A Podcast Mega-Plan and Drinking Your Own Champagne
The snowdrops are out, The Traitors is over (a bit disappointing if we’re honest), and tomorrow is February, so I hope January has been nice to you.
Ma-hoosive podcast media campaign
It’s been a big old week for Fresh Air Media.
You may already know this, but Fresh Air doesn’t just make podcasts. Yes, Fresh Air Production makes brilliant shows and short form creative for a huge range of clients.
But Fresh Air Media is a bit different. Our promotional arm acts as a specialist media agency with an unrivalled expertise in planning, buying and executing advertising campaigns across the podcast world. It doesn’t need to involve making your own podcast – it’s about matching great podcast shows and talent with the long form attention that is podcasting’s big USP. Your campaign can harness the power of existing shows and the intimate nature of podcast listening to get your message across in the perfect environment. We handpick podcasts from the biggest shows on the major platforms, to more niche series that are super-relevant to the target audience, from the UK to anywhere in the world, to create an approach that is bespoke to the brief and the client.
And this week saw the launch of our biggest ever campaign – for our long-term clients and partners at TV Licensing. Across this year, you’ll hear special segments in your favourite podcasts, including ‘Shagged Married Annoyed’, ‘Help I Sexted My Boss, ‘No Such Thing As A Fish’, ‘Therapy Crouch’, ‘Wolf and Owl’, ‘Frank Skinner Off The Radio’ and ‘Football Ramble’. The hosts will talk about the TV that’s bringing them together with their friends and family, seamlessly integrating it into their show, emphasising the superb TV that’s made possible by the licence fee (It’s not just for shows on the BBC you know).?
Each of the hosts has the creative freedom to frame the campaign in their own words, to wax lyrical about their favourite TV shows and give the message authentically to the audience who love and listen to them. The creative will stay really fresh and be frequently updated across the year, with superb collaboration between the podcasts, the client and us as the agency in partnership with RAPP.?
We’re tracking results with pixel-attribution, Podscribe and all the measurement tools you can shake a stick at, enabling a clear demonstration of the campaign’s ROI across a full year. We’ll show how the podcast work impacts metrics like brand recommendation, revenue and ROAS so that the client is able to see how this compares with more traditional media. It's been a huge collaborative effort between TV Licensing, RAPP and Fresh Air Media to use podcasts to target hard-to-reach audiences with real creative value.
Richard – Director of pressing Send on the Email – is now ready and waiting for his next media brief. He’s poised to create a mega-plan for a brand who wants to build their own ground-breaking podcast campaign. You can find out more by emailing [email protected] or go directly Richard himself – [email protected]
Words in the office.
This week saw another phrase added to the ever-expanding list of ‘Things Michaela – Director of Content and Head of Loud Nose Blows - has banned anyone, but especially Neil, from saying in the office’. This particular entry sounds bad, I admit, but was said very innocently.
Michaela, Izzie – Head of Going to Weddings – and I were discussing a shortlist of possible presenters for a new show. We had intended to choose five candidates, and we already had four on the list. I helpfully said that we would be happy with four brilliant options, and that Izzie shouldn’t feel obliged to ‘squeeze one out’ just to make up the numbers. Michaela immediately banned me from ever saying ‘Squeeze one out’ again in the office and she almost certainly will now ban it from future editions of this newsletter.
Acast ‘Drink their own Champagne’
There’s a phrase we have long used in the Fresh Air office - ‘Eat Your Own Dog Food’, a phrase often used in the software world to mean proving/understanding the value of the product you sell by demonstrably using it yourself. It was the reason for creating our own podcast series - Fresh Ears - in which we discuss the power of podcasts through the medium of podcasts.?
Well, acast are clearly a fancier, more refined bunch than us because they have set out to do the same exercise, but called it ‘Drinking Our Own Champagne’. Anyway, the case study shows how acast used ‘house ads’ running in their own inventory to shout about the power of podcast advertising. They tested ads in different languages across multiple territories and extolling the virtues of trackable ads with podscribe (who we’ve also used for the TV Licensing campaign above).
Over 22% of their new sign ups last year came about as a result of the ads, second only to paid search, and they saw a noticeable drop when the ads were paused. It makes sense, right? Contextual, smartly placed audio ads attracting the attention of potential advertisers who are already, by definition, podcast listeners. Smart stuff from the posh acast gang.?
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Fresh Air’s Giant Headphones on TV
Two years ago, we in the Fresh Air leadership team decided to make a big splash at The Podcast Show (2025 tickets now available) by creating an eye-popping stand. Many readers of this newsletter will know very well that this involved a giant pair of shiny, bright blue, 8-foot high headphones. They certainly attracted attention, with people stopping to take selfies standing in between them, and complementing us on their majestic presence. Most importantly, they were bigger than the BBC’s bright orange ones.
Other more cynical people suggested at the time that a pair of 8 foot tall headphones might have been an expensive vanity object, especially when they turned out to be too big for our storage unit and required another financial investment to take them apart again. However, those people are now laughing on the other side of their faces after the headphones appeared for a whole 0.8 seconds on Series 6, Episode 2 of the utterly ridiculous Channel 4 show - Celebrity Hunted. Zeze Millz and David "Sideman" Whitely, hosts of the +44 podcast, chose to hide somewhere the hunters would never think to find them – at the UK’s biggest podcast conference. Going completely undercover and incognito in a bright red jacket, the pair mingled in the crowd in front of some magnificent Fresh Air signage, and the huge camera crew who followed them took a wide shot of the Fresh Air headphones in all their glory.
Huge thanks to Auto Trader UK ’s Rachel Bickler who spotted the show-stealing appearance of the headphones, especially as she was one of those people who originally expressed some doubts over their value for money. She now concedes they were one of the podcast industry’s most astute investments.
领英推荐
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Clara Kavanagh rewinds to the 90s...
Grab your cosmos girlies! There’s a new Sex & The City podcast in town! If like me, you can’t get enough of podcasts about HBO’s finest export – you fawn over the fashion during the ‘Every Outfit’ podcast and you spent your pandemic doing laps of your local park laughing and crying along to Sentimental Garbage’s Sex & The City miniseries. ? You’ll be clicking your Manolo’s?to hear that one of the famous foursome finally has a podcast. Kristin Davis aka Charlotte York dives into her memories of the show with lots of behind-the-scenes stories on ‘Are You A Charlotte?’. ? In the first episode, Kristin does a great job of talking to the listener, and it really feels like she’s whispering all this juicy goss into your ear. She stays noticeably neutral on the Sarah Jessica Parker vs Kim Cattrall feud. But does kiss the ring of SJP one too many times, which might reveal where her allegiances lie. The 90’s nostalgia will have you clip-clopping over to your telly for an immediate rewatch.
Eva Higginbotham has a different kind of true crime series...
None of my friends who have given birth have given me the impression that it’s something they’d like to go through, say, every other day, or even once a week.? I’m not friends with Kaitlyn Braun, however.? But then again, she doesn’t actually go through labour that often either. She just pretends to.? From CBC and the BBC World Service comes this highly unusual true crime series about a woman who seems to enjoy pretending to be in labour while seeking the support of doulas. Over the course of days, she’ll fake contractions, sexual assaults, baby loss, even a coma. It’s a wild ride, and only the first 3 episodes of the 6-part series are out yet. Totally enthralling storytelling that fits squarely in the genre of ‘podcasts that make you go wtf.’ I can't wait for the next instalment. And a content warning - there's a lot of really tough subjects discussed in detail.?
What have we been listening to this week?
The sun.
You know we love a bit of space at Fresh Air, especially as our own Izzie hosts one of the world’s biggest Astronomy podcasts - The Supermassive Podcast. Well, now we can listen to the sun. NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has been closer to the sun than anything ever before in order to monitor its outer corona, and it had a bit of a listen.?
So what do solar winds sound like? Well, kind of windy. If you believe Ladbible where I stole this news from, and where you can listen for yourself, it sounds like the creepiest noise ever heard, or like it’s sent from the depths of hell. But, let’s face it, wind is wind.?
What have we been doing this week?
Stroking Matt Goss’s dog’s back.
Fresh Air Towers is based in Tileyard, Kings Cross. It’s a vibrant community of musicians, audio specialists, record labels and radio teams. Over 130 studios on one site, all with people who love creativity and sound. We love it, and it also brings up moments that wouldn’t happen anywhere else.
This week’s ‘Only in Tileyard’ event happened when we were working in the studio with our good friends and clients at The Wall Street Journal. I needed to pop out to find the driver who was waiting for one of our guests. He needed a parking permit to put in his window and was, I was assured, driving either a Mercedes or a BMW. So I headed back to the reception area and, sure enough, a driver was parked in a black Mercedes, so I walked up to it. Whereupon, the rear window came down and 80s boy band legend Matt Goss stuck his head out of the window. I hastily stopped myself from saying ‘Oh hello, blimey you’re Matt Goss.’ And just went for ‘Sorry – I’ve got the wrong car.’
Five minutes later, Matt had himself gone to the studio for his recording, and warmly introduced himself to Beckie – Fresh Air’s Head of Organising Everyone Everywhere All At Once – and Annie – Head of Snacks, Chat and Gambling. More importantly for them both, he introduced his French Bulldog Reggie who enjoys having his back scratched.?
Matt Goss is one of those people who splits the Fresh Air team by generation. Some have no idea who he is, given that Bros’s golden years were around 1988/89 well before they were born, and others are star struck, instantly wanting to go back and listen to Now that’s What I Call Music 11 (When will I be Famous?) and 13 (I Owe You Nothing). Annie’s 8 year old self was jumping around the room.
If you’re one of those people for whom Matt Goss doesn’t ring any bells, may I point you in the direction of their superb documentary ‘Bros: After the Screaming Stops’ – well worth the ￡3.49 rental fee on either Apple TV or Amazon Prime. If that sounds like too much, just enjoy ‘The Wisdom of Bros’ with the masterful quote:
‘One of my songs is called ‘We’re All Kings’, which is a song about, basically, if you see a man sweeping the road that man’s a King to me. He’s one of my Kings. Because I’m thankful that I don’t have to sweep the road.’
Is that enough about Matt Goss now? Probably.