CEOs turn to podcasts to control their message

When Nicolai Tangen, head of Norway’s $1.6tn oil fund, started interviewing chief executives for his new podcast in 2022, it was a way to give the Norwegian people a glimpse into the large international companies their country was investing in.

His roughly 45-minute weekly episodes, which have featured top bosses from Goldman Sachs’ David Solomon and Citi’s Jane Fraser to Microsoft’s Satya Nadella and X’s Elon Musk, have since reached a far broader audience, with 5mn total downloads.

The upbeat 58-year-old host says the podcast format allows for “more time to explore what is driving their businesses and them as people”.

“What are they trying to improve, what does the competitive landscape look like, how do they win in the marketplace,” are the sorts of questions that do not naturally lend themselves to a quick soundbite or news story, yet say a lot about how a company is run, Tangen says.

His In Good Company series is one of the many business-focused podcasts that have sprung up to showcase top-flight chief executives as hosts, interviewees or both. Others include The Diary Of A CEO, an interview show with British entrepreneur Steven Bartlett that looks at business and personal development; All-In, hosted by a group of tech-focused venture capitalists; Acquired’s deep dives into well-known brands; and Masters of Scale led by co-founder of LinkedIn Reid Hoffman.

Looking to educate and entertain, some of these shows rank among the most popular on streaming sites. They appeal to executives seeking to reach specialist audiences and listeners who may not previously have engaged with their companies. The male-dominated technology industry, in particular, has found this a useful medium; Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg appeared recently on Acquired. It allows founders and executives to chat to each other in a more relaxed way.

Outside of tech, companies’ communications and marketing teams are turning to audio as a means to highlight their expert knowledge and contact books. Goldman, for example, has its own podcast series, Goldman Sachs Exchanges, in which top managers at the bank speak to industry figures about important issues shaping the global economy. KPMG’s UK chair, Bina Mehta, hosts the Pull Up a Chair podcast with other top directors.

CEOs have warmed to the peer-to-peer format, which some see as a way to mitigate reputational risk. The interviews take place in a more informal and less confrontational setting, often without the level of scrutiny a chief executive might expect to receive from a newspaper or TV journalist. (Tangen says his guests have “editing rights”, although these are exercised very rarely. They can also listen to the podcast in full before it goes live.)

The format enables guests more control over how they communicate, to shape their own narrative and to engage directly with their chosen audience, often at length (some podcast episodes, for example Acquired’s recent discussion with Howard Schultz from Starbucks, exceed three hours).

Communications specialists say podcasts can encourage executives to speak more openly and on a more personal level. This can offer listeners — who typically include employees, shareholders as well as customers and industry specialists — an unfiltered view of the person running the company.

“The open-ended format lets executives bring their commentary to life with all sorts of material that might otherwise get left on the cutting-room floor — anecdotes, book references, you name it,” says Joshua Rosen, at communications firm Prosek Partners. “Detours and rabbit holes aren’t just welcome — they’re encouraged. And so there is more room to show depth and breadth, that you are an authority on your industry, but that you also see the bigger picture.”

People like emotional engagement. If the CEO isn’t doing that, it’s going to be dry

Rosen adds that, for most executives, the rush to appear on podcasts has less to do with “seeking safe spaces” and more about showing off “the ability to riff”. The more relaxed interviews normally complement traditional media appearances, rather than replace them, he says.

But this softer-touch approach, which can make executives feel like they are talking to a friend, can make it trickier to hold them to account over specific business decisions and actions or give room for probing questioning. An interviewee shutting down or providing a “no comment” does not make for good podcast content.

Tangen challenges the suggestion that guests might prefer the softer approach of a fellow executive to a traditional media grilling, saying he is trained in military interrogation and has spent an entire career needling CEOs as a portfolio manager. “I’ve been doing it my whole life.”

Veteran journalist and communications specialist Richard Miron founded podcasting company Earshot Strategies in 2017 to help companies shape their messages. He says while podcasts can give “CEOs a platform to create a sanitised and unquestioned version of what they want to say”, these individuals only come across as wooden, scripted and boring. Coming under scrutiny and being put under pressure by shareholders and journalists is something that is “good for them”.

If companies are going through a bad spell and do not want to come across as guarded, “don’t do it. Stick out a press release instead”, says Miron. “People like emotional engagement. If the CEO isn’t doing that, it’s going to be dry. If you’re asked questions such as, ‘Why are you such a great CEO?’ no one is going to listen.”

Miron says so many corporate executives have gone through hours of media training, often with crisis response teams close to hand, to formulate optimal responses to any potential questions from news outlets. While communications teams might think this helps them, “it’s no longer perceived as genuine”, he says. “CEOs who show a bit of leg and are more normal is unexpected and people like that.”

For the individual or company hosting the podcast, it is also a way to reach younger generations who are consuming news and media differently — turning more to social platforms and video content. Some podcasters record video footage of their interviews, which they publish on social media. Others conduct live events, too.

Tangen notes that hosting his own podcast has brought benefits for his company — Norges Bank Investment Management, which oversees the oil fund, has received a flood of job inquiries that it believes is in part driven by the podcast. “In Norway, we would always have a huge amount of applications,” says Tangen. “But we are seeing higher applications in New York and London than we have in the past. Dramatically higher.”

And yet, despite being a significant investor in some of the world’s biggest companies, Tangen faces the same issues business journalists do in securing his interview guests. “It’s a hard fight to get them on [with] communications departments whose only job it seems, sometimes, is to make sure they never appear on any podcasts, so it’s really difficult,” says Tangen. But he remains persistent, noting: “My wife [Katja Tangen] turned me down the first time.”