Is it possible you’ve got to this part of your day without listening to or talking about a podcast? From where I sit (admittedly in an audio creative agency) it’s certainly all people want to talk to me about. This month we’ve been working with entertainment, educational and technology brands, and discussing getting their podcasts out there, and the latest one that’s gone into production is for a well-known global drinks company. Everywhere you look or listen, its podcasts, podcasts, podcasts. This month alone I’ve counted four or five household magazines compiling lists of their favourites. Add to that the fact that both advertisers and publishers are leading the cultural charge and it feels like we’ll get to podcasts being a mainstream medium much sooner than expected.
Photograph: Ally Lang and Sally Henderson
Maple Street Creative was recently invited to curate a session at an industry event for Recruitment Agencies, ‘Audio Recruitment Day’. We’ve done this kind of thing before and in years past we’d usually talk about creative advertising, this year however, we felt compelled to discuss the possibilities of podcasts. Ads are fantastic for volume, but a podcast can build that engagement in a company, keeping the brand at the forefront of minds and at the front of the queue when it comes to recruiting the best people. In order to illustrate our case, we took along Sally Henderson, a Head Hunter turned Change Mentor and Podcaster. Sally’s one of the most dynamic and infectious public speakers you’ll ever meet, and she laid out a clear case for brands with communication at the core of their mission statement to be immersed in digital audio. For their long-form format and authentic voice, podcasts remain the educated creative’s weapon of choice. In a world turning screenless, brands without podcasts will become the modern-day equivalent of a business not having a website.
