Fresh Ears

As the next season of Fresh Ears approaches, we’re taking a look back at some of the most enlightening lessons we learned in Season 1.

A good format is key to drawing listeners to your podcast, and retaining them. In our second bonus episode, we explore the different approaches used for some of our podcasts. 

We hear from Lucy Donnahue (Happiful), Pau Bartoli (Unilever), Charlie Greenwood (NFU Mutual), Jonathan Hill (GML), Martin Loat (Propeller) and Fresh Air producers Geoff Bird, Martin Poyntz-Roberts and Alex Kenning. 

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As the next season of Fresh Ears approaches, we’re taking a look back at some of the most enlightening lessons we learned in Season 1.

In this episode, we tackle one of the most basic, but important, questions to consider in the creative process: why is a podcast right for our brand?

We hear insights from Lauren Boothman (AQA),  Lucy Donnahue (Happiful), Jonathan Hill (GML), Alison Jackson-Carter (Slater & Gordon Lawyers), Bryony Mackensie (Shell) and Meryl Westlake (Kew Gardens), as well as Fresh Air producers Annie Day and Martin Poyntz-Roberts.

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Salesforce Appexchange is a platform upon which people all over the world have built their own businesses. There are entrepreneurs who owe their success to the platform, and of course plenty of other entrepreneurs who want to hear from them for inspiration.

So Salesforce created 'Trailblazing Entrepreneurs' - a podcast series that's not about the platform - it's about the people who've used it.

What's more, they used their own in-house staff member as a presenter. This is a popular option than can obviously go two ways, depending on how naturally the rookie presenter take to the medium. 

In this episodes, Fresh Air Senior Producer Anouszka Tate and Tahseen Taj - Senior Manager, AppExchange Marketing at Salesforce - reflect on the success of the series, how they coached the host, and how they've created a valuable asset for the many enthusiastic users of their software.

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How many stories can you get from studying people 50 years? The Centre for Longitudinal Studies celebrated 50 years of the groundbreaking BCS70 with a 6 part podcast, interviewing the scientists, the participants and their families.

With a modest budget, elderly contributors and a national lockdown, it required creativity in both format and execution.

Neil Cowling speaks to:

Ryan Bradshaw – Senior Communications Officer

Justine Goy – Communications & Events Officer - Centre for Longitudinal studies at UCL

Martin Poyntz-Roberts – Senior Producer at Fresh Air

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A podcast for Kew Gardens. That will be a nice series about flowers and trees, right?

Wrong.

Kew know the power of storytelling, and they set out to create a wonderful podcast series of mysteries that would pull people in, make the very most of audio, and help listeners understand the extraordinary science that takes place under the Kew banner.

Neil Cowling speaks to:

Meryl Westlake – Senior Digital Content manager at Royal Botanic Gardens,  Kew

and Katherine Kerr - Senior Producer - Fresh Air

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'Insurance Tomorrow' is a podcast aimed squarely at insurance brokers, and is a great example of the power of the medium to super-serve a valuable but niche target audience. Across six seasons, the podcast has positioned Allianz as a future-facing, thought-leading brand in a highly competitive market.

Originally presented by Nick Hewer, the latest series has seen Steph McGowen take over the reigns, with all the change in tone that she brings. So how do Allianz know it's successful, and how to do make sure you're keeping the topics around 'the future of the insurance industry' fresh?

Neil speaks to

Steph Mylchreest – Marketing Consultant, Brand and CSR - Allianz,

and Annie Day - Senior Producer, Fresh Air Production

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Aimed at listeners who are engaged and interested in the transition to carbon-free economy, 'The Energy Podcast' by Shell explores the technologies that might take us there and never dodges the tough questions around Shell's own involvement.

From grilling their own senior executives to inviting environmentalists tp debate, Shell have consistently used the podcast as a way to facilitate intelligent and nuanced conversation rather than simply push out a corporate message.

We discuss how they've done this and the editorial discipline involved, with:

Bryony MacKenzie, Editor of Digital Channels, Shell

Annie Day, Senior Producer, Fresh Air

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NFU Mutual is the UK's largest farming insurer, and wanted to create fascinating content on a topic that many farmers are super-keen to explore - diversification.

In recruiting farmer/podcaster/influencer Will Evans and recording on locations all over the country, we created a series that brings a wealth of information, experience and insight to the farming community.

It won a Corporate Content Award for best Use of Audio, as well as Best Corporate Storytellers, and also got us all out recording 'in the field', which was great fun.

Neil is joined by Charlie Greenwood of NFU Mutual, Presenter Will Evans and Producer Geoff Bird.

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Brushing your teeth is a boring, empty two minutes where nothing else happens, so Zendium toothpaste decided to create super-produced, beautifully scripted, ultra-short podcasts to fill the time. 

2 minutes of Zen is a series of exercises, mindfulness routines, and now children's content designed to be heard while brushing your teeth. It's perfectly aligned with the brand values, and is the perfect example of audio stepping into a space where no other medium really works.

Neil Cowling talks through the thinking and execution of '2 minutes of Zen with:

Pau Bartoli – Global marketing Director at Unilever –  Zendium's parent company

Alex Kenning - Fresh Air's producer for the project

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Global PR agency Propeller group created The Dog 'n' Bone as a way to host fascinating conversations between influential people in the marketing industry.

The Dog 'n' Bone podcast demonstrates the strength of their own network, and acts as a way to secure time with some of the marketing world's most impressive thinkers. It also demonstrates propeller's own capacity to create podcasts as an offering to their own clients. They've recorded in studio, at conferences and even at the Cannes festival.

Propeller's Martin Loat and Branwell Johnson join Neil to reflect on their own podcast-building adventure, how the format has evolved, and what benefits it's brought to the business.

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