Third brief this quarter with the same line buried on page nine. Under future channel opportunities, in a slightly smaller font, as though it snuck in on its own: a podcast. No topic. No host. No reason. Just the noun, sitting there, waiting for someone to be excited about it.
I asked the client what the show would be about. There was a pause of the kind you learn to recognize, and then: our expertise. I asked who would listen. Longer pause. Our customers, probably.
Which is exactly the problem.
Everyone in this industry watched the same thing happen. Serial made audio respectable, Gimlet Creative made it purchasable, and now there is a line item for it in budgets that have no line item for anyone to actually make it every week for two years.
A podcast is not a channel you can occupy. It is a weekly promise to a stranger that the next forty minutes will be better than silence, and almost no brand has anything to say at that frequency.
The shows that work are not accidents. GE did not make a science podcast about GE, it made a science fiction serial with real production money behind it, and people listened because it was good, not because they were curious about turbines. eBay's Open for Business is genuinely useful to somebody starting a small business, which is a real audience with a real problem. Slack's Variety Pack was about work, not about Slack. In every case the brand paid for something and then got out of the way.
What separated those from the noise was not budget. It was subject. They found a topic that was adjacent to the business and interesting on its own, and they committed to it as a show rather than as an asset.
So before you approve one, answer three questions honestly. One: what is the show about if you delete the company name from every episode description? Two: who is making it in week thirty, when the launch enthusiasm is gone and the internal expert has a quarter to close? Three: what does success look like in a number you would actually be willing to report?
If the answers are our expertise, someone on the marketing team, and downloads, you do not want a podcast. You want the feeling of having one.
If the answers are our expertise, someone on the marketing team, and downloads, you do not want a podcast. You want the feeling of having one.
I sing twice a month at a bar in Southeast with a floor that grabs your shoes and a host who calls everyone baby. I am not good. I am extremely committed. The difference between me and a branded podcast is that nobody is paying me to be up there, and everybody in the room knows exactly why I am doing it.