Podcasts bring brands to life

You can do that with words on a page (you may just have heard of the blog), but when it comes to even greater ‘pass it on' value, there's nothing like sound and pictures. Enter the podcast.

Podcasting up a storm

For new readers starting here, a podcast is really any kind of audio or video content downloadable from the Internet. Radio stations and other media outlets are already podcasting up a storm. The Mail & Guardian Online does a weekly podcast and Darren Scott's East Coast Radio pod won Podcast of the Year in this year's SA Blog Awards (talking of ‘pass it on' - you've probably heard his spoof calling the Zim Embassy switchboard. See how these things spread?).

Podcasts offer an incredible opportunity for marketers. The bottom line is that you now have a way of getting content to your target markets without having to persuade a media channel to carry it or to pay huge advertising rates.

Podcasts are:

• targetable - you can create highly relevant, niched content and then promote it to a specific target market
  
• measurable - you can see how exactly many downloads and subscribers you have
  
• controllable - it's your content
  
• responsive - set up a blog alongside your podcast, alter content according to the comments, respond to issues. You are actually having a conversation with your market
  
• boundary free - it's the 'Net
  
• relatively inexpensive

However - and this is important - the content must be:

• Excellent quality - podcasters have an advantage in South Africa in that our radio stations are offer little variety and originality - especially when it comes to speech content (I know, I used to work in it). This provides an opportunity to create unmissable, targeted content.

• Real - (this is the big one). While there is value in having product or service information embedded in a website, there is no point at all in producing an audio version of a company brochure as a regular podcast. Why would anyone listen? One of the reasons social media has been embraced so warmly in South Africa and elsewhere is that consumers are losing faith in the content of traditional media. Even if editorial is not actually paid for, a lot of the time it has been influenced in some way by advertisers. Although there are podcasts internationally that carry adverts, people can fast forward straight past them and the chance of real success lies in branded content. This is not about advertising or even just product information. It is about coming up with ideas for real programmes that, through informing or entertaining, enhance your customers' experience of your brand.

Brand positioning example

Here's an example of what I mean. In November 2007, Old Mutual did a six-part podcast called Old Mutual Success Stories Six high profile SA journalists (Ferial Haffajee, John Robbie, Fred Khumalo, RudeBoy Paul, Patricia Glyn and Aden Thomas) chose six South Africans they thought of as successful (including David Kau, Irvin Khosa, Frederick Van Zyl Slabbert, Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu). They then did an in-depth, half-hour interview with them which was recorded and put up on the Old Mutual site. OM was mentioned in the opening and closing billboard, otherwise it was all about six remarkable conversations.

Old Mutual's present brand positioning is all being as successful as you can be (“invest in your success”). This podcast brought that concept to life and made it an experience. It meant people interacted with the brand for up 30 minutes at a time instead of 30 seconds. It was something unexpected and different. It gave people inspiring, top quality content and therefore a very positive feeling about the brand that gave it to them. And all for a fraction of the cost of a 30” TV ad.

There's no doubt that podcasting is young in the world and in its earliest infancy in SA. All the issues about Internet penetration and bandwidth still apply. But that's true of any social media. The power can still be harnessed. And, forget Internet penetration, what about mobile penetration? Podcast via cellphone and you've got 90% of the SA adult population on offer. Podcasting is a medium with incredible potential. It is flexible, cheap and just waiting for some cunning exploitation. Give it a whirl.