Introducing Lower Street Office Hours

I’m really excited to share a new project we’ve been working on: Lower Street Office Hours. Once a month, we’re opening the doors to answer all your Brand Podcasting questions with focused one-hour sessions featuring the best minds in branded podcasting.

Kicking off our September session is Steve Pratt, co-founder of Pacific Content, founder of The Creativity Business and author of the upcoming book Earn It: Unconventional Strategies for Brave Marketers. Register today to receive the first audio chapter of Steve’s upcoming book!

He’s going to show you how to create a strategy to earn attention.

After decades of working in media, Steve knows that in a world full of content, what really matters is getting your consumers’ attention. Without it, you’ve got no value. If your brand podcast doesn’t get attention, that means no listeners and frankly a waste of your time and money. With the right attention strategy, you unlock what podcasting can really do for your brand.

He’ll share how to nail your attention strategy, then we’ll open the floor for 30-min of Q&A.

Join us for free on September 18th, 2024 at 5pm BST / 12pm EST / 9am PDT.

Lower Street Annual Retreat

We just wrapped Lower Street’s retreats for this year welcoming 9 new faces to the team.

The timing was amazing for us, having just closed the acquisition of the Pacific Content brand. It was a big celebration and an opportunity to talk about the future.

As a fully remote team of 30 creative individuals, it can be tough to get us all in the same place, at the same time.

(Even this retreat was missing 3 team members, who got to enjoy a shorter local offsite, while the rest of us headed to Southern France. Next time, we’ll all get together!)

Getting a chance to hang out in person at least once a year is so much fun, and brings so much to our relationships. Our entire business is run through Zoom and Slack which works wonderfully, but for truly getting to know the person at the other end of the line, you can’t beat a bit of face-to-face.

Friendships are born or strengthened, folks from separate departments feel less siloed from one another, and we all feel excited and united around common goals.

In work sessions, we talked about the future of branded podcasting, about video, about AI. We’re very excited about the future and I’m looking forward to sharing the things we’ve been working on with you in this newsletter very soon.

This is truly one of my favourite events of the year and I’m so incredibly proud of this amazing group of people. Here’s to another positive year of branded podcastings!

Ads in Podcasting

This past month there have been several studies on ads in podcasting coming out. And they’re pointing to some signs publishers should be wary of. They’re also a great argument for branded podcasts!

Podcasting is getting more and more dense with ads. This year spending on podcast ads is up, but so is the amount of ads overall. It’s not that networks are charging more for their spots, it’s that they’re opening up more listening time to ads.

Broadcast radio in the US really suffers from its high density of spots. It feels as though you hardly get to spend time enjoying the content that you're there for.

It’s important for podcasting’s future that we don’t let it become like radio. We must remember what listeners come for and what they stay for, be sure to deliver on that and not let monetisation impinge too heavily on the experience.

It’s not just listeners that get a bad experience. A sea of ads means your ad is getting less impact.?

As Oxford Road recently showed us, the more ads there are taking up space, the less impact the impressions have, and there’s an increased risk listeners will skip that ad altogether.?

In this case, wouldn't it be better for your brand to own an ad-free podcast all to itself, rather than a 1-minute spot among a bunch of others?

Okay, you got me, I’m biased. There’s no denying the immediate reach, simplicity, and scalability of ad campaigns. But imagine building an audience that you don’t have to share with other advertisers, that can be focused entirely on the best listener experience possible - without interruption - and which you own forever.

We’re seeing more and more brands shift from advertiser to publisher, and it’s a huge opportunity. But I don’t need to tell you that,?you’re already subscribed to this newsletter!

Yet, if you do opt for advertising, there is some good news. Audio ads still match TV ads for consumer’s attention. It also turns out, that your money would be better spent on traditional media, rather than social.?

Latest At Lower Street

Introducing Superhuman AI: Decoding the Future. In our latest client production, Zain Kahn and Hassan Bhatti of Superhuman AI speak to AI industry pioneers and innovators to find out how smart technologies are transforming business. Superhuman AI is releasing their show also as a video podcast, you can catch it on YouTube here.

Cadence Bank’s In Good Companies is back for a special Sea-Suite Summer Series. Over the next four weeks tune in for episodes all about business and wellness including overcoming burnout, financial wellness and how to create a joyful corporate culture. Have a listen here.

- Harry Morton, Founder of Lower Street