NPM Creative is NPR’s in-house sponsorship creative team, working with brands to craft custom campaigns that resonate and perform with a curious audience. NPR listeners turn to NPR for high-quality, trusted journalism, and NPM Creative strives to create sponsorship messages and stories that reflect those same values.
In this article, Shannon Boerner, NPM Creative’s Supervising Producer, dives into their team’s ethos as well as the process that brings brand stories to life.
My job is to work with NPR sponsors to figure out how to tell their brand story in a way that is authentic, informative and relatable. We call this “mindful sponsorship,” helping listeners get to know a brand so they can make confident, informed choices. When we get it right, it leads to what we call the “NPR halo effect,” where trust in NPR transfers to trust in the brand.
I spend a lot of time getting to know our sponsors and their products so I can help tell their stories through custom audio. I truly want to get to know the people from the brand who we interview, and find out the why and how behind their work.
Sincere and person-first messaging is essential for building trust with the NPR audience – and it drives performance. In a survey of NPR Podcast listeners, scores for attributes like trust and authenticity rose significantly when a real person from a brand began speaking.
agreed they liked hearing from a real person from the brand
agreed that hearing from a real person from the brand helped them trust the brand more
The success of this approach hinges on close collaboration with our sponsors. We guide them through our production process, which can be non-traditional when it comes to advertising, with clear communication and documentation. From filling out a creative brief to choosing from multiple creative options, the brand has creative oversight every step of the way.
Learn more about our production process in my conversation with NPMC Managing Director, Sara Barbour.
Ultimately, what motivates our team is a shared passion for crafting meaningful audio stories. Every member of NPM Creative is an avid NPR fan, and that’s why it’s so important for us to create sponsorship messaging that reflects a person-first, narrative approach. We often focus on raw emotion and human experiences to help listeners put a “face” to a brand and better understand the passion behind the work.
Hear this approach come to life in my own personal story:
While we create a variety of mid-rolls and long-form audio content, our flagship product is a Brand Soundscape, which is a roughly three-minute audio/visual story that highlights the real experiences of people behind the brands. As you may have guessed, the two stories above are Soundscapes about, well, Soundscapes. Meta, right?
There’s no one-size-fits-all formula for telling these stories. Every Soundscape is unique, and depending on the narrative, we may recommend a more immersive approach. NPM Creative offers distinct capabilities that go beyond traditional advertising, including on-site recording to capture rich, high-quality audio (and even video!).
Field recording takes listeners behind the scenes by weaving natural ambient sounds directly into the narrative. For NPR sponsor Organic Valley, we traveled to Vermont to speak with dairy farmer Tyler Webb, capturing the genuine environment of a working farm.
With custom audio storytelling like Brand Soundscapes, NPM Creative empowers sponsors to transform traditional messaging into deeply personal narratives and to share those stories with NPR listeners and on their own platforms. Bridging the gap between authentic storytelling and unique production, the studio helps brands build lasting, meaningful connections with the NPR audience.
National Public Media’s in-house creative studio, NPM Creative, uses active listening to craft impactful stories from raw interviews.
The NPR halo effect is stronger than ever. See how it turns sponsorship into audience connection for brands.
Explore how NPR’s non-profit model, strict editorial ethics, and uncluttered sponsorship environment maintain high trust, integrity, and audience affinity.
