The Path to Creating the SURROUND Podcast Network

Host Susan Fernandez sits down with Bobby Bonett, EVP of Digital and strategic growth at SANDOW DESIGN GROUP and co-host of the podcast Barriers to Entry at NeoCon, to chat about the creation of the SURROUND Podcast Network. Bobby will share the lessons learned along the way and the invaluable insights they gained throughout their remarkable journey to create a podcast network for the architecture and design community.

The Design Board, by UpSpring, is a proud member of SANDOW Design Group's SURROUND Podcast Network, home to the architecture and design industry’s premier shows.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to The Design Board, a podcast created by the team at UpSpring that focuses on design, development and everything in between. We invite innovators in our industry and explore topics that support your growth in every way. The Design Board is a proud member of SURROUND, a podcast network from Sandow Design Group featuring the architecture and design industry's premier shows. Check it out at surroundpodcast.com.

Susan Fernandez:

Welcome everyone to The Design board, a podcast by UpSpring that focuses on design, development, and everything in between. We host innovators in our industry and explore topics that support your growth in every way. I'm Susan Fernandez, Vice President at UpSpring, a PR and digital marketing agency dedicated to the design industry. I'm here at NeoCon, joined by Bobby Bonett of the SURROUND podcast network team. For those who aren't familiar, SURROUND is a podcast network from the Sandow Design Group featuring the architecture and design industries premier shows. Today we're going to dive into how the network got started and what they're most looking forward to as they continue to grow and expand. I'd like to welcome my guest, Bobby, welcome to the show.

Bobby Bonett:

Hey Susan. How's it going?

Susan Fernandez:

It's going very well. NeoCon is really turning out to be a very vibrant event this year.

Bobby Bonett:

It was so exciting to see. We're in the NeoCon podcast studio, which SURROUND is powering. I have a reputation for being a plug guy on our podcast, the Barriers to Entry podcast. You didn't mention, The Design Board is part of the SURROUND podcast network, but so we're at the NeoCon podcast studio, which is in the north lobby of the Merchandise Mart and the registration lines, which were about a mile long this morning, wrapped right around the space. We were able to see the excitement of the morning. We were able to see how many people were waiting online and we had a front row seat and everybody had a front row seat to us in the fishbowl space that we have that SnapCab built out for us right here at NeoCon.

Susan Fernandez:

Yeah, it's a beautiful space and it's amazing how quiet it is inside of this pod.

Bobby Bonett:

Quiet, comfortable. We have two producers here with us as well, so we're able to stretch out and enjoy ourselves.

Susan Fernandez:

Absolutely. Let's get started. Can you tell us about the inspiration behind starting a podcast network? I mean, a lot of people think about starting a podcast, but what made you decide to start an entire network?

Bobby Bonett:

We started by starting podcasts. I think the first show we launched at Sandow Design Group was Design Nerds Anonymous in 2020 and shortly thereafter, we launched a podcast with NYC by Design called The Mic. I was at SiriusXM for about five and a half years. I helped launch their podcast operation. Huge fan of the format, the audio format, in terms of its ability to engage listeners.

As we were launching shows and as we were discovering other podcasts in the architecture and design industry and as an organization at Sandow Design Group as an enterprise, the fact that we had brands within our network, if you want to call that. Interior Design magazine, Lux Interiors, and Design Metropolis Magazine. We had launched Design TV at that point, ThinkLab, the list goes on. I think we thought, "Well, it would be nice if we could be curators and aggregators for the audio industry as well. We have a couple of shows under our umbrella, what if we could find other podcasts that we were huge fans of and bring those together and help find ways to grow audiences for those shows?" That was kind of the germ of an idea. I think we started thinking and putting pen to paper in October 2021 or so. There wasn't really another network out there in this space, in the architecture and design space, that was tackling the opportunity. We just ran with it from there.

Susan Fernandez:

That makes a lot of sense. Sandow is everything designed so that fits. What are some of the challenges you faced putting together a network?

Bobby Bonett:

I think the number one thing we wanted and continue to want to accomplish is making sure that we have a well-rounded and well-represented group of programming. You don't want same voices, you don't want same sounding content and you want really excellent content as well. We're in constant discovery mode. We're lucky that we have taste makers and influencers, not just at our network, but throughout our organization.

Sam and I will get Slack messages from all different individuals at Sandow Design Group from time to time saying, "You should listen to this podcast," or, "I guested on this podcast, why don't you have a listen and maybe they'd make for a great network partner." Sourcing or finding shows isn't that hard because we have so many diehard podcast listeners at Sandow Design Group, but making sure that when we're listening, we're listening with a keen ear, not just for the type of content that we're fans of, but we're listening with a keen ear to understand what's the type of content that I think we feel like we have a responsibility to curate programming for our industry in some respects. What is content that our industry would be fans of, in a unique and diverse and distinctive way?

Susan Fernandez:

That makes a lot of sense. I think there's so many different types of people listening or listening with different intent. You have manufacturers, you have designers, you have just enthusiasts in this industry. I can see that having very well-rounded diverse content that somehow together does create almost a singular voice, though is a very interesting way to look at this curation process.

Bobby Bonett:

Yeah. I would say I think the voice that we've sought to accomplish and something we've been fortunate to be able to hit a Grand Slam with, is hosts and producers who have infectious enthusiasm and who are overall good people. By us bringing everybody together from the network as part of the NeoCon podcast studio, we were hanging out with some of the producers of the Inhabit podcast from Perkins and Will, this is day one of a three-day activation and just meeting some of the folks who are behind the shows who are part of the network. They're just so excited to be podcast producers. They're just fans of the shows they're producing. They're excited to cross promote the other shows in the network. I think it was Amanda Schneider who had said to Sam, Rachel Senatore, Head of Networks, and I that podcasting is the last kind of content medium where there isn't really competition between shows. Everybody just wants to transfer audiences, everybody wants to promote the shows they're fans of.

We wanted to build a network even if the content was, in many ways we want the content to be complimentary of one another, but it doesn't necessarily need to be a situation where you're a fan of every one of our 13 shows. If I'm excited to promote Design Board and Design Tangents and Inhabit and Clever and the Learning Objective and all of our other hosts and producers are excited to do that as well, we've done our job because our goal here is to open up a forum and a place where as listeners, or as the hosts and producers ourselves, we're giving listeners an opportunity to discover their next favorite show.

Susan Fernandez:

Yeah, that makes sense. I love all the shows on SURROUND.

Bobby Bonett:

So do I.

Susan Fernandez:

It's really been very fascinating to see all the different perspectives in this industry that I think is so positive. It's such an uplifting industry of really solving the future's problems today and then listening to all the different perspectives on how to approach that. What are some of the challenges you faced when putting this together?

Bobby Bonett:

I would say the first challenge truly was articulating a value proposition to our network member partners. Sam and I, and Rachel did a little road show. We had, I would say our first group of 10 or 15 shows that we targeted to join the network. When you're the first podcast network in our industry, a lot of niche programming that we're bringing together. When you're chatting with creators who are really passionate about their show but maybe aren't necessarily experts in the medium quite yet, kind of explaining what the value is of a network and the value we can ascribe as a network partner. We were trying to create a market for something and also sell, not in a literal sense, but sell the value proposition of being a part of the network at the same time. That was just a learning experience. It wasn't hard in as much as it was interesting to understand, hey, we're building a podcast network from scratch, we're talking to a whole bunch of creators who have a whole bunch of goals, and what's going to be the right formula for success here?

At that point, we also hadn't dreamed up, what are the big activations we're going to collaborate on. Our internal list of shows we were producing was much smaller than where we're at right now. We have this paradigm now called the SURROUND production, which are shows that Sam's team produces, I think there's probably seven or eight or nine of them, maybe there were three or four of them at that point. We were much more of a kind of baby network and a baby production studio at that point. We had to kind of talk a little bit bigger than we were, which is tough. You had to kind of speak this into existence for a while.

We had a couple dominoes fall, November, December, January where we onboarded, including Design Board. We onboarded a number of shows. We onboarded a show from Perkins and Will, as I mentioned. We on onboarded a show from FX collaborative. Amy Devers brought Clever into the network. At that point, you've got these amazing content creators and these amazing brands that are now partnering with us and all of a sudden we're getting inbounds where folks are inquiring about the network.

It was challenging to kind of speak content partners into existence and understand really manifest in our minds what's what's going to be what of the network. Once the content dominoes started to started to fall and once that programming lined up, it was natural to start to think through then, "Okay, how do we activate together? What are ways in which we can recommend and cross recommend guests just as we're doing on this show?" I think we have two or three other shows that we're producing here, where a host from one of our shows is guesting on another podcast from our network. We have big ideas, big goals for how we'll continue to do activations like this in the future.

Susan Fernandez:

Something you said really reminds me of Joseph Campbell and The Hero's Journey. You have the vision, and I have to say, now meeting you face-to-face, I would say I have no concerns about you selling an idea when it's in its infancy as something complete, but let's just suspend that for a second. What kind of pushback did you get? I mean, when you talk about selling this, you've got this vision, you've got to share it, what did folks say to you? What were their objections?

Bobby Bonett:

Sure. There are probably 20 different objections we've gotten along the way, but I'll two out. The first was, and this nobody has an answer for, but the first was how can you quantifiably articulate how you can improve my listenership? What's really hard about podcasting, is the number one way still to drive listenership is word of mouth. We're dealing with RSS feed technology. You can't run a Google ad that's going to guarantee you another 5,000 downloads. It's just not how this works. Joining a network is kind of a way to drum up best practices to drive that word of mouth. We have kind of a guidebook that we share with our member shows to say, "Hey, you're going to, at the end of the episode, say I'm part of the SURROUND podcast network. We'd like for you to cross promote your favorite show on the network." That's a nice way to kind of drive some repetition with the cross promotion, but we can't make that guarantee and we wanted to be transparent as network partners out at the jump.

The second thing, which is something we run into across the business all the time, is that we've launched four new businesses at Sandow Design Group since March 2020. We launched a video streaming platform called Design TV. We launched a marketing agency called The Agency by Sandow. We launched a creative studio called the Studio by Sandow in addition to SURROUND. There's always a little bit of trepidation, we'll get the question or the presumption that Sandow is trying to take over the world. I think there's just this hesitation about, do I want to lend my intellectual property to Sandow as part of your podcast network? How might this further advantage your ambitions to take over the world?

Really what Erica Holborn, our CEO and I wanted to set out to do with this network along with Sam and Rachel, was be entirely content and audience first with SURROUND. This was not a monetization play for us when we launched it last year. We want to be experimental. We want to launch new mini brands within the Sandow Design Group family. We want to find creative ways to partner with design firms, with PR firms, with other creators, and then do an activation like this that we couldn't have done this without a podcast network, collaborate with SnapCab on a custom-built studio and have a footprint in the north lobby of the Merchandise Mart and do three straight days of live podcasts. This is really cool.

I remember one specific conversation, I'm sure Sam does as well, where we just got that question, "I don't know if I want to partner with Sandow," and I look back and maybe that person is like, "Oh, I wish I was in this booth right now having a live recording on my show." Those are two of the main objections we had and maybe objections will forever have. What we've wound up with now, I look back, we launched this network in May of 2022 with five shows. We're 13 now, probably going on, I'll make the bold guess we'll have 16 by Q4. We have an amazing family of shows. I think everything worked out perfectly for us.

Susan Fernandez:

I can't quite put my finger on it, but it seems like there is an underlying ethos or something in the Sandow spirit that would allow something like this to come up and happen.

Bobby Bonett:

There is. My sister was formerly an architect at HED in Chicago, now she works in workplace strategy at Northern Trust. She's walking around NeoCon, I think she's looking at lockers and actually soundproof booths. She was looking at our wall of brands that we have in our design scene space on the 11th floor, which includes our three media brands, our research brands, and our four, if you want to call them emerging brands. We've launched four new brands in the last three and a half years without very much pushback from Erica, our CEO.

I mean when I've come forth with my colleagues with a new business idea to Erica, it's not like she says, "Okay, go ahead. We're going to launch a business tomorrow. Great idea, go ahead." There's a lot of thought that goes into it. We're coming up with a business plan. We're seeing if there's an addressable market, an opportunity in the long run to monetize, it's best for business, et cetera. We know we need to take leaps of faith in order to continue to shape our business business at an enterprise level in a way that will produce solutions for our clients and in a way that will continue to produce compelling content for our audiences.

We want to be innovative, that's Adam's spirit. I mean, look at Material Bank, look at the way in which that's completely changed this industry writ large. AI think Design TV as a video streaming platform, a very different platform that we launched two weeks after the pandemic started. The first podcast network launched for this industry, a media brand launching a marketing agency in a creative studio. Four types of brands that I don't think we really would've thought of launching three and a half, four years ago. We just went out there, we pulled together a little business case, and now honestly, when I started in January 2020, our digital team was five people. Now we have 31 people and it's an incredible group of talent ultimately.

What we're able to do when we're working with clients, I know I'm going way off-topic now, but what we're able to do when we're working with clients now, I look at Hannah Viti, who's one of our producers on our audio team who sound designer and producer by day, DJ in the Chicago and Detroit house scene by night. Our clients love to collaborate with her because she's bringing this amazing perspective. We wouldn't be able to have Hannah on our team if we didn't say, "Hey, let's start producing podcasts and launch a podcast network." Sam ran events for interior design and now she's running a podcast network. We're able to build really unique skill sets, onboard people from completely different walks of life into our community at Sandow Design Group. Ultimately what that allows us to do, is really cool stuff with our partners and then executing really cool activations at major events like NeoCon.

Susan Fernandez:

I think that is really in line with the spirit of what designers and architects do anyway. That's how they think. It's all about the future. It's all about what can we build, how can we design it, how can we optimize it? Speaking of that, for that audience, it's a very, very niche audience, yet they're really different types of people, architects, designers, completely different. How do you reach that community? How do you engage with that community and make sure that what you have to say is really relevant to such a diverse audience?

Bobby Bonett:

Well, the first thing is for our member shows, keep our hands off. Our creators know what they're doing. They know how to speak to their audiences. When Tiffany, your CEO, came to Sam and I about starting a podcast, I think she sent us some scratch tape and asked us for our feedback. Our feedback was much more on audio quality suggestions than content suggestions. Tiffany knows how to speak to her audience. When Rachel and Sam and I are brainstorming around the value we can provide to our network member partners, it's more around best practices from a host perspective, not like, "You should change your content strategy because our network member shows know how to engage their audiences."

For the shows we host in our network, Metropolis hosts a show, AJ Paron, our EVP and design futurist hosts a show. They've been engaging with architects and designers. Metropolis is a 45-year-old brand, 43 year old brand, 42 year old year. Sam will fact check me later. AJ is a longtime designer and architect and very well respected. She knows exactly how to engage with these individuals. It's really about staying true from a content perspective. It's going to sound like I'm saying this line because of the size of our audiences, ultimately we care less about driving massive listener numbers and we care more about producing content for these niche audiences. That's what's nice about operating a niche podcast network. Same thing is true from a media perspective. Interior Design, Metropolis are B2B media brands. Interior Designs has tens of thousands of readers, not millions of readers, ultimately. Same is true for Metropolis. They have the luxury, in a good way. To be able to create content for a very specific type of audience.

I think we carry that same idea forward and it allows us to empower our creators ultimately. What we're able to do is we can look ahead and Sam and I have our eyes on more conferences down the road in 2023 and 2024 to say, "Hey, how can we then partner with an institution like the Merchandise Mart and bring some of that niche programming into an environment where all of a sudden you've got this crush of 40 or 50 or 60,000 people from that community who are going to be like, oh man, I really want to see Amy Devers producer our show." Or "Oh man, COOL HUNTING is going to be here." There's their pseudo celebrities in this space and I'd love to see them talking about whatever topic they're talking with AJ Paron about tomorrow. We'll find out, tune in. That's the mindset we're trying to drive here. I'm excited to be able to engage niche audiences in that sort of way. It's what's nice about not being in a mass space and being more in this niche space, like you said.

Susan Fernandez:

It really allows you to carve your own path and it isn't pre-written for you by some kind of corporate mandate of, "This is how we do it."

Bobby Bonett:

Right.

Susan Fernandez:

As podcasting continues to evolve, what do you guys see as what's next? What's next for the industry and what's next for SURROUND?

Bobby Bonett:

On the podcasting side, one responsibility we have is certainly to stay completely apprised of podcasting technology. I mean, this is probably the boring stuff, but if you are a creator, one of the reasons you got into the game of creating is probably to monetize your show or at least subsidize what you're doing from a passion standpoint. We're always thinking about what are the new and best ways to drive audience? What are the new and best ways to ultimately monetize your podcast? Like I mentioned earlier, it's still a very old school medium from a monetization and advertising standpoint. We want to stay ahead there.

On the more exciting end, this is the first time, this is true across the board in so many ways from over the last three and a half years, but this is the first time we're meeting so many of our partners face-to-face. It's the first time SURROUND, I look around the Merchandise Mart, bring a tear to my eyes, seeing all the SURROUND signage and all the SURROUND swag we brought out here. It's sort of a coming out party for us from an audience perspective. We're able to drive brand awareness. We're able to test a live activation. This will serve for us as a proof of concept for how can we go and talk with other trade shows, other festivals, how can we talk with the Merchandise Mart about future activations, whether it's a booth, whether we do a podcast conference, whether we do a live show.

I mean, I think back to when I was working at SiriusXM, we were close partners of WNYC at an enterprise level and WNY C, one of the things that they loved doing most were live shows at their, I think it was called the Green Space or Green Studio or something like that in Manhattan. I would love to, we're we're already talking with Amy about doing a live show to celebrate her 200th episode later this year. There's something about going and watching a podcast live. When we're podcast listeners, we tend to be super, super, super fans of our podcast that we listen to, but we don't get to see them. That's an exciting experience to have. We want to think about how we activate, we activate in a unique way.

The last thing I'll say is, I'm a really big believer in breaking the format. When you launch a podcast, you have a feed and then you have access to that feed and you get to release an episode every week or every two weeks or every four weeks. A lot of times you think, "Hey, I've launched an interview style podcast and I'm the host of my podcast, and my podcast is 30 minutes and every two weeks I'm going to release a 30-minute-long interview style podcast." Well, you own that feed now. So why don't we think about interesting ways that we can break the feed in some capacity, whether it's releasing an episode from another podcast that I'm just a huge fan of, whether it's doing a micro episode, whether it's breaking in with some breaking news. How can we just be experimental in some interesting way? I'd like to just find ways that we can be provocative in an experimental way, be leaders in that sort of way through SURROUND, and then impart some of those lessons and share some learnings with our network partners.

Susan Fernandez:

Very cool. I really like that idea of a podcast not living just in one format, but being live. I really enjoyed your micro episode, I guess you call it with the Architecture Hunter.

Bobby Bonett:

Yes, exactly.

Susan Fernandez:

Yeah, it was really cool. I have a question for you.

Bobby Bonett:

Sure.

Susan Fernandez:

If someone is thinking about starting not just a podcast, but a network, what advice do you have?

Bobby Bonett:

Do it. That's the first thing. Just do it. Is that a slogan? Has anyone trademarked that?

Susan Fernandez:

It's all yours.

Bobby Bonett:

Thank you. I think one thing that we will forever be very passionate about and religious about is the lane we're in, from a content perspective. I think we've gotten some inbounds from folks within our organization, where they've sent us really outstanding podcasts that just were not design enough for us or architecture enough for us. I think when you're creating a network, you need to figure out what's the mission statement of the network, what are the three tent poles in the network? Make sure that every show that you're welcoming in is going to fit that initial mold and you can't really veer from that.

Now, there's obviously networks that exist that do veer from that. I mean, I think SiriusXM technically has a podcast network and it's format and content agnostic. It's a volume play, and you've got loads of celebrities that have massive audiences and all different types of content, and SiriusXM has the luxury of doing that because they have a massive platform with 30 million, 40 million listeners, et cetera. I'm assuming that if you're in this hypothetically, you're probably in the proverbial garage and you're thinking, "Okay, I want to start a little niche network." You have to make sure you kind of stay true to what that initial goal is from, I think a content or format standpoint.

I would say, like we mentioned earlier, understanding kind of the value you can provide to your network partners. For us, we started with the backing of media brands with really significant audiences and fantastic reputation. How do we add in some of that benefit to our network partners? How do we add in some support from, I guess an operations, logistics, connectivity standpoint? I mentioned earlier on the opportunity to transfer guests from show to show, and then as our network grew, we could say, "Hey, we can now offer the opportunity to activate together." Starting off with, what are those core benefits you can offer as well? Core benefits plus what's that lane I want to fill, but not a lot of people launch networks really. I think a lot of people launch podcasts. There's like hundreds of millions, tens of millions of podcasts in the Apple Podcasts store, but I'm a huge fan of network. You don't need to figure out how am I producing 15 podcasts, you just have find 15 people with really good podcasts.

Susan Fernandez:

I love that. It really creates this vision. What I'm hearing you say through all of this is, pick your niche, it's got to be something you're really passionate about, and grow through aligning yourself and curating with the right type of podcast partners to do this. It's a little bit of luck, I think. A lot of charm, which is good. Is there anything else that you can tell us about? Any teasers? What's coming up? What is next for SURROUND?

Bobby Bonett:

We will definitely have another activation or two this year for sure. We will absolutely. Sandow Design Group is headquartered at PENN 1 in Manhattan and Interior Design and Metropolis activate through live programming at the Landing at PENN 1, which is very similar to Marshall's Landing at the Merchandise Mart. We'll be doing some live podcasting at PENN 1 in 2023, without a doubt, at least two shows this year which SURROUND will be producing. I'm excited for that. We'll be videoing those as well, so there'll multi-format.

The other thing that I'm excited about, which is more for our members than for our listeners, is continuing to build our membership community. Now that a lot of our member producers and hosts will meet one another this week, we'll think about creating a Slack channel, thinking about how we formally create more regular get togethers. I think, again, building this community, I look out the window throughout the day and we've seen our producers just sitting on the chairs out there and chatting with one another, chatting with our guest shows, et cetera. How do we maintain that momentum so that it's not just we're getting together at the activations and interacting through one-off emails, but rather more of an ongoing conversation? We're all passionate about podcasts and we want to be able to continue that passion. Internally building community, externally, events, live, that sort of thing.

Susan Fernandez:

Wonderful. Thank you so much for taking the time and in the midst of this incredibly busy and exciting show, we really appreciate it.

Bobby Bonett:

Thank you. We're recording live from the NeoCon podcast studio, powered by SURROUND and sponsored by SnapCab.

Speaker 1:

Thank you so much for listening in with us today. We hope you leave inspired by the ideas in today's episode. For more follow UpSpring on LinkedIn and Instagram. Don't forget to check out the amazing lineup of shows brought to you by the SURROUND podcast network at surroundpodcast.com.

The Design Board, by UpSpring, is a proud member of SANDOW Design Group's SURROUND Podcast Network, home to the architecture and design industry’s premier shows.

Tiffany RafiiJuly 5, 2023