Tina Dietz (00:00):

We are wired for stories. Human beings have been telling stories around campfires and on journeys and over the water cooler for centuries. How does that translate into selling more products, amplifying your brand, or changing your company culture? Besides that, how do you solve business problems with podcasting? This is what we're diving in deep around today on Podcast Inc.

Tina Dietz (00:36):

Hello, again. It's your host Tina Dietz, CEO of Twin Flames Studios. Before we get started, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that this wonderful podcast, if I do say so myself, is brought to you as a collaboration between the Podcast Inc conference, Heartcast Media, Twin Flame Studios and the Pioneering Collective.

Tina Dietz (00:57):

Welcome back to another episode of Podcast Inc where we're leading up to the podcasting conference in fall of 2020 all about internal corporate podcasting but, as you've probably noticed, we can't talk about internal corporate podcasting without talking about external corporate podcasting and all of the issues around that as well.

Tina Dietz (01:16):

It's an exciting world and it is an evolving world. Today on the show, I have Jonas Woost. Jonas is a digital media and entertainment executive with a passion for innovating in the digital content ecosystem. He is the director of strategy at Pacific Content, which is an award-winning podcast agency working at the intersection of brand strategy and high-quality audio storytelling.

Tina Dietz (01:39):

Pacific Content was named one of Entrepreneur's 100 Brilliant Companies and its clients include Dell Technologies, Facebook, Charles Schwab, Red Hat, and Mozilla.

Tina Dietz (01:50):

We had a great conversation about the place of storytelling in podcasting, both internal and external as well as using podcasting to solve business problems. All that and more. Let's get right to the interview.

Tina Dietz (02:05):

Jonas, thank you so much for joining us today.

Jonas Woost (02:08):

Thank you for having me.

Tina Dietz (02:09):

Yeah. You know, where I'd love to start this conversation is in your own passion you've spent so much time in broadcasting and the work that you do with Pacific Content Services some of the largest brands in the world but what's your personal take, your personal passion of what you love about podcasting, and about what you do out in the world with all these companies?

Jonas Woost (02:36):

I think myself and, obviously, many other people in the industry and in the community are passionate about storytelling. It's just fun to be part of a storytelling culture and a storytelling industry. The thing that in my specific role that sort of keeps it interesting every single day is the fact that when we work with organizations and we help them make some sort of podcast or tell some sort of story over audio, it's not so much make a podcast for them or tell a story or create audio or reach audiences.

Jonas Woost (03:12):

It's all about solving a problem. When organizations come to us, they have a specific business challenge or business problem that they want to solve. Obviously, they use lots of different tools and lots of different ways to solve that problem but when they think about using audio to solve a problem often they come to us.

Jonas Woost (03:31):

Working on how can audio solve a business problem? Say it's a brand perception problem or it's an awareness problem or they want to convert customers to do something, they want to inform people. Lots of different problems they might want to solve.

Jonas Woost (03:45):

For us to put almost like a puzzle together of how can audio solve the thing that they want to do and we talked to many organizations all the time so it's always a different problem, it keeps it interesting. That's what I find really, really interesting myself and then the storytelling goes on top of that and that becomes the vehicle to solve that problem.

Jonas Woost (04:07):

It's just kind of almost every day like a different challenge that I get to work on and then that's just hugely rewarding.

Tina Dietz (04:15):

What are some of the stories that you think that these companies, these organizations need to be telling, should be telling, or in some cases, are already telling?

Jonas Woost (04:26):

What we've seen is there are some stories that work really well that organizations should tell, can tell, and you know what? There are others that they maybe shouldn't tell. I think especially sort of day to day news and day to day journalism. Just from a partly practical point of view. Maybe that's not the place for organizations to be part of in terms of their own storytelling but anything that is inspirational, that changes a point of view, that gives background, I think organizations are a wonderful vehicle to tell those stories.

Jonas Woost (05:05):

The thing that we always talk to all of our clients about is that in podcasting the thing you can do in podcasting is you can go deep. There are so many other types of medium that just don't allow that for many other reasons. Let's all be honest, how many times did we open that New York Times article and we read the headline and we read the first two paragraphs, did we make it to the end? Maybe.

Tina Dietz (05:28):

Highly unlikely.

Jonas Woost (05:29):

Exactly. What we see with our podcasts and I'm sure there's many podcasts like that out there that we see completion rates 80%, 90%, 95%, ie, people listen to the whole story. They really spend half an hour with that story and that allows us to go deep and to show nuance. Nuance is something that is sort of maybe rare to find right now in the media landscape.

Tina Dietz (05:50):

Good point.

Jonas Woost (05:52):

We tell our clients that that's a great opportunity for the company not just to say, "Hey, we believe in X" or, "We think you should do Y", to actually say, "Let's really go into this topic deep and show different points of view" and the company can show they're not just about a thing and they're trying to tell people that they believe in something. It's kind of like show, don't tell if that makes sense?

Tina Dietz (06:17):

Yes. [crosstalk 00:06:17]. That's just what came to mind for storytelling principles, show, don't tell. Exactly.

Jonas Woost (06:22):

Then you can look at an issue from all the different angles. Still, there's a bit of a unique opportunity for a company, for an organization to tell stories in that nuanced way. Podcasts are really perfect for that.

Tina Dietz (06:37):

Do you find that there's a difference in storytelling between internal podcasting and external podcasting? The types of stories that get told or the problems that get solved? You know, what would be some of the differences and what might actually be the same?

Jonas Woost (06:55):

Maybe start with the same. Everyone that we've been talking to and everyone we work with, they really want to use whether that's internal or public-facing or external, they want to use great storytelling. They don't just want to have what might be a company newsletter and convert that into audio and read out the newsletter. Everyone has the intention of really using storytelling.

Jonas Woost (07:22):

However, I think often what we end up with is that organizations want to use the internal podcast to relay a little bit more of information as opposed to doing something that's inspirational and storytelling-based. They end up wanting to just have a bit more information-based.

Jonas Woost (07:41):

It's something that we're working through. We're always reminding companies the reason they want to have an internal podcast is, again, not to replace the company newsletter. It's to give more context, give more depth, give more nuance or show different emotions that you might not be able to tell or convey different emotions that you might not be able to convey in an email. There's a lot of work that we're doing on that to stick with the storytelling.

Jonas Woost (08:10):

If I could be frank, budget is always a concern. Like the types of stories that we would want to tell, rich, narrative, in-depth, human-based stories for an internal podcast it's not cheap to make and often there has to be some sort of justification on why we're spending all this money if we're "only" reaching our internal audience? I think that's going to be changing but that's a landscape that I think continues to evolve.

Tina Dietz (08:41):

I would have to agree with you because the issues that companies, particularly, large companies have ... You're maybe talking about a workforce of 5000, 10,000 people or more. That's more downloads than most podcasts could expect in a per-episode base. I mean, the average podcast is about 150 downloads. If you have a podcast internally to your larger company that gets thousands of listens and downloads you're making a larger impact than any average podcast out there.

Tina Dietz (09:12):

I think you're right. I think we will see some changes in the type of narrative storytelling that we love to do but you're right, from a production standpoint, takes a lot more time and a lot more energy and investment.

Tina Dietz (09:27):

Getting a little bit deeper into that, how do you find some best practices perhaps in working with companies as they deal with this storytelling or the hosting side of the podcasting? Because your company specializes in some beautiful rich, narrative storytelling style podcasts. How do you draw these stories out? How do you help the company find the right host?

Jonas Woost (09:58):

Drawing the stories out, yeah, that's ... It's kind of the fun part of our job, especially the early conversations with the organizations and especially when you have new clients because, if we're honest, that's a big learning curve. For everyone involved. Of course, for us, at Pacific Content because we'll have to learn about the company but then also often the individuals that we work with within the companies that they might not be experts on podcasting and they might not quite know what kind of stories they want to tell.

Jonas Woost (10:24):

What we rely on heavily is prototyping. We like to use the term rapid prototyping. What we often do is we would go after kick-off or strategy sessions, strategy meetings, we'll actually go back and record audio right away. These are not real stories. This is just scripted stuff that we record with colleagues just to get ... It's not so much the what do we want to talk about on the podcast but it's the how we're going to talk about it? What's the feeling? How is it hosted? Is it multiple hosts? Is it one host? Is it no hosts? What's the emotional arc? Is it funny? Is it light? Is it really in-depth? Is it really heavy?

Jonas Woost (11:00):

It's that kind of stuff that you can talk about and when it's people that maybe are professional audio storytellers then there is a shared lexicon and we can have references and you and I talk about the podcasts we want to make, we could probably talk about it enough and all have a shared understanding of what that podcast is going to sound like.

Jonas Woost (11:18):

When someone who has never done this before, they have no frame of reference, right? We might explain to them, "Well, it's going to sound like radio lab and it's also going to have a bit of this" but they actually will not understand what we're talking about.

Tina Dietz (11:29):

They wouldn't understand that. Sure.

Jonas Woost (11:30):

Even though they might say they will. We learned as soon as we send them audio just bang. Everyone has ears, right? Everyone gets it when they listen to it and they feel something or they don't feel something, that they'll know it. For us, that's a key tool to really use audio examples.

Jonas Woost (11:47):

Then when it comes to hosting, it's the same sort of thing. We might have some hosting ... As an example, we're not sure if we want to have one or two hosts, maybe that is sort of a problem that we're trying to solve. Instead of just talking about what it might feel like, we're just going to try it out and we'll just use ... The producer is just going to record themselves and show, well, this is a completely different dynamic if it's two people having a conversation about something, like a reply all maybe, than having something that is more scripted and a single host. This is the kind of stuff where we go back and forth and use audio a lot.

Tina Dietz (12:23):

I really love that idea of rapid prototyping because you're absolutely right. Conceptually, it's hard for people to mentally hear what that's going to sound like but if you can give someone several examples then they immediately get it and they'll probably have a very visceral reaction to, "Yes, that's it. That's what it was" but they didn't have the language or the background to articulate it necessarily. That's brilliant.

Jonas Woost (12:51):

I think I'm about to butcher up a quote but I think it was David Bowie who said dancing about music is like ... Sorry. Talking about music is like dancing about architecture. You know, to convert what you're saying into something you can actually hear is just sort of impossible until you can hear it.

Tina Dietz (13:10):

That's a brilliant point. You know, when we were working with internal and external podcasting, obviously, you're maybe solving some different problems what are some of the results that your clients tend to get from their efforts around both internal and external podcasting? What kind of problems get solved?

Jonas Woost (13:36):

I mean, it always depends, of course, it's really different but some of the currently ... I think it's changing, okay? I'm giving you lots of different vague answers. Most of the external podcasts that we're working on currently are kind of maybe top of funnel marketing exercises, brand awareness, brand positioning, brand perception. That is a lot of the work that we do. There might be an organization that might already have a good level of awareness in the market but they want to maybe change the perception a little bit. They don't want to be seen as X as much anymore. They'd rather be seen as Y.

Jonas Woost (14:13):

Again, this then goes to show, don't tell. Instead of a company saying like, "Well, we're not really about this anymore. We're not about that." Sure, you can say that but that is difficult for the market to believe that so instead you can show it by telling the kind of stories that exemplify the kind of thing that you're standing for, what your values are or what your products are really about. That is the sort of most popular request that we get right now is still very much on the brand level.

Jonas Woost (14:45):

I think over the last really six months even this is starting to change and now we're looking at more of a mid-funnel, a lot of mid-funnel requests where there might be specific products that are launching or something that's changing so it becomes a little bit more product-based. That is an interesting challenge for us. We love that challenge. It's not quite as easy.

Jonas Woost (15:06):

When you talk top of funnel you can tell great inspirational stories about how we can make the world a better place. Once you start specifically about products you've got to be smart. Storytelling is still an important part of that. The challenge is how can we make sure that it's not just a reading out the brochure or ... It's just like the specs of the product are being read out. [crosstalk 00:15:32].

Tina Dietz (15:31):

Or an infomercial of some kind. Yeah.

Jonas Woost (15:36):

Exactly. Exactly right. It takes additional work and I think it's also different individuals that we're working with where when we're making these brand-based top of funnel exercises, we're talking to people that are in the brand department and they have that big picture thinking about where they want to stand.

Jonas Woost (15:54):

When you're more working the mid-funnel space, they're marketing people. They're looking to convert, right? They're looking at the end of the day to see like how much did we sell of this? There's a different language that's being spoken to us if that makes sense?

Tina Dietz (16:05):

Absolutely.

Jonas Woost (16:07):

I mean, they come to us because they know they want storytelling as part of whatever they're launching and then we have to work with them together to figure out, "Okay, what are really the stories that are important and interesting around your product?"

Jonas Woost (16:24):

Typically, it ends up being like what does your product actually impact? Yeah, your product is like this or looks like that or makes this, that's all great but who is impacted? How is it solving someone's problem? What's happening to person X that might consider your problem? How is it going to change their life?

Jonas Woost (16:42):

That's where we then start looking at those human stories about like, oh, wow, the thing that you make really can change someone's life because it makes it better or it solves something or it's cheaper or whatever it might be. We need to find out the human part.

Tina Dietz (16:56):

Yeah. I think that's incredibly important. I was working with some executives at a large pharmaceutical company and they were looking at not so much having their own podcast but being podcast guests. A lot of the knowledge that kept coming out of their mouths was very clinical and very linear and I finally stopped them and said, "Let's just have a conversation about the people. Who do you know that has been impacted by this particular medicine?"

Tina Dietz (17:29):

They started talking and within about five minutes all of us were in tears. That kind of visceral moment, kind of like the rapid prototyping, you know it when you hear it, shifted the whole conversation. They're like, "Oh, okay. That makes sense. Tell the story. Don't worry about the stats and the results and the bullet points and the soundbites and all of that." It's who is this making a difference for?

Tina Dietz (17:55):

Then you can back up into some of the more technical parts of a conversation if it's the right kind of podcast, these guys are guests, but I would imagine that in the podcasting production side of things too with the storytelling that there is an arc in education going from this is kind of our ... Particularly with marketing folks, right? We all have a language. I've been in marketing for many years. This marketing language, the jargon that comes out and then moving them into these laymen terms that is a much more kind of emotional intuitive storytelling conversation.

Tina Dietz (18:38):

I was actually listening to a couple of your shows, the one from Charles Schwab and the one from Facebook. You know, both of them I was delighted to hear the depth of storytelling that was coming across on connection and your brain and making decisions and even the use of A Christmas Carol as an illustration for this very large financial company to talk about what does it take to change somebody's mind? What an interesting and fascinating conversation?

Tina Dietz (19:13):

You know, the depth of creativity here I think opens up the conversation for organizations to consider what podcasting makes available in terms of having an impact. Do you find that you have to overcome objections in terms of the measurements and the metrics? I know when I'm speaking on podcasting [inaudible 00:19:34] and I get a lot of questions about what's the ROI?

Jonas Woost (19:39):

No, we don't get objections. We get questions and those are fair and those are good questions. I should say, especially with the two examples that you mentioned in Facebook and Charles Schwab and actually most of our clients, they come in and they want to tell stories. It's not really an uphill battle. You talk about the language and there's a marketing language. I mean, they come to us because they're looking for storytelling expertise or hopefully that's why they come to us. I don't think they come to us because they just want us to record a podcast. Lots of people can just record a podcast, they can do it themselves, but having that sort of storytelling capacity and they come in with intention so they're listening.

Jonas Woost (20:16):

In terms of the measurement, absolutely, that is a tricky one, especially when you work at top of funnel podcasts, like what is the exact conversion? How many people at the end open an account with Charles Schwab? That's not easy to measure.

Jonas Woost (20:35):

Luckily, we can measure it, even like things that anyone who works in marketing is quite familiar with, we can measure, we can start with the listens or the downloads and that kind of stuff.

Jonas Woost (20:47):

The conversation we have about measurement very quickly moves towards time spent listening and that's really the number one thing we like to look at and the way we see is that podcast is really just an engagement medium and that's what we want to measure. If you get two million downloads or listens that doesn't actually reflect whether people liked it or they engaged with it or that were actually impacted by it, but what we tell people is like if someone listens to your podcast all the way through and subscribes and listens to another episode that's a pretty good indication that they are really engaging with your podcast and, therefore, with your brand.

Jonas Woost (21:23):

I mean, you have the choice to turn the podcast off at any time, right? If people listen to it all the way through and when we see our completion rates 80%, 90% we know like, okay, this is an average completion rate of 80%, 90%. We're very at peace with that. Clearly, the people that decided to listen to it really engaged with it and really enjoyed it, and hopefully they subscribed and listen to more podcasts.

Jonas Woost (21:44):

Time spent listening is the number one metric that we look at. Obviously, if there's lots of people that listen a lot, that's also great. Then we do branded stories. That's sort of quite easy and that's been around for a very long time, again, all marketers would understand that that we can expose people to an episode or two episodes and we can ask afterwards, "What do you think? Has it changed your perception?"

Jonas Woost (22:08):

One of the questions, of course, as part of this sort of [inaudible 00:22:12] we do is like do you remember the brand? Who was the sponsor of this thing? People remembered. Like even though with Charles Schwab I think I'm pretty sure the brand is mentioned twice at the start and at the end. Maybe one more time in the middle.

Tina Dietz (22:26):

That's about it. Yeah.

Jonas Woost (22:28):

Right? People remembered, people know.

Tina Dietz (22:29):

They just say the name, "Brought to you by Charles Schwab." That's it.

Jonas Woost (22:32):

That's exactly right. Consumers are ... They're savvy, right? They know what's going on. They know like, "Okay, well, this is a thing that is brought to you" or sponsored by ... They might not understand the exact sort of mechanics on like how it was produced but they get it. Okay, here's a podcast and then Charles Schwab sort of underwrote it and they know that. You don't have to keep telling them that.

Jonas Woost (22:53):

Then to measure afterward, "So now that you've listened to this how does that change your perception of Charles Schwab" or what you think before, what you thought afterward, and then we measure this and we've been very happy and, hopefully, our clients also have been very happy with results. Again, they went in deep, telling stories that represent the values of the companies that it works.

Tina Dietz (23:15):

Do you find that there is a difference in what you're measuring on for an internal podcast versus an external podcast? Or even I know internal podcasts tend to be very private for most companies so can you even have metrics for those kind of podcasts?

Jonas Woost (23:34):

I think maybe internal podcasts they ask ... It's kind of like work where public podcasts were a number of years ago where it's still very much focused on how many people actually listen to this thing. We've got 20,000 people working here. How many people listen to this?

Jonas Woost (23:52):

I think there's a wish that everyone is going to listen to it. I think that's just unrealistic. It's just not what people do. Very much the focus is still on like has this actually been consumed by a lot of people internally?

Jonas Woost (24:11):

I think then what action did people take afterwards? Which can be measured as well. I think that's also being measured but I think we're still pretty early on measuring impact. I think we have to all calibrate and figure out what's realistic here? If you have 100,000 people working for a company, we're all busy, are we going to have 80% listening to the podcast? Are we not? 5%? That just seems kind of low but it's somewhere in the middle, right? [crosstalk 00:24:40] everyone and it's certainly more than just a little handful.

Jonas Woost (24:45):

Actually I don't think we have a number where we would say, "This is a great success." We kind of have those numbers for public podcasts. We've done this enough. We understand with this kind of story, with this kind of marketing budget, we have a very broad understanding of what we would be happy with in terms of total hours listened. I don't think for internal I don't think we have that yet.

Tina Dietz (25:07):

I would agree that the data is not there. Part of that is because companies do want to keep their information private. I was wondering if you would speak to the difference of the production standpoint about what we're able to see because I think that a lot of companies would be surprised that we actually can't see a lot of what they're doing.

Jonas Woost (25:32):

That is correct. I can't name the clients but with one of the projects that we're working on, it is extremely secretive. For example, I have not heard the podcast and I'm not allowed to listen to the podcast that we're making for one of our clients. There's only a very small handful of people within our organizations that even listen to it and we're not allowed to store the audio files or the transcriptions. We're not allowed to use a human-powered transcription service because that means someone external would listen to the thing that we're making.

Jonas Woost (26:08):

Yeah, secretive. I mean, this is just making the podcast. Then getting the numbers of how was it performing? I don't know. They power it all, they manage it all. We actually don't know. I mean, we hear the feedback. Are you happy? Not happy? That's the sort of stuff that we can gauge, of course, based on what we hear but the exact numbers we don't know.

Jonas Woost (26:27):

Part of it is also ... I'm sure you've covered this or you will cover this on other episodes is just the sort of distribution mechanism. This is hard, right? How can you make sure that a podcast is only available to the people that work within the organization? Okay, that's possible. What if someone quits? Then we have to destroy ... You have a whole DRM system, which is hugely unpopular, of course, in podcasting in general. It's sort of the idea was always to do the opposite, to make the files available as easily as possible and then we go backwards in terms of internal podcasts.

Jonas Woost (27:00):

That doesn't help your consumption habits either. If I have to use yet another app for me to listen to the podcast that my company is publishing because it's not showing up in my sort of regular podcast feed that is just its own little challenge. You have to think about new ways of distribution, of reminding people, other intranets or other websites where people could listen to it?

Jonas Woost (27:23):

Every company kind of has their own solutions or is asking us to figure out a solution. But all that adds to the challenge of figuring out how do we measure it and what success actually mean?

Tina Dietz (27:35):

Yeah. That's a double-sided coin because figuring out those challenges and solving those problems is innovation and excitement and coming up with something new and new solutions are coming to the forefront. We'll be talking with Todd Cochran from Blueberry here, who they've just launched an internal podcasting platform. Of course, we've talked about Podbean and [inaudible 00:27:57] also having some different solutions.

Tina Dietz (27:58):

I think we'll continue to see more solutions come to the forefront as internal podcasting evolves and I think you're absolutely right. That internal podcasting is where external podcasting was maybe six, eight years ago? Maybe even 10 years ago? Down the pike. I think we're going to see a rapid increase in the consumption of it just because there's been so much interest in it, a huge influx of interest in it, and it doesn't have to be for an entire company. It can be for a division, it can be for an affinity group, it can be for a piece of the company and it doesn't have to be ongoing forever. It can be a limited series, for example, or experiments. Are you seeing the same kind of trends?

Jonas Woost (28:41):

I've had a conversation just this week with an organization ... Yeah, I would call them a large organization with dozens of thousands of employees and they're looking to use podcasts as a learning tool. They already have audio courses, video courses as well and audio courses and you can consume them to get further education within the company.

Jonas Woost (29:04):

They're looking to add a podcast level as well, which is a little more topical, a little more timely. It still has a learning element to it but you might interview other people that work in your organization. I haven't seen that before quite like that.

Jonas Woost (29:18):

The reason I'm telling you this is that it sort of keeps evolving, which is fantastic. There's like, "I never thought of this" and it comes to us as an idea and I'm telling you about it and I'm probably going to mention this to someone else as well. Good thing it's a ... I think it's such a great way of doing it.

Jonas Woost (29:34):

The one thing that holds it all together, which it is the thing that we are really passionate about is how can we use ... Maybe it's two things for me. First of all, how can we use storytelling to better have internal conversations within the company? Let's not just do the email that says like, "Well, no, we are doing X and the quarter results are Y and we've got a new CFO" and all that kind of stuff.

Jonas Woost (29:55):

How can we bring storytelling into all of this? Make it more compelling but also to really convey not just about what's the company doing but also where are we heading? What's the thing that we're doing? What's the vision of the company? It's easy to talk about a vision but to maybe illustrate the vision using audio I think is super powerful.

Jonas Woost (30:13):

The other thing is on a much more practical level when you work for a big organization, and I've worked for some, you don't want to read another email. You don't want to read another thing from the CEO that talks about another thing. It becomes like a time suck. It's like, "Oh, here we go. Here's another eight minutes of my life when I have to go through this and click on the thing and maybe watch the video."

Jonas Woost (30:33):

Just being able on a very practical level to being able to listen to something while I used to go to work and drive to work or use public transit. That is not happening right now [crosstalk 00:30:46].

Tina Dietz (30:47):

Going for walks.

Jonas Woost (30:48):

Going for walks. Thank you. Yeah.

Tina Dietz (30:48):

Going for walks.

Jonas Woost (30:49):

We're recording this in April 2020 so going for a walk or doing the dishes, being able to consume something while you do something else, or maybe even do other work. Maybe it's something like an internal podcast you can listen to while you do your actual work. It's just on a practical level that just is very handy. It doesn't eat into your other work activities. It's on top of everything else. I mean, even if you add up all the hours, if you have 100,000 people working somewhere for all of them to read an email for 10 minutes versus listen to the podcast while they're still working there is actually an economic sort of incentive to say, "Well, maybe we want people to listen to a podcast as opposed to read another thing."

Tina Dietz (31:29):

Exactly. Well, there's so much research around screen fatigue and around email fatigue and actual health impacts that are being reported far and wide about all of those factors. Audio being, by far, the most portable form of media. It really helps people and you don't have to engage that visual cortex, you don't have to consume information or read another thing, like you said.

Tina Dietz (31:55):

It definitely is a different experience both from a practical standpoint and even a neurological standpoint, particularly when you add the storytelling on top of it and then it doesn't feel like you're having to learn something or take in a lot of hard information. We are naturally wired to learn from stories. That makes it a lot easier as well.

Tina Dietz (32:20):

From a more practical standpoint, if a company was looking at potentially having a podcast, either internally or externally, what are some of the things they would want to think about or have in place even before, say, coming to Pacific Content?

Jonas Woost (32:40):

A lot of the times ... We're very lucky. A lot of people approach us. Often, they come to us with, "We want to make this podcast" or, "We're thinking of making the following podcast" or, "These are the ideas" and there's always one question I ask right away and I try and say it in a polite way, hopefully, it doesn't come across strange but I ask them why? Why do you want a podcast? That is often the step that people forget or sometimes they know why and I just want to find out myself. What is the real business reason to make a podcast? What's the problem that we're trying to solve here?

Jonas Woost (33:14):

What happens a lot on a regular basis is that people come to us and they want to make a podcast and, yes, they want to make a podcast but they actually don't have the, in our opinion, maybe the right reasons so then we're going back to saying, "Well, is that really the reason? Aren't you trying to solve this?"

Jonas Woost (33:31):

As we talk to them, pivoting why they want to make a podcast? This happens quite a lot. That is really sort of the groundwork is like what is the problem that we're trying to solve? Then, obviously, this is an obvious one for us who work in the industry but [inaudible 00:33:47] who do we want to reach? A narrow audience is great and that's something that we keep saying. It's fine to keep it narrow. You don't have to reach everyone. It's totally fine. If you think, "We want to reach ..." We work with a lot of tech companies. If you want to reach IT decision-makers in North America you think that's a small group of people, right? There can't be that many people [crosstalk 00:34:12].

Tina Dietz (34:12):

Comparatively, yes.

Jonas Woost (34:14):

But it's actually there's still so many people, it turns out thousands of people in that group so it's actually kind of a big group. Then we always say, okay, say that's our target group, that's fine and if we reach some other people, that's great. That's great collateral damage, doesn't cost us anything. It would be like it's wasted, right? We're reaching a bunch of people that are not going to buy your product so it's not actually meeting your business goals, which typically in a marketing context would be quite expensive, right? If you buy a bunch of ads somewhere and they don't reach the right people that's really expensive and a waste. Well, a podcast, yeah, sure, it's a waste. It's a great waste.

Tina Dietz (34:49):

It's a fantastic waste because you never know who those other people might know who might refer the podcast to may have another contact. You just don't know but it doesn't cost you any more.

Jonas Woost (34:58):

You got it. You got it. For marketers, it's not super obvious, right? It's obvious for us but some people don't even necessarily know how much does it cost to publish a podcast? That knowledge is not around. When that clicks with people and they realize, "Oh, right. This doesn't cost ..." That's a big moment for a lot of people because then it also changes the storytelling a little bit. Then we can say, "Okay, we want to reach the IT decision-makers." Well, we can still stories that are actually interesting for people, including IT decision-makers but also a bunch of other people.

Jonas Woost (35:32):

Actually this is exactly what we're doing with our Trailblazers project with Dell Technologies where it is a show that is really available and interesting for anyone who is interested in disruption and technological innovation, including IT decision-makers, which are the kind of people that Dell would want to reach but also a bunch of other people.

Jonas Woost (36:00):

Sorry. Going back to your question. Really trying to figure out what's the business goal? Who are we trying to reach? I think that's a great start. Then based on that, we with our clients have the kind of conversations, if this is what we want to do what's the kind of stories? What's the kind of tone? What's the kind of audio experience that we want to create that might help you solve that problem?

Jonas Woost (36:24):

That always is a complete collaboration. At no point, will we come in and say, "Well, you got to do X and that's going to be the solution." We actually don't [crosstalk 00:36:33].

Tina Dietz (36:33):

That doesn't work very well.

Jonas Woost (36:35):

It doesn't work very well. Actually, we always say that, I don't have any solutions, I have no solutions. We can develop the solutions together with our clients. The clients understand the problem and their business, of course, we understand audio storytelling and podcasting in general, and there's sort of that Venn diagram of us together then moving forward and make something that has a great impact. I think I might have moved on a little bit from your question here but that's sort of the way we like to work in collaboration.

Tina Dietz (37:01):

We're in the middle of storytelling here, Jonas. It's all good.

Jonas Woost (37:03):

Yes, clearly. Clearly.

Tina Dietz (37:04):

Exactly. Exactly. Obviously being inside the industry, I am intrigued by everything and to be totally and complete transparency, even as a podcast production house owner myself, I have a little bit of a professional crush on Pacific Content because of the level of content production that you do, that beautiful narrative, editing, and content storytelling development requires an enormous amount of talent, an enormous amount of planning, an enormous amount of labor when you get right down to it but the results are just fantastic and wonderful to listen to.

Tina Dietz (37:45):

I really appreciate you taking the time to join us here today and whether it's virtual or live, I look forward to hearing more from you and seeing you one way or another at the Podcast Inc Conference this fall of 2020.

Tina Dietz (37:58):

Thank you, everyone, for joining us here today on Podcast Inc. remember, you can go to Podcast Inc dot co and find out more about this upcoming and developing conference that is happening in fall of 2020.

Tina Dietz (38:11):

As podcasting develops, internal podcasting is constantly emerging and constantly coming up with new innovation and ways to solve problems. If you have questions, you can reach out to Jennifer at Podcast Inc dot co or, like I said, go to Podcast Inc dot co for signing up for information and all the details about the show that's coming up.

Tina Dietz (38:35):

I'm Tina Dietz from Twin Flames Studios and we'll see you next time here on Podcast Inc.