Audio is the DEI Format

Years ago, I had a conversation with an Imam who was to produce an audio recording for our company, Vennly. At the time, Vennly was focused on publishing content from spiritual leaders across all denominations, races, religions, and creeds.

I recall that the Imam was relieved that Vennly would publish his thoughts in audio format, instead of through video or written word. When I asked him why, he said, “I was born in New York. I’m a die-hard Knicks fan. But oftentimes people look at me and assume that I’m in ISIS or something.”

This Imam wasn’t alone. Repeatedly, I heard contributors express the view that audio was the best medium to represent diverse perspectives. The principle is that without a camera, which introduces visual bias, more perspectives would be heard. And without a tightly-packaged blog post optimized for search, more people will tell you what they truly think, feel, and believe.

Although Vennly has since pivoted from its original mission of producing spiritual content, towards enabling businesses and organizations to better distribute and measure their audio content, the Imam’s words still resonate. That’s because companies are focusing more than ever on content to support Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (“DEI”) initiatives, and it’s important to recognize that audio is the best medium for DEI content.

For example, many companies have invested in DEI reports, which are static, multi-page PDFs that live on a tab of a corporate site. While the content is fantastic, the medium can bog readers down. What if instead companies could integrate audio content to the PDFs to really engage their readers? This is exactly what Vennly is doing with SAP, and we are proud to feature our joint PDF-integrated audio asset here.

Let’s take it one step further. What if DEI voices and stories were also shared to a careers page? To LinkedIn? What if they were shared internally to Slack, Sharepoint, Staffbase, and FirstUp? If conversations about DEI matter at your business, then audio is the ultimate format for communication with all of your stakeholders, both internal and external.

If you’d like to hear more about how businesses are innovating in DEI through leveraging audio, please reach out and I’d be happy to set up a brainstorming session.