A travel sponsor worked with NPM Creative to craft custom audio spots that bring their luxury experiences to life and transport listeners. Their cross-platform NPR campaign drove awareness, favorability and interest in the brand.
Objective
This brand believes the travel experience is as important as the destination. They wanted to bring their luxury experiences to life for NPR listeners. Targeting men and women age 45+, the goal was to attract both loyal and new travel enthusiasts.
Solution
National Public Media crafted an NPR campaign that included custom audio spots developed with NPM Creative and a full cross-platform presence across NPR podcasts, radio programs, and NPR content on smart speakers. And NPR Listeners are travel enthusiasts, making the target audience highly accessible. NPR Listeners are 41% more likely to have taken at least 5 international vacations in the last 3 years, and 34% more likely to have taken at least 9 international vacations in the last 3 years.
Custom audio to bring the vacation experience to life
To enhance their brand’s story, this brand added a newly-implemented Immersive Audio product to their campaign. These custom spots enhance a brand’s story with high-quality sound effects that transport listeners to a new environment, and were created by NPM Creative. The campaign also incorporated custom Spotlights, where listeners can hear directly from brand representatives about what makes their luxury vacation experiences unique.
Program selections to reach the right audience
Multiplatform campaigns with NPR deliver 118% more impactful results than one medium alone. To amplify the effectiveness of their marketing, the brand ran a cross-platform campaign reaching NPR listeners across radio, podcasts, and smart speakers. To heighten reach to their target audience, the campaign included a combination of NPR programs with listeners who had a high household income and median age above 45 to share their message with. This included a custom run of podcast collection including Fresh Air, Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!, Car Talk, and Book of the Day. Radio programs included Morning Edition, All Things Considered, 1A, Weekend Edition, Fresh Air, Throughline, It’s Been a Minute, and Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!
Results
Veritonic Creative Testing revealed how NPR listeners responded to the custom creative, and specifically how the sound effects of Immersive Audio resonated with listeners. The findings: all of the travel brand’s custom creative performed above benchmarks for NPR and the travel industry when it came to agreement with key attributes and increase in intent to book a vacation with the brand. The spots were especially well received by NPR listeners who said they are likely to plan a vacation in the next 12 months.
Across platforms, the campaign had an impact on NPR listeners. Awareness and opinion of the brand increased significantly among NPR’s podcast listeners and radio listeners. NPR radio listeners saw a 17% lift in interest in learning more, and NPR podcast listeners saw a 10% lift in intent to utilize the brand the next time they travel. Results were even more positive among key categories such as listeners with $100k+ in household income and heavy travelers.
And among people who listen to both radio and podcasts, even higher lifts were seen in awareness, positive opinion and interest, proving the value of cross-platform exposure.
This brand’s campaign saw results with their target audience by combining NPM Creative’s custom audio with a cross-platform approach. Immersive Audio and Spotlight placements connected with NPR’s audience of travel enthusiasts by bringing the vacation experience to their regular listening and providing information from an expert source about this brand’s unique luxury travel experiences.
Sources: 2024 MRI-Simmons Fall Doublebase USA; NPR Digital Impact Study, recall among users exposed to sponsor’s message on radio and podcasts vs. radio alone.
