well, and you're getting all
the energy from the room and you're feeding off it and you're in it. Like it's all that flow. But
then I'll have like days and days where I'm at the desk editing, and I find after three or four
days of pure editing, even though I love it, my energy levels are just gone. Yeah, and like I
need, I need that energy again. So it's about, I think that's one of the things of getting, getting
a bit older and wiser. You start to realize what works for you.
Jack Murray 16:50
Yeah,
Patrick Haughey 16:50
in terms of productivity, in terms of
Jack Murray 16:53
workflow,
Patrick Haughey 16:53
workflow, and what what gives you the end. It's where you get your energy.
Jack Murray 16:56
Yeah, that's true.
Patrick Haughey 16:57
And equally, the people and the things that take away your energy, you learn to avoid them,
and you learn to gravitate towards the things that work.
Jack Murray 17:05
So, an opportunity came up with on the last word on Today FM with Matt Cooper. The show had
been well established at that stage. It started in '97. I was explaining to someone in the office
about when it started, and we were talking about the whole Dunphy thing about when Dunfee
started the last word, and someone had come on, and it was like so groundbreaking at the
time. Where it was like, you know, he used to have all these Northern Unionists on, and be like,
you're, you know, you're great, you're one of greatest, you know, you're. I need to say we used
to joke about the intros Dunphy used to do about writer, broadcaster, podcaster, DJ, and but it
was a kind of a let them talk type of radio that on a national level hadn't and then then Matt
came in tell us about getting that opportunity and very popular program with a very big reach
Patrick Haughey 17:54
yeah it was it was and again look it's all about timing isn't it but as the as the sort of in TV it's
all contracts unless you're, you know, employed in RT or whatever. But in the production
companies, it's contracts, so you get contracted for a series, and then the next series with it. So
as that was, this one was coming to an end for David McWilliams' show. That series, a
researcher position came up on the last word, and to be honest with you, much as I love TV, I
was dying to get back into radio. Yeah, you know because of that, the adrenaline is far higher.
Jack Murray 18:24
Yeah,
Patrick Haughey 18:25
you know, two days preparing one item, and then you go into a studio, and the cameramen
need four hours to get everyone set up. And
Jack Murray 18:31
when you're a radio person, a lot of this can feel like it's in the way the camera is. Exactly,
exactly. Yeah, and you try to explain that to someone where, like, when it's just when when you
get really excited, and I remember when I was doing audio editing in journalism, like I said to
someone, like, "Is this going to sound weird? Like I love looking at audio waves. I look at looking
looking at the shape of someone's voice, yeah. And I like saying, "Oh, that's Patrick's voice, and
that's Tom's voice, and that's because I can and I can see the patterns because I've been
watching it forever. Yes, but but that's far simpler than everything else. All of the kind of lights
and lot of bells and whistles. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Patrick Haughey 19:05
And it's just time because you can make things happen much quicker in audio.
Jack Murray 19:10
Yeah, it's
Patrick Haughey 19:10
there's far less in the way. There's far less to set up. Um, so I was dying to get back to radio, so
I was delighted. And David put in a good word with me to Matt, and that really helped. And I
had a coffee with Matt. He was trying to figure out could he work with me, and you know,
stupidly he realized he could over a coffee. But you know, he he he soon he probably soon
came to regret that. But anyway, no, we had a great we had a great working relationship
actually for about 12 years. Yeah, but I went in as researcher, and then again timing, assistant
producer role came up. I went for that, got it. Then Barbara Loftus, who was the senior
producer at the time, who was brilliant, and I learned so much from, she ended up leaving the
show, and I ended up getting the position of senior senior producer, and was there for almost
12 years. Yeah, and again, a bit like a bit like going from. Again, I remember day one, walking
into the room, and I saw there was like a team of five people plus Matt. And I had, apart from
the the big bite, just come from three years in radio where it's just me and the presenter
putting together a two hour show. Now I'm coming into another two hour show, and there's five
people doing it. Like God, well, this is going to be easy,
Jack Murray 20:21
yeah.
Patrick Haughey 20:21
But quickly realize that the time that you save, so instead of having to do 14 items, you've got
to do two items,
Jack Murray 20:29
yeah.
Patrick Haughey 20:29
But the pressure to find the very best voices for those slots is completely different to what it
would be. And sometimes you're just filling the slot in thing, or it might be for four minutes. But
you have to. You're
Jack Murray 20:41
competing against RT. You're competing against news talk, and you need to have exactly
people ahead of people. And
Patrick Haughey 20:46
there's more debates, so there's more like, okay, we're talking about big issues here, and we're
going to have to have our right wing versus our left wing, or we're going to have it was that
kind of era of kind of scrap radio as well, which you know I kind of tired of fairly quickly, and
luckily it comes with swings aroundabouts, but you would have a lot. The time that you had
now freed up was to find the best voices in Ireland, and also to find to pre-interview so that you
would you'd know exactly what each person is going to say. So the panel is going to have the
perfect mix and cast of characters. What
Jack Murray 21:19
are the big pressures when you're doing that? Like about people falling off, about libels, like
what are the what are the big?
Patrick Haughey 21:24
Yeah, libel isn't as much of an issue because you've been stopped. It's not really yeah because
you have that the dump button. Yeah, so you're you're always broadcasting 10 seconds ahead
of what everyone's hearing. Yeah. So now not every show has that, but we had it. But
generally, you know, your job as a producer or researcher is to sort of number one find the best
talkers you can because we like with TV. Unlike TV, we don't have graphics and you know
colors and lights to to sort of fill a lot of the gaps. It's pure raw conversation and voice. So you
need to find the best voices and a and a great like a great talker, a great communicator, and
you know storyteller can make what you might think is a boring topic really exciting. But
conversely, a fantastic topic topic can be destroyed by a poor communicator. So your job is to
find the very best, and then if there's more than one person on that slot, if it's going to be a
debate or if you're looking for different angles, you've got to go and find someone. Spend. You
could talk to find. You could talk to 10 people before before you find the right one.
Jack Murray 22:27
And talk to him about this about like Billy McCarthy, David McWilliams, Matt Cooper, Mario
Rosenstock. Like you fairly pick them as as kind of strong strong individuals who know their
own mind, who you know, like you know, kind of you know, and I've done work with Matt, and I
like I've interacted with David Mac Williams. Like, like talk to me about that relationship when
you're dealing with strong-willed people who have set views on things and big personalities.
Yeah,
Patrick Haughey 22:57
it's a it's a great question, and I and I I would probably temper the set views on things because I
think one of the things that they're really great at is actually they do they have strong views on
things, but they're not set.
Jack Murray 23:08
Yeah,
Patrick Haughey 23:09
not all of them, you know. And I think that's really important because the broadcasters that
survive for decades are the ones who aren't so set in their ways and opinions that they they
can't have a team around them or whatever they don't go very far, and the dynamic between a
broadcaster, a presenter, and their team, and particularly their senior producer as well, is is a
fascinating one to watch because there has to be so much give and take. So they're in the job
because they have strong opinions and they have a strong perspective, and so on my on my
side, my job as a senior producer, I always saw was to to recognize their strengths and what
they're good at and what makes them shine and what makes them unique, and to feed to
throw coal into that fire, and then the stuff they're not so good at. And everyone has things
they're not good at, and you have to approach that conversation differently with everyone, but
you just-it's not like you have to-you have to recognize what those weaknesses are and and not
feed it at all. Okay, and so you're trying to funnel that. So, so you want the best for them. I
want so I become your senior producer, Jack, and I want Jack to shine. That you know, all boats
rising, and the old. And is that
Jack Murray 24:22
an unspoken conversation where we have an understanding of what I'm good at, and you know
what I'm weak at? But you're not saying that to me. There's a little. There can be a bit of that.
So
Patrick Haughey 24:29
I'm not going to say we're not doing that again because you're terrible at it. I'm just not putting
that type of guest in front of you again. Or for example, if you're great at, like, brilliant with
current affairs and and human interest stories, but not great when a comedian comes into the
room because you try and like you know get funny with them too, and it doesn't work. Then I'm
just not giving you many comedians who are going to feed the the good stuff. So as as a senior
producer, my motivations are to make you look great and to make the show work and to under.
Understand who you are as an individual, and not try and shape you, but actually just use all of
the skills God gave you and enhance them. And that's going to be so. You're going to trust that
I have the best thing. Once that once the the presenter trusts that you have their back, then
they're going to listen to you more when you try and steer them in different directions or try
and put the show in a different direction. So, even though you might have a set opinion on
something or you're set in your ways, you might you're going to trust that. Actually, if I have a
different perspective on that, you're going to listen to me. And the great broadcasters listen to
people who have their back, and together you you find the right path.
Jack Murray 25:37
So, at a certain point on your journey, you had an idea around radio education, and the the
Today FM School of Radio started, and I want to talk about about that. Your transition to
podcasting, and I suppose so. So so so I want you to address that, but I want to start kind of
where radio is now, vis-a-vis podcasting now, and I'll be honest with you, I'm very tired of a lot
of the radio now. I think it's very segment driven. I think the metrics around it are terrible. I
listen to some of the outputs of stuff, and it's very rat tat tat. Where a lot of the data would
show that people are willing to listen to things for longer, they're willing to tune things, but
radio doesn't seem to be serving that as well as podcasting is now.
Patrick Haughey 26:27
Yet it's still doing extremely well. Yeah, do you know? And that's so you mentioned the
education piece there, and you know, after soon after I got into the world of podcasting, I
started doing a lot of training with radio stations about developing slates of podcasts and
developing podcasts and the opportunities there, and which was interesting at the start
because it very much started from a position of we're radio podcasts are the enemy, and
people are either going to listen to podcasts or radio, so we need to like bunker down here and
make sure they listen to radio.
Jack Murray 26:59
Yeah,
Patrick Haughey 26:59
where what we fast forward to today, podcasting is massive. Radio is still massive, so there's
room for everyone. Like
Jack Murray 27:06
I have a friend who listens to things back. He listens back to. He said, "I love podcasts, and I
said, "What are you listening to? And he starts reading off radio. I said, "What's wrong with
you? And he said, "What? I said, "That's not podcasting. I listen to Pat Kenny. I said, "That's a
fucking radio program. I said, "What? I said, "I have a whole list of things you can listen to. And
like, look, I have read, like, as I've said already, like, I was talking to the lads about this. Like,
Galway Bay FM is brilliant at putting all of their sports content up on Spotify, and if Galway win
a match the day after, I will go on a long walk and put in the local commentary the day later,
knowing the result at the end, and I will listen to all of it, and I was thinking, I wonder, does
anybody else do that, or is that just my weird passion? But so, around 2013, the school of radio
started, and you took a very like that was you was that you were driving that yourself then?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Patrick Haughey 27:55
So I kind of like when you're in a road of senior producer, you get a lot of calls, emails going like
I, I'm Jack. I'm 22. I'm just out of college. I really, really want to get into radio. Any work
experience going, and you know, unfortunately, you can't offer every Jack work experience. It's
just the way it is, you know. And teams are small, and and even if you bring Jack in for work
experience, there's a very good chance that because everyone's so busy and so up the walls
trying to get the show, Jack just sits in the corner and kind of watches you make the show, as
opposed to getting stuck in or really taking much away. Not that that happens all the time at
all, but it happens. And but mainly, there's not enough spaces for all the Jacks who want to
come in and experience it. And and I kind of felt like, God, this feels-it feels like there's some a
better way here. And I look out on the floor of Today FM and see all these amazing presenters
and producers and storytellers and content creators and everyone in the station who is just so
good at what they did. And then there's all these people who want to be part of that. So I
thought, well, what if we just, you know, created a space where you know all the people who
want to be part of radio can come in and learn from the people who who are doing it so well,
and that was the birth of the Today FM School of Radio. So it was it's a 10 week course, one
night per week. The first nine weeks are in independent college. We team up just to have that
academic side of it and to to have that sort of academic partner, but it's a very unacademic
course. First nine weeks, the guest lecturers are coming in. They're telling you what they're
walking out the doors of today. If Ephemera News Talk, having done the job, this is the beauty
of it. It wasn't 20 years ago. They're walking out the doors of the station, going today on Pack
Kenny. This is what we did, and this is what my role is as a senior producer on Pack Kenny or a
Matt Cooper. And here's the fundamentals. Here's the skills. And now, second part of the night,
I want I want you to go and pretend you're a producer in Papkenny. Now tell me what you do at
5o'clock and why. Find a guest. So. Very kind of practical like that. Then the 10th week,
everyone for the first nine weeks, everyone has in has been in production teams preparing a
show, a 20 minute as live show, and then they come in on the last day. They sit in Matt
Cooper's chair and they sit where the guests are and they make their shows, and it's absolutely
brilliant to watch. So it was my idea, and luckily, whatever way was structured at the time, I
created a limited company to run it, and and so that that's the partnership. So even after I left
today, FM, the partnership stayed, and we could run it, and it's very successful up to this day.
And there has been absolutely no no fall off in the amount of people who want. How many
times a year do
Jack Murray 30:43
you run the course? Then
Patrick Haughey 30:43
it could be it could be twice. It could be four times. Okay. So we could have, and we keep
numbers limited to around 20, so that you have the best learning experience. So sometimes we
have 40 people. Sometimes we have 80 people going through a year, and
Jack Murray 30:57
and some of them have popped up in careers in radio. I'm assuming kind of all
Patrick Haughey 31:01
the time. Those people across all across News Talk Today FM 98 spin local stations around the
country, and
Jack Murray 31:08
it's probably a good way to see talent and say, "Oh, look, I've saw there's a real firecracker.
That's
Patrick Haughey 31:13
you're really tapping into it. And what's been interesting is that when we first started the
course, everyone in the room wanted to work in radio because that's if you're into audio and
audio content creation, radio is your only avenue. You fast forward to today, people who want
who are interested in audio can work in a radio station on radio shows on the podcast network
the radio station probably has. They can work in independent podcasting, branded podcasting.
They work in PR and communications and have a speciality around audio content for their
clients. They can work in house on marketing teams, internal comms teams, and make audio
content. The amount of opportunity that has developed out from having audio skills is massive
because audio has become such a thing. Like you know, and notice I'm saying audio, not radio,
because it takes in so much more now.
Jack Murray 32:04
I remember my one of my first PR clients, the the late great Jerry McCahey, and it was about
maybe 2004, 2005, and podcasting was just starting, and we did this PR campaign where we
gave, and I remember getting a lecture from a journalist. I convinced him to buy 20 iPods in
2005. Oh yeah! We got this thing that looked like a, it looked like an arm ring for swimming, but
it was clear. And we put the i you put the iPod into it and blow it up, and it had a podcast on it
about this initiative that we were launching. Great idea. And we sent in this package, and you
kind of you'd get it, and the only way you could get the iPod, I was like either take a knife to it
or just deflate the armband, and but like I remember a friend who went into it in 2005 and
called himself Podcasting Ireland, and he was just like so far he was so too far ahead of cars.
Yeah, yeah. So you made the move in you made the move in 2018.
Patrick Haughey 32:57
Yep. To
Jack Murray 32:58
set up audio brand. Tell me about like the genesis of setting up an independent podcast
production company, what the nature of the work look looked like, what did it look like then,
and what has it evolved to now?
Patrick Haughey 33:10
Well, so I guess I had two parts, and I'll tell them briefly. The first part was when I was still in
the last word, and you mentioned about radio becoming maybe a little bit formulaic and a little
bit predictable and stuff like that, and I get what you get where you're coming from in that
because by its very nature, it's matured, and it has found its model and that certain show
formats work and certain things work, and so we're going to keep doing that, and as and they
work, and we can develop better podcasts, whatever. But I remember personally starting to get
very frustrated when I was the producer that we'd have somebody in who had this incredible
story, like a most amazing personal story, and I knew how much was in the story because I'd
done the pre-interview, the brief, and everything like that. And they'd have 15 minutes max on
the show, and so Matt's just getting stuck in. They're 12 minutes in, and I know they're about
5% through what this story could be.
Patrick Haughey 34:04
Yeah,
Patrick Haughey 34:05
and I knew in three minutes' time we were going to have to. I was going to have to go, Matt. We have to wrap it up here now. We've got the traffic with Esther Monahou, and then we've got
the news, and that was the end of it. And it consistently started to feel a bit wrong. Oh yeah, it
was too short, and and then like I remember, Brezzy, Blind Boy, the two Johnnies all started to
come out with podcasts when it became whatever 2016, whatever the new renaissance of
podcasting, and there people were getting an hour to share their story, and people were
listening, and it's like, oh, this is interesting, and not only that, but there was like all this sound
design, and you know, there's all this kind of extra elements, and it was kind of new, and
they're experimenting with formats in a way that we couldn't in radio anymore, and that got
me really, really interested in the format.
Jack Murray 34:51
And the radio felt like a bit of a like that thing of the traffic with Esther or Moore Donohue,
where, like, if you if you think back to Marion Finucane. And Nulo Fueland, that seminal
interview that kind of really cut through, and like that was almost like a podcast type interview
because it was at the weekend, maybe 45 minutes long. Oh my god,
Patrick Haughey 35:08
I can't believe you're saying that. I point I point to that example regularly because she was the
only one doing interviews that were more than 15 minutes long.
Jack Murray 35:15
Yeah,
Patrick Haughey 35:16
and I and I always remember them. I always listened to them, and you're right, they were like
podcasts, and people are hungry for a full story. So whether whether it's a personal story or like
a brand trying to share some kind of complex information that their expertise, like certain
things, need time and space to shine. And unfortunately, radio we can't offer that all the time in
radio at all. Do you know what I mean? So that's when podcasting has now opened up all of this
opportunity, and so I started to get very interested in the format. I left the last word. I'd been
there like nearly 12 years and just wanted to sort of experience something new. I guess I didn't
ever want to be cruising, and the world of kind of content marketing was starting up, where you
know they were bringing journalists in to do marketing roles, as opposed to public publicists.
And this really interested me. Actually, I thought that was the beautiful marriage of the world I
was in, as in journalism and production, but a world that I was fascinated into, which was
business. Always love business and how businesses work, and founder stories, and all that. And
there was a company called VoxPro, which has since become Telus International. Dan and
Linda Kiley, core couple who set it up, was an outsourcing company. Yeah. So, you know, you
you ring up your a Google customer or you're a some kind of you're ringing up a company and
you would get you know someone from VoxPro, but it was it wasn't like a sea of sort of phones
in a very drab room somewhere. Like they totally revolutionized what call centers were. They
used to call it beautiful customer experience. They used to design their offices the same way as
their clients. So Airbnb were a client. So you'd walk into VoxPro's call center and it looked like
an Airbnb. It was so clever, and I got a job there as content editor, and I'm going to be honest
with you. For the first little while, I dramatically missed the radio station. I missed the studio,
the microphones, the dynamism of a of a the daily energy studio. It's just there's nothing else
like it. Yeah. So I selfishly said, I think we should start a podcast. Obviously, you know, very
strategic reasons, but like, actually, I just wanted to be background microphones, and I, I was
such a believer in the power of audio that I thought there must be something in this. So we set
up a we set up a podcast called Fox Pro Studios, and the idea was that we'd invite some of the
world's like the biggest tech, like the customer customer experience heads of all of these big
companies in Dublin, the tech companies like Google and HubSpot and Airbnb, they would
come in and I would interview them about beautiful customer experience. So essentially, the
content was what our target market wanted. You know, so there's that little bit of kind of
branding there and a little bit of PR, a little bit of comms and marketing, but actually cleverly,
we were inviting some of the big target customers in. So the phone call wasn't, "Hi, we're
VoxPro. Would you like to use our service? Let me tell you about it, and I'll send you a deck.
The first phone call was, "We Hi, we're VoxPro. We have this podcast where we want to hear
how great you are a customer experience, and what you do in your company, so come in and
be part of it. That opens up a it's a it's a whole other way of opening up the conversation that
can ultimately still lead to the same thing. So we had this was going on for a few months, and
next thing, I get a phone call from HubSpot who had been on the show recently, and they said,
"Look, to be honest with you, we had never heard of Oxbro, and we have our head of customer
experience coming over from Boston. We'd love to set up a meeting, see what you guys do.
And so that was like, "Okay, ding! All of the investment, the time. Now we've just landed
potentially a massive client, and and we did actually land that client.
Patrick Haughey 38:57
So, so like one one moment of that podcast led to like a whole commercial benefit, so I thought,
okay, well, this is interesting. If if this kind of model works for Volkswagen, then maybe it can
work for for others. So, like within less than a year after I started, I said, you know what, I
wanted to give this a shot, and that was the start of Audio Brand. And I jumped out. Three kids,
one had just been born. God bless my wife, who who said, "Go on and do it.
Patrick Haughey 39:24
Yeah,
Patrick Haughey 39:25
and I said, "I'm going to set up company. Ended up doing some branding work. We'll call it
Audio Brand, and I'm going to basically work with all of these companies and brands who have
all this stuff to say, but don't necessarily know how to say it and how to say it in such a way
that people want to listen to it because there's a lot of that stuff. Yeah, and I'm going to work
with them, so I'm going to sit down and we're going to learn all about what you want to say and
what you're good at and what makes you unique and what the story is and what your expertise
is that you'd like to share. And I'm going to help build that, going to understand that, and help
turn that into a podcast series that's. Full of interesting voices and sounds and soundscapes or
whatever it might be, and ultimately create something that your target customers or clients
would enjoy listening to.
Jack Murray 40:09
So let's get into that because, like, I've done in in in a kind of a wide variety of communications
roles. I've done different, like I've done some podcasting, not to the level that you're doing it.
But one of the challenges I would have found doing it is, like, you bring a level of expertise to
creating the narrative, and it's not always accepted. So some people would say, "Oh, we want
to say this, this, and this, and you go, "That's incredibly dry. I'm not sure that that's going to
work that way. And I would imagine it's a it's a kind of a spectrum where some people take the
advice and they do it really well, and other people say, "Look, we don't mind. This is dry. We
want to put it out this way. Yeah. Talk to me a little bit about that,
Patrick Haughey 40:45
and that's totally fine because the client gets what the client wants. Yeah. And so you can bring
your expertise, and that's something I learned. And I think it's in that you know, and you've
been very successful in business. I've had a level of success as well. I think a lot of it is not
necessarily what you're offering, but it's it's the relationships you have with the clients and the
respect you give them, and you you can lead a horse to water and all that. So I've had plenty of
conversations where actually yes I think that that could be a bit dry, so we try this and then
they go yeah let's do that and everyone's happy. But then conversely, what you just said the
scenario is there, and sometimes it just takes a bit of understanding to kind of get where
they're coming from, and to understand well why does it need to be like that, and why I think
when you understand that, you can make it work. And often it's only a small part of a bigger
episode or a bigger series. So sometimes the person you're working with on the marketing
team or the comms team, like they're just they're under pressure to get this thing in there, and
it might be the most exciting thing in the world, but ultimately this is a strategic commercial
product, so it has to be in there, and that's fine. But let's make the best of it as that we can.
Let's we can put music behind it, we can add sound effects, or we can just kind of have it in
there as part of this bigger piece, and that's that's where the real job comes to life. What sort of
Jack Murray 42:05
formats you like? Like give us a sample of like the type of different formats you might be doing
in podcasting now.
Patrick Haughey 42:11
And that's the the beauty of it because it goes goes from, and this what I love because when
you're when you're in radio, you get you you generally get placed on a show, like the last word,
or that, and they're set. They're they're formats. They're formulas, and so you know what
you're you know what you're going to do, and you know it's same structure every day, totally
different people, which is great. The beauty about podcasts is you can create anything, and so I
work. I create tons of different formats for different clients, depending on what's going to work
for them best, but also what they're willing to invest as well, because the more complex the
format, the the more time, the more cost. So it goes from anything from a simple, you know,
conversation like this and a little bit of music top and tail, to I'll give you a good example. One
of the most one of more more sort of high high production ones I did was last year with Folch
Ireland through Forsman at the agency, so the idea is that there's this wonderful story called
about the bog bodies. Oh yeah! So just down the road of the National Museum, you've got two
bodies who were unearthed in a field in Offaly and Meath 20 odd years ago, and they were
these perfectly preserved. You could see their fingernails, their hair was perfect, and was like,
"Jeez, is this like a recent like what? What is this? Have we just found like a kind of a missing
person type thing? Turns out they're two and a half 1000 years old, but they suffered a very
brutal death, and nobody really knows why. Okay, so we created a kind of a true crime, a four-
part true crime series for Falch Ireland, which basically set out to explore what was it about the
Iron Age and the society and the culture and the belief systems that might have led to the
death in such a brutal fashion of these two people, and who were they? Were they peasants?
Were they kings? Whatever. And was it
Jack Murray 43:57
like narrative form? Narrative form. So
Patrick Haughey 43:59
Fion Davenport, yeah, fantastic narrator, fantastic journalist. He was the presenter, and we had
so I would do. We would travel off to the bogs in in Offaly, or we were up the top of Tara Hill. We were in Loch Crew at the at the autumn solstice, and we were talking to archeologists. We
were talking to storytellers. We were talking to historians. We were talking to Mary Cassidy,
who was state pathologist. At she was called down to one thing. Talking to guards, everything,
and basically it it was a really rich production where I ended up with all this incredible amounts
of interviews, like hours and hours of interviews, hours of like RTE footage from the scene, and
so you're kind of creating all these like sort of you have to storyboard all that out, write the
links for Fiona as narrator, who would then put his polish on it, and we had invested a lot in
sound design and creating. We had. Music composed for it, with sort of that drones and this
sort of Lancome feel, and just to create this mood, and that was the most fascinating
production to work on as well. Because again, this is a branded podcast, so and the best
branded podcasts do two things: they allow the company to achieve something, and they
allowed the listener to achieve something. So in this case, Folch Ireland wanted more people to
get excited about these Iron Age sites around Ireland and these kind of you know these old kind
of Celtic significant places, and to get into their car on a Saturday and to head down and take a
short break. And the listeners to that series wanted heard a great story, well told. It's a
fascinating piece of history, Irish history. A lot of work and well told, huge amount of work. So it
go. So there are two ends of the spectrum. Yeah, one from
Jack Murray 45:51
straight talk to exactly in 2016, Mark Simpson used to ring me from News Talk, and he used to
say, you know, I I had a good relationship with George Hook, and like, look, I'm very fond of
George. We know how difficult George can be. And Mark used to ring me, and he used to say,
"Is there anything? Is there anything you'd like to talk to George about on days where he had
like stuff to fill? And like, I I thought the next time I get that call, I'm going to be ready. And I
shaped up this idea, and he said, "I said, I have an idea here. And he said, "What is it? I said,
"It's called Media Moments That Change the World. Oh, I remember that that slot.
Patrick Haughey 46:24
Yeah, Brad. But
Jack Murray 46:25
it was funny. The thing about George for me was like George met me two days later for
breakfast. He said, "How long is it? I said, "It's 10 minutes long, and he said, "How many of
them have you got? I said, "There's 40 on the list here, and he said, "Okay, off you go. And I
just I was always taken by his confidence that he could give 10. He could give me 10 minutes of
his show, and he didn't need to be anywhere near it. He said the only one he ever did. The only
one he didn't want was the one about Ben Dunn, the Ben Dunn in Florida, because I think there
were bodies from Cork. Yeah, but it was like I was I was quite taken by the innovation in that,
and I like it's funny. I'm I'm I'm I must do something with them because I still have the four. I
had the rights to the 40 of them, and I still have the 40 of them. But it it just shows you that,
like to your point, that was a 10 minute narrative audio slot. Yeah, but there there are loads of
different formats. Oh yeah,
Patrick Haughey 47:16
and and but but and it and something like every single company I work with is different. They
do different things. They have a different story, and they have different objectives and different
expertise. And so you craft a format that's going to bring that to life. And that's the job. The job
isn't, I'll go and record your podcast using microphones, and we'll stick it on Spotify. But that's
the easy bit. That the job is actually let's really understand why you want to make a podcast,
what your podcast is going to do for a listener, because like that's what it's all about. You know
what I mean? It's and
Jack Murray 47:49
the stats then as well. Like the the latest Reuters Institute report showed that the the
audiences for podcasts are younger. Yeah, people stay longer. Like my my eldest is 19, and the
two of us are obsessed with the indoor sport podcast. Oh yeah, and everything
Patrick Haughey 48:03
really well. It's amazing. And every day
Jack Murray 48:05
we like every day we'll catch up, and she'll say, "Did you listen to Bits and Bob's Dad? That you
know they were slagging Joe Malloy about wearing those golf tops at the rugby at the weekend,
and like they joke on that podcast about their cohort being the 19th or whatever that sweet
spot off the audience, and like she's in it, and she's a female in it, and she listens to all of it.
And so, like within Ireland and the UK, all the stats show that people listen to podcasts more,
they listen longer, and this notion of trust and deep dives.
Patrick Haughey 48:40
Yeah, yeah, and and like everything you just said there shows paints a picture of just how
incredibly unique podcasting is as a format. Like, is there any other format like that apart from
like reading a book where you're going to have someone's attention for 40 minutes, 50 an
hour? If you're Joe Rogan, could be up to five hours. You know, there is no other format like that
because it's a companion medium. It's on-demand companion. So, you know, we've always had
radio. Radio will keep you company while you're cooking the dinner or you're out on a walk or
whatever. But the problem with radio is that you have to listen to whatever radio is putting on
at that time. Yeah. So at 1o'clock, I'm going to go down to the gym or going to go out to the
park for a walk, but I don't want to listen to what's on the radio at 1o'clock. It's not get getting
me. So suddenly there's this audio format that comes along, and I can choose from one of 7
million things to listen to out of my walk. And if it's good, my walk is going to take 40 minutes,
50 minutes. I'll stick with the whole thing. So it's incredible. That's why, from a from a brand's
perspective, there is nothing else. None of your other channels are holding my attention for
that long. But the stuff has to be good, you know. But it's an incredibly intimate because you're
on your own time. This is personal time to you. Yet I'm listening to Jack during that time, and
that over and over again creates this amazing intimacy and a connection. And so there's.
Jack Murray 50:00
It doesn't exist, and it it also like psychologically it takes the weight off you, so you don't have
to put the muscle in to read it and to comprehend it because you're you're passively absorbing
it. You're absorbing it, but it's also that like is it a function of the amount of time or the format?
But people feel kind of you know I remember someone saying to me the difference between
movies and TV was like you know movies you don't don't happen that often and you know you
have contempt for TV people, but whereas the people feel like they have a relationship with
podcasters and a warmth and a friendliness more like like they're they're like one of their
friends as opposed to even though you've never
Patrick Haughey 50:36
met them and that's and it's because there's a couple of reasons they're they're keeping you
company during your personal time. So this is my time in the gym. This is when I get away from
work and all the clatter. Yet I'm listening to Jack Murray's podcast, and I'm Jack's talking to me,
and I'm flying the wall conversation for 40 minutes, 50 minutes. You know, week after week.
That's incredible. But also, I think the length of time lends itself to, like, you know, it's back to
our sort of you know a five minute radio bit. It's very hard to get nuance and hear people
change their minds or reflect on stuff. You know, it has to be very condensed and concise,
which is brilliant for what it does. But if you listen to a 40 minute conversation, you hear tone of
voice, you hear reflection, you hear challenge, you hear you know you might say something to
me, and I'm like, "Geez, actually, you're right. Actually, I'd never thought of it that way. That's
amazing. That's natural, authentic conversation. And again, there's no other channel that really
captures that apart from podcasts. So that makes you feel part of it, and it feels relatable.
Jack Murray 51:35
So you're tell me if you're if you're advising somebody now, and it doesn't matter if it's a
corporate PR advisor or a marketing director, and they're thinking about you know opening up
a bit of budget to a podcast. What are the key considerations? Like, what are the things they
should be thinking about, as in format, duration? How long does it need to be? Just generally a
fear. Oh God, if I start this, I'm going to have to keep feeding it, and it's going to go on forever.
Yeah. Like, what's the difference in something that might work and something that isn't going
to work?
Patrick Haughey 52:03
I'll I'll start with the point, and it's a great point to make about. I'm convinced that way more
people would start podcasts if they, but they're scared that I'm going to start next Tuesday. I'm
going to have to do it every Tuesday for the rest of my life. You know, that's a big big lift. And
what I advise most of the people we work with, or people who are just casually talking to me
about the the same stuff, is start with a series. Start with series one, and do six episodes, do
eight episodes, and then you you can bring you can take the time to craft the perfect six or
eight episodes, and so you don't have to think about geez, what are we going to talk about
every week for 52 weeks? You go, okay, I've got six opportunities to have a touch point with my
target market, whether it's clients or customers or internal colleagues or whatever. What are
the six things that would actually that they care about, or the six problems I can solve, or if if
I'm in business development, what do our customers keep asking us for, or what what do they
keep telling us their pain points are? So there's like six episode themes already, and you're also
Jack Murray 53:11
putting manners on yourself. You're bringing production values. You're you're limiting. You're
structuring. You're doing all of that
Patrick Haughey 53:16
exactly. So you can actually go. You can start. You can start today, and you don't have to
launch it till next January. That gives you whatever amount of months to go right. I'm going to
think carefully about my six topics. The six topics are going to be things that we want to be
seen talking about, or showing our expertise about, or stories we want to tell. There are also
going to be six topics that our listener is going to actually get a benefit from. That's a key thing.
So the the perfect branded podcast it achieves business goals for the company, but it's also
something that people enjoy listening to and get a benefit from. Okay, it's a simple. You give
me half an hour your time, I will give you all of this in return. Whether that's you know
information that's going to help me to make better financial decisions or to be better at work,
or maybe just a great story.
Jack Murray 54:04
And you're, I suppose, the other thing I'm interested in as well is like you're, you've got the
expertise in producing, in producing the the podcast. What about the marketing piece then,
and you know the shorts and the clips and the the TikTok and the Instagram reels and and all of
that stuff that plugs into it. So like you can create great content, but if you're not rowing in
behind it, and if you're not you know sharing it, and you're not doing the social strategy behind
it, it's probably not going to go anywhere.
Patrick Haughey 54:28
No, it's very true, and it's it's important. So it it breaks down into three very simple phases
every project. That building phase, phase one, where we really understand why we're making a
podcast and what it's going to do for your listener. It has to have a listener benefit, and
otherwise, just don't even bother doing it. It's just you talking about yourself. Phase two:
capturing great audio and putting it together into a great listener experience, and then phase
three: letting everybody know it's there and why they should listen. And too many people get
too caught up with phase two and three; they think. Going to buy a really expensive
microphone, and then we just start chatting, and it's going to be fine. Or they think, okay, we're
going to make a podcast, but how are we going to let people know it's there without ever
thinking about is it going to be any good? Yeah. So my first piece of advice is, do not skip phase
one. In fact, front give a lot of time and and really pay attention to phase one because that's
your your the foundation of your house. You know, your house is going to be built on a solid
foundation. Then you have great stuff to record, and you've got great content to promote. The
promotion bit is huge amount of time, and you know what's making it a lot easier now. And I'm
doing a lot of training in this as well and consultancy. It's AI has actually made this is
revolutionized how how much and how well you can market your podcasts. So it's all about
repurposing,
Jack Murray 55:45
and it's good on the structure too. Like you know, the the the hook line for this episode was you
know one of 10 or 15 options I played with on AI, where you say, look, you know what the show
is about, you know the structure of it, you know this is who the next conversation is, this is
what I want to drill into. Can you give me some hooks on what to call the episode? So it makes
those things where people maybe they weren't wonderfully creative before. It helps fill that
gap,
Patrick Haughey 56:08
and that's it. So you need it needs to start with you, but then you're building an AI team.
Patrick Haughey 56:13
Yeah.
Patrick Haughey 56:13
So and are there
Jack Murray 56:14
tools you would use for identifying clips for with AI clips that you can?
Patrick Haughey 56:20
Yeah, there's phenomenal platforms out there at the moment. Just a couple to mention.
There's, there's, there's. I mentioned three, and very briefly, there's one called Opus Clip, which
if you've got long form video, so we're going to end up with an hour long video here. You can
simply upload that to Opus Clip, and the AI recognizes the key moments, the stories, the
emotion, whatever, and it pulls. It will present you with like you can tell it what you want.
Generally, it will present you with like 20 social ready clips that are auto captioned. They're cut
camera cut, and they have identified moments that it believes will make an impact on an
audience. So that's like now you can go and like with anything AI related, you go edit it, you go
tweak it yourself, you change stuff, but it breaks the back on what used to be work that
actually probably didn't even have time
Jack Murray 57:06
to do.
Patrick Haughey 57:06
Okay, so already you've got that much. There's another platform called Riverside, which is a
phenomenal tool for remote recording. So we've got the luxury of being face to face here, but
often you don't. So one piece of advice: never use Microsoft Teams ever. Worst audio forever.
Yeah, that's a different story. Zoom is your next best, but if you can use Riverside because the
way it records is so much better, and it it ends up with you end up with fantastic quality audio,
or certainly the kind of audio you can you can work with in a much better fashion, but then it
will take your recording and it will do the same. It'll identify clips, it'll mash it up into a sort of a
cut episode. Okay, it'll give you the show notes, the titles, the descriptions, if you so choose to
use them. And then the third one is called Descript, which is amazing because you can either
upload an interview to it or record within it. It will transcribe the whole thing. Okay, so you've
got the full transcription, and if you go through the transcription and take out a word here or
there, take out a chapter, take out the thing, it's you're automatically editing the audio or
video.
Jack Murray 58:13
Okay,
Patrick Haughey 58:13
so you don't have to be an audio or video editor. You can just edit words, and it's linked. If you
know what I mean. So yeah, you export the the edited thing then, and and there's loads more,
but programs like that are making instead of going I don't have time I'm not going to bother it's
now like oh actually yeah I can lean on these and you end up with like you know all these
brilliant assets that you can now put out over social you can send them to your guests or
whatever, but because they're so good and easy, don't just do the first layer and the most
common thing that it gives you. You know, you need to make them your own as well. Okay.
Jack Murray 58:46
So, just I I know we're nearly at an hour now. So, just before we get into the rapid fire round,
just one last question before we get into the the rapid fire round. Media HQ has added 1000s
and 1000s of podcasts to our platform, and like we're helping people manage their media
relations. It is interesting that I have noticed with our user base that people are quite reluctant,
and like we do a lot of education where we say to people, "There's like there's blank programs,
as you said. There's like people want good pitches. Like there's huge amounts of opportunities
to participate as an expert, as a podcast guest, to tell your story in long form, and I, I still don't
think. I think we're very good at listening. I still don't think we're as good as at feed. And I know
it's different to a radio program, but there are huge opportunities out there.
Patrick Haughey 59:30
Oh yeah, do you mean to to be a podcast guest or a podcast, whatever? Yeah, but you find that
people are. I find that people are sticking
Jack Murray 59:37
to their normal workflow as much, like they want to be on the last word, or they want to be, you
know, they want to be on the Today program, but they're they're not they're not sending their
pitches to podcasts as much as it would be to radio programs.
Patrick Haughey 59:47
Yeah, and you know what? Like, it's I understand why because it's still a relatively new medium.
Okay, like it's still in its infancy, and as you mentioned, if you look at the graphs, younger
people. Are all over it and get it, but as the graph goes up in age, less so.
Jack Murray 1:00:04
Yeah, and
Patrick Haughey 1:00:04
that's going to change. But I think there is, and you know, it actually taps into one of the the
the questions in the rapid fire answers. So maybe we could just get into it. Where actually, let's
Jack Murray 1:00:14
do that. Yeah, go. We're out. So we'll definitely answer your question, but we'll pack it into the
pizza. So the rapid fire round. Question one: What is one media moment that's changed how
you work?
Patrick Haughey 1:00:25
So, I I probably answered this already, unfortunately, but maybe it'll give us more more time for
the others. The moment when HubSpot rang me and said we hadn't heard of you guys until we
were a guest on your podcast, and we'd like to come in and maybe see what you guys do in
Vox Pro and all that. That was, in fairness, the defining moment for me because that's the point
where I went. Actually, there's a business in this. There's there's actually I've stumbled on
something that I can actually kind of make a business out of, and that was whatever 10 years
ago, and that's that completely changed the direction of my life. So I don't know if that's like a
media moment per se, but it was a moment that involved a medium. No, it's a good one.
Number
Jack Murray 1:01:10
two, give me one example of something that failed that you learned from.
Patrick Haughey 1:01:15
I'm going to go back to the economic recession and when the SH1T hit the fan, and the the IMF
were in, and everything like that. I was working on the last word, and Matt Cooper was the the
great authority in all this. He was reading, he was writing books about this. He knew what was
going on before the rest of us did. He knew how bad it was going to get before the rest of us
did, and so we felt having such an important, a big, powerful platform as the last word, and
having an expert like Matt, we all sort of agreed that. Well, look, you know, we need to use it to
inform people about the reality of the situation. Okay, and the reality was not pleasant. And
what we noticed was after a few weeks of this, after a couple of months of this, our listenership
started to go down and down and down. And we did a lot of soul searching after a while, and
realized, you know, it's not people don't need the full raw warts and all information all of the
time, because let's think about our listeners. They're getting into the car at half four or five, and
they've had a shite day in work. Half the team might have been left off. They probably got a
pay cut, or they got made redundant, and now they're listening to the last word and two and a
half hours of pure doom and gloom, even though all truth and important. And then they're like,
"I'm going to switch off because I I can't take it. And it was a massive lesson in going. Actually,
let let's always put our shoes in the in put our feet in the shoes of the audience and go, "What
what what role do we play in their lives? What can we be in their lives? And what do they want
from us? And they didn't want two and a half hours of the hard truth. They wanted a bit of that,
but then a bit of travel, a bit of escapism. What's the new iPhone coming out? Whatever it
might be, and I remember that to this day. It's same with podcasts. What role is our podcast?
What's it doing for someone? Okay, is it informing them, entertaining them, giving them a
laugh, give them escaping. Where is it
Jack Murray 1:03:01
bringing them? Yeah,
Patrick Haughey 1:03:02
yeah, exactly. Where do they
Jack Murray 1:03:03
want to go? Yeah, yeah. So it's a big
Patrick Haughey 1:03:04
lesson.
Jack Murray 1:03:04
What's one universal belief about public relations that you think is wrong or overstated?
Patrick Haughey 1:03:10
Okay, so that's so you were we were talking about the just a few minutes ago. So I think, and I
don't, I'm not from the world of PR, so I don't know if this is a universal belief, but I certainly
think that there's a sense that bigger reach always leads to better PR outcomes. So you
mentioned people don't they pay attention to the Morning Islands and the Pack Any shows or
whatever before they'll do a podcast, and the same goes with like so you do you are a guest on
Morning Ireland, and you're like, yeah, I've just reached 400,000 people there. That sounds
great, doesn't it? Yeah. But how many of that 400,000 people actually care about what you say,
or listened, or took anything from it, or remembered anything? Because they're just not your
target audience, okay? But if you have do a specialized podcast, or if you have your own
podcast, those the listeners to that podcast have actively chosen to be part of that community
because they care about it. Whether it's sport, whether it's business, whether it's technology,
it's exactly so you're you're speaking to your tribe when you're speaking on a podcast or when
you have a podcast. So I think don't always think that the massive big show is the one that's
going to get you the best outcome. You know, sometimes a small niche podcast is going to
make far better outcomes for you and achieve a lot more action. What's one piece of advice
you'd wish you you wish you'd heard earlier in your career? There was a great phrase I heard
years ago, and it was it's taken from the Art of War, and it was friend said it to me. Goes in in
times of war, prepare for peace, and in times of peace, prepare for war. And he applied that to
a business perspective. It's like when when things are going when things are nice and quiet and
it's plodding along, get ready for the time when the shite is going to hit the fan, or else get
ready for a time where your business model is going to be challenged. So, for example, today.
I'm here sitting here thinking AI is going bananas like everyone else is. How am I going to
prepare for two or three years' time and be in a position to be strong and have a great business
in two or three years when all these other things are going to be eaten up? And conversely,
when things are crazy in times of war, you're trying to get back to a point where things are
level, whether that's hiring more people or, you know, building something for a client that
automates something, whatever it might be. So I think it's just a phrase. It's a very simple
phrase, but it always gets you thinking about doing your best in the present, but also always
having an eye on the future.
Jack Murray 1:05:35
Finally, what book do you think everyone in your job should read?
Patrick Haughey 1:05:39
I'm going to be cheeky and give you two. The first one we spoke about the last word earlier on.
Eamon Dunfee days. Stephen Price, who was a producer on the last word for Eamon, left the
last word. He was there for years. He left the last word and he wrote a book called Monkey
Man, which was about a egomaniac presenter, TV presenter, and his long suffering producer.
You can take from that you will. But a fascinating, like brilliant, brilliant, entertaining book, and
actually so real in the sense of the dynamic, the producer presenter relationship, some of the
challenges, some of the struggles, all that. So anyone in media, I think, might enjoy that if they
haven't. It's going back a good few years now. The second one, I'm only halfway through it.
Scott McGinnis kindly recommended to me. It's called Key Person of Influence, and it's basically
about becoming the expert in your field and becoming the person that people think they think
storytelling, they think Jack Murray, they think podcasting, they think Patrick Hawley. So it's
really it celebrates expertise. It celebrates being the expert and how you can create business
models out of that that really work for you. So that's a really good one.
Jack Murray 1:06:47
Thanks, Patrick. That was a great conversation. We went slightly over, but that's because the
conversation was so good. Thanks very much for tuning in today. If you like the show, please
like and follow. Tune in next time for more conversations about Inside Media Relations.
