Jonathan Keith on Content Marketing

Jonathan Keith is Founder and CEO of Feelr Media, a Los Angeles-based creative agency that focuses on content strategy and development. Jonathan has a background in entertainment and the traditional media, and, today, he applies the sensibilities and production values learned there to creative marketing for the advertising and tech industry. 

From DJ to radio & TV personality to artist manager to digital media entrepreneur, Jonathan has had a multifaceted career. But at the heart of all this work has been content and storytelling that engages and inspires people. Jonathan is the producer of the monthly Web TV show "The Download" and the daily podcast "Insights," both products for Microsoft Advertising.

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Transcript

Roy Sharples: 0:09

I'm Roy Sharples, and welcome to the unknown origins podcast series, the purpose of which is to provide inspirational conversations with creative industry personalities on entrepreneurship, pop culture, art, music, film and fashion topic is marketing, for which I have the delight of chatting with Jonathan Keith. Jonathan is founder and CEO of feeler media, a Los Angeles based creative agency, and production studio focused on content strategy and development for the advertising and tech industry. He began his career in the music and entertainment industry, first as a DJ producer, then radio and TV personality, and quickly learned how to leverage different mediums for cross channel brand building speciality radio programmer. He was among the first to play groundbreaking artists like LCD soundsystem, Mia and the gorillas on us radio, and he conducted hundreds of on air interviews with the likes of Daft Punk, the Chemical Brothers and underworld. 2000s. Keith was an artist management consultant, designing marketing strategies for independent musical artists that harness the power of new media, and the DIY nature of the internet. A key element in this work was video, he deployed tactics for Visual Communications and fun engagement. That included social video, EP K's live performances, animated gifs, as well as traditional music videos, the 2000 and 10s. Keith moved into the strategic side of digital media, working in business development and content acquisition for a range of IPTV companies and software service startups. kidspot grind in nightlife, fostered an expertise in cultural and experiential marketing, which has often overlap with his passion for innovation and technology. Keith produced the projection mapping experience for the inaugural ny e la the first public New Year's celebration for the city of Los Angeles held that Grant Park, he managed a team of digital artists who created a 3d projection spectacle for the face of the 32 storey LA City Hall building. The event was attended by a capacity plus crowd of over 25,000 people. In 2018. Keith developed the Bing AR, and augmented reality software application that combined the Bing search engine with AR and technology meets abstract art brand experience defeated being AR in New York Nashville and conference. Lee Keith is the producer of the download a monthly Web TV show and insights, a daily podcast for Microsoft advertising. With feeler. He applies techniques and sensibilities land from all his various Mass Communications experience to forward thinking brand storytelling across the digital landscape. Hello, and welcome, Jonathan.

Jonathan Keith: 3:26

Hey, Roy, thanks for having me. This is great,

Roy Sharples: 3:28

what inspired and attracted you to being a creative marketer in the first place?

Jonathan Keith: 3:35

Well, you know, it's funny, because I never really thought of myself as a marketer. So when I hear, you know, myself being kind of positioned in that context, it's very interesting. But what I realized when I look back on my creative career, is that a lot of what I was doing was in fact, marketing. I'll be at unwittingly at times. You know, I was, yeah, I come from an entertainment, I guess you would say an entertainment background. Yeah. I was, I was a radio broadcaster radio personality. At the height of it, I had a weekly radio show. I had a weekly TV show that was sort of the video or the visual companion to the radio show. And then I had a weekly club night. Now this was all you know, this was promoting electronic music, electronic artistry, you know, that kind of thing. And at the time, when you're immersed in that, you just sort of think, Okay, well, you know, this is the hustle. This is this is my creative ambition. This is what I want to do. But when you sort of look back on it, you realize that was actually a cross channel strategy to build a brand. You know, I had all of these different platforms, if you like that were, you know, kind of cross promoting each other, all to build a brand around innovative music and, and musical artists, you know, so and not to sound, I don't want to disrespect actual marketers, you know who really do this and and there's an art and science to it and that's valuable. And at the risk of sounding a bit cliche, we are all marketers to some degree, you know, you get up every morning, and when you pick out your outfit, you're marketing, you're doing marketing, you're saying, Okay, this is how I want to present myself to the world, I want to say, I don't care what you think about me. Which is a lot of that right? Now, obviously, during or I want you to notice me and I want you to respect me, or I want you to notice me and I want you to feel outraged, or whatever that is. We're constantly marketing ourselves and obviously, in the digital era. That's something that's it's much more of a familiar concept to folks. And I think it starts much earlier. So now that I am doing proper marketing, it's it's interesting, you know, kind of looking back on on my career and how it all sort of informs what I'm doing. Now, you know, I was on the radio every day and you get immersed in that, you know, sort of the storytelling mindset that feeds that theater of the mind, as it's called in radio, because and this is something that in our podcasting, business and our podcasting, evangelism, I guess you would say, or education for for new clients that are embarking on podcasting, obviously, you know, it's it's a very popular medium. Now, it's the notion of, there are not visual stimuli to help tell this story. And the lack of visual stimulus is actually a good thing, because it triggers different parts of the brain. When human beings are hearing audio only content they have to, they create mental pictures that are based on their own experiences that connect with what that content, what that speaker, what that host what that guest what what is being said, the story that's being told, we as the audience, we are supplying our own mental pictures based on our own experiences. So that means we're investing in that content. And we're creating a real personal connection to the storyteller as a result of that it's a, it's a very symbiotic kind of thing. And that's why it's really powerful.

Roy Sharples: 8:00

You triggered my reservoir of memories, on your point about radio, not having a physical image, which transcend you into a state of imagination, by conjuring up your own mental images of what the words and conversation evokes, for example, growing up in Britain, and tuning into late night radio shows, such as the john peel sessions, and also radio Luxembourg, which was an important forerunner of pirate radio and modern commercial radio in the UK, which was cutting edge on the music played on the stories that told

Jonathan Keith: 8:38

Yeah, you know, podcasting is just radio. at its best, it's just radio. I mean, there was the whole period, I guess, you might say, I started producing what you would call a podcast around 2004 or 2005, when I had an alternative specialty radio show, and this is this is really pre social media. I mean, MySpace was around. And in fact, we did have a MySpace page for the radio show. But what we were noticing Around this time, is that the internet was starting to reach critical mass, you know, starting to build an audience. Yeah. And and the world was also becoming a little more complex in that people were, your audience was more time shifted. And they would you would hear things like, Ah, you know, Jonathan missed your radio show. I really liked this one section that you do this one segment of the show, it'd be great if if there was a way that we could hear that afterwards. Yeah. And and so we thought Actually, we can do that. You know, our show was a very produced show. And so we can we can pull segments out of the the total show Top and tail it are sort of produce that that little, you know, segment unto itself. And we started posting these on our MySpace page, and they were downloadable for people. And it was just sort of an exercise really to, you know, kind of test this out, there was no social media strategy there was was no real digital strategy at all at the time. It was something it was a little bit of an added value test to sponsors this this segment, we could, you know, we could have one sponsor that we would mention is presenting this segment. But it kind of planted a seed for this idea that like, okay, you know, these little pods, these these little excerpts from a longer form programming that can be distributed digitally, they're much more compact. They're digestible or snackable. Is the parlance now. Yeah. And, you know, so eventually, and we just thought, you know, when podcasting kind of came along in its early stages, you know, podcasting, there were a lot of deliver dilettantes, I guess, we could say, you know, bloggers who got GarageBand, and, you know, they got a basic mic, and they would press record and sort of read their blog. And, you know, that's fine. There were there was actually that was, that was part of the charm of all of this. And what we were seeing around this time as well, was the backlash to big media. And in this case, corporate radio, in particular, people were becoming aware that like, you know, terrestrial radio is, it's a pretty bad experience, it's, it's a lot of noise, it's a lot of clutter, it's full of ads, and it, and it's in terms of its, let's say, music programming, or, you know, programming scope, it's very limited, you know, so the response to that, which was, you know, that the barrier to entry, now, Visa via the technology was lowered. So you have, these would be broadcasters that can now get out there and create content and have something to say, for better or worse, there were some, you know, there's some really good producers that that came out of this man, of course, there was a lot of noise, you know, the signal to noise ratio was pretty low. You know, so as this evolved over time, to kind of get to where we are now. The standards have changed, people are used to pod people like podcasts, they're very popular, they'll listen to several of them now. But their, their time and attention is taxed. And so, you know, podcasters, and producers have to elevate their game now. You know, it's, it's it, there's so many out there, there's so much content out there now, that I think that there are certain, and, you know, this isn't a lawful kind of statement. But I think in general, you know, the audience is like, okay, we get it, podcasts are cool, we like them. Now, we want them to print in terms of production values, we want them to sound better, we want them to feel a little bit more like the traditional media that we grew up on, or we came of age on. Yeah, you know. So that's kind of the I think that's sort of where we are. That's, that's now the challenge for a lot of podcasters and content creators. Now.

Roy Sharples: 13:53

Do you typically characterize your creative process? In terms of how do you come up with ideas? How do you develop those ideas into concepts? And then how do you implement bring them to actualization?

Jonathan Keith: 14:06

I don't think the creative process is ever something that you turn on or off, I think it's an always on thing or to you know, abl to always be looking. You know, there. We're surrounded by inspiring, interesting stories. Every day of our lives. You can walk out the door, maybe now more than ever, you walk out the door and you can notice things if you're attuned to it and not to sound New Agey about it. But this is at the at the heart of you know, my company feeler that concept. You know, a feeler is an antenna on an insect. Yeah. And, you know, we all have as sentient beings, we all have a sense of antenna, you know, you walk into a room And you can sense that something's a little off here, something's going on, you know. And so for us, it was this metaphor that your your feelers are what you use to, to navigate, to find food or nourishment, and two cents change in the environment around you. And we thought that that was a pretty apt metaphor for where a digital agency or a digital consultancy needs to be thinking, you know, now, so with you know, that in mind, I think that the creative process is always on, it's always something that you're you're feeling you're seeing stories, you're seeing things that that inspired you. And, and this informs the creative process, you can draw on this experience. I also think that, you know, from a more conventional, what you would think of as a conventional agency kind of model, right? where you are, as an agent, you are looking for you You are you have developed relationships with other talented people that you collaborate with, and that you bring to a project on behalf of a third party, a client, right? Yeah, that's what we think of when you think of a typical agency, we happen to do a lot of the work ourselves in house, but one of the most rewarding and enriching parts of this job for me is collaborating with other creative people. And that's, again, going back to this, you know, it's always on, you're always sort of looking, you'll see some, you know, incredible artists or, you know, produce or whatever, whatever the the creative field is, yeah, you know, you recognize that and you see, like, okay, that could really bring a lot of value to this client and this project. And that's just been one of the most delightful parts of this for me, because you In turn, grow, because you're learning from that, this is why we do the work. You know, it's why we do the work in the first place to learn and to grow, and, and to get better. So that is, that's kind of how I approach a creative process is that it's just it's always going. But in terms of like, a specific brief, you know, you turn to all right there, there are books there, you know, design books, there's just art books, and music, every kind of, you know, creative resource that you draw on for a reference can help, you know, inform like, oh, wow, that's a that was a really, you know, the sort of, let's say, the 1980s, eight bit video game, look, that kind of art would work really well, for this project, or, you know, you draw on different eras that, you know, can you know, help drive that creative conversation?

Roy Sharples: 18:17

What are the key skills needed to be a creative marketer,

Jonathan Keith: 18:21

my number one, skill or note, and my number one thing to keep in mind is, it's, it's knowing your audience, it kind of comes down to that it's that sort of the Alpha and Omega, it starts there, and then it ends there. Who is the audience? Who is your intended audience? So right now, with this podcast, Roy, I'm sure there are a lot of things that, you know, we would you and I would love to talk about, but you know, you have a particular audience in mind a particular focus for this. And, you know, so you, that's sort of the lodestar is, you know, who is the audience, you always have to be thinking about their benefit, you know, when telling, telling stories, and that's using, you know, whatever, medium really, I think for us, we Yeah, that's the really the heart of what we do. We're storytellers. And, but But we, we tell stories, using lots of different tools, you know, video, audio, emerging technology, we do a lot of stuff with augmented reality, we've designed software we've, you know, activated, you know, big experiences and projects in a in a live real world kind of context. And it's all interesting work, but at that we don't really, we don't really care what the the channel is or what the technology is. We just we love technology. We love innovation. So whatever new thing comes on. Long, we're going to embrace that too, and and try to find creative ways that we can use that in service to our clients in a way that that has, you know, fidelity and and context and, and real power and resonance for their audience that they're trying their customers and the people that they're trying to attract. So I would say that that is kind of, you know, it's it's understanding audience. And then it's just, it's all about story. What is the story? You know, and really focusing on that distilling that down, and and trying to keep that as cogent and clear as possible. through, you know, throughout the process, what is the story you're telling? And who are you telling it to? That's kind of when it comes down to

Roy Sharples: 20:56

your point around knowing your audience triggered a story that I had a while back around bill Shankly, who was the manager of the Liverpool Football Club, back in the 1960s, and 70s. And he took the team from really nowhere to becoming the most formidable football force in uniform for many years. And he believed that that success is in the main and he said, You have to believe you are the best that make sure that you are and Shankly was deeply connected to the Liverpool fans. And he wanted to build a team that played football the way the fans wanted, which was an exciting, stylish and victorious way. So by doing this, what Shankly did was, he personally responded to every fan letter, of which there were thousands every year. And as Liverpool became one of the most popular football teams ever, to drive excellence in everything that he and his team did. He proactively and regularly telephone funds to ask for their teams critique, and how they would how they would like the team to improve, and he often acted on their advice. But what Shankly was really doing behind all of this was, he was trying to see through the soul trying to see through the eyes of the funds, so that he could synthesize their desires into his blueprint for what became a peerless, fun centric football team with a winning culture. And the key within this is starting a movement is about showing up where your audience is, and making a difference, and inspiring them to be healthily obsessive funds. And when you connect emotionally to people by providing personalized, unique experiences, then then that's when the alchemy happens. And your audience then becomes loyal funds. Because what you have provided matters to people by creating a bond creating a trust, and making people feel good, and connected to something bigger. And when you put your audience authentically at the heart of your brand, and you show up where they are, and make the difference by truly understanding and synthesizing their desires into providing unforgettable experiences. This is how you create a deep, deeply committed culture, looking into the rearview mirror. If you were 18 again, now, and you know what you do today, what would you do differently if a toll anything in terms of the advice that you would give to a young

Jonathan Keith: 23:41

Jonathan is kinds of questions or, you know, abstract questions, it's always a challenge. Because you you think about, you know, what would you do differently? I'm not sure I would really do anything differently. I think that, you know, whatever, you know, my experience was that led me to here, it's just inevitably that this is this is what was meant to be? Yes. You know, I used to work in the music business. And I was managing recording artists at a time when there was just tremendous turmoil. This is in the early 2000s. And the industry was just, you know, completely melting down. And, you know, it was a very challenging time to be, you know, working with artists, but it was also the most exciting time because you felt like, there you were making up the rules as you went along. Sort of I mean, certainly there were, you were kind of going through the motions of the model that had come before there were certain things that you know, you wanted to do you wanted to you know, pursue some traditional type of PR. You know, this was still at a point when we did one put out a physical album of physical CD, because we felt like that was the real artistic statement that tangible, you know, piece of creative output. You know, so we wanted to do that, and, and the creative around that the art, photography, all of that. But, you know, you had to do so much of you had to do so much work that previously, you may have hired out, you know, people do, you had to figure out how to do it on your own. You know, it was, you know, this was the Wild West. Yeah. And what I found is that, you know, I didn't even realize it, but I was like, wow, I kind of know how to do this, I kind of understand this, because of, you know, my experience from being a DJ being in broadcasting, being in television, and all of the things that you had to do or that you wanted to do, because of your creative ambition that you had, that you wanted to share this with people, I want to share this new music with you. You had to make people care about it. And you had to do that on your own. Now, I'm obviously looking through the prism of doing this in the Midwest and kind of a medium sized market. You know, so it was tougher to do that, you know, because you don't have, you know, the the audience and and the the interest for these things of a market of like a New York or Los Angeles. Yeah, I was, you know, in Indianapolis. So, and you know, you have, so you have to a lot of this work you have to do on your own. And that, again, was marketing, you go back and you look at it, it's like, oh, that was that was marketing, I was doing experience from, you know, experiential marketing with a club night. grassroots marketing, you know, street level marketing with flyers for that night, and then that cross promotes the radio show. And then when you're on that channel, you're promoting, you know, that other thing. And then when you do, I did a, I hosted a music video show, in what I call the post MTV pre YouTube era. So this is in, you know, the early 2000s, MTV is no longer really showing music videos, in the nights, you know, the nights and the overnight programming. But, you know, they've basically abandoned the music video in favor of reality shows. And there was no YouTube yet YouTube came around in 2005. And there were lots of really interesting artists that all had music videos, because, you know, you needed to do them, this was an accepted a, an understood promotional tool that you had to make. And they're now to be fair, if you really wanted to do some digging, you could go online and find these things, but there wasn't that one stop place where it was just, you know, right there at your fingertips. And, you know, people there were some very, you know, LCD soundsystem amye, a gorillas, you know, artists that were doing some really innovative work at the time, both musically and visually, and people just had no idea they'd never, you know, they'd never seen these artists before. So that was a channel as well to you know, sort of cross promote. So, I look back on all of that. And, you know, when I started working with artists, myself was like, Okay, I understand these channels. And, you know, there was plenty that I learned on my own I got a real crash course in law, entertainment law, which I you know, I didn't really bargained for but it was, you know, really fascinating. Um, so, yeah, I don't I I'm not sure what I would really say to my 18 year old self, I can't even remember really what I was doing.

Roy Sharples: 29:28

What's your vision for the future? And what do you see is the key drivers of change, socio political, economical and technological playing a role?

Jonathan Keith: 29:37

Hmm. What's the quote? an optimist says the future is uncertain. I think this has been a time this year when a great many people have spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about the future, right, both personally and professionally and coming up with more questions than answers probably so much change. So much big change so fast. But change always brings opportunity. And here's where creatives step into the picture again, for some context on this back in January, okay, January 2020, we put together a deck for the Microsoft brand studio called 2020 vision. Okay, this was a trends forecast deck, you're obviously very popular around the new year. But this wasn't just a new year, it was a new decade. So we were taking a long look into the crystal ball, I guess you could say. And we looked at five different verticals. Okay. Media, culture, technology, economics. And there was a fifth when marketing, okay, you know, so we, we identified a trend for each one of those verticals. And we made a prediction that we thought, probably in 10 years time, this is still going to be relevant. And then COVID hit. So we thought well, so much for that it was a fun exercise. But all bets are off. Now, you know, the world has changed too dramatically. And and this is all irrelevant. But then we went back and looked at the deck. And not only were our predictions still relevant, they were actually amplified because of COVID. And all the compressed digital transformation we saw this year. And one of the key takeaways or themes that ran through most of these trends in these different verticals, was the idea of trust. All right, now, here's where it might get a bit metaphysical, especially in the context of predicting industry trends, and you know, the business world. But this is very important. We've seen the erosion of trust throughout our societies, trust in our public institutions, obviously, trust in companies and corporations, and their messaging and advertising. And, and more specifically, the way they deliver information, right. Certainly trust in technology that has disintegrated. we've crossed this Rubicon It feels like with technology, where it's such a fundamental part of life now, but it feels very much like technology controls us, rather than the other way around, or rather than it empowers us, which is what we're all promised. Now, obviously, we could sit here all day and cite ways where technology has improved our lives, right. I mean, this very thing that we're doing right here is a great example of that, especially this year, but basic Trust has been compromised. And to get it back, it's going to take creative minds, creative storytelling, creative messaging, creative marketing. Okay, brands and companies have gotten a crash course this year in how to adapt their messaging very quickly, speak to their audience in an authentic way, with problem solving in mind, or, you know, real world pain in mind. Right, and this is only going to intensify going forward. And this just maybe the most serious problem that we face.

Roy Sharples: 33:49

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