Driving brand awareness with Buffer’s first narrative podcast
We worked with software company Buffer to create a narrative podcast that helped them reach their target audience of founders and marketers.
We created a 5-episode narrative series, Breaking Brand, in collaboration with software company Buffer.
With over 4 million users, Buffer build software that allows users to schedule and automate their social media. They have a strong record of using highly effective content marketing to grow their user base. In 2014, 70% of their app’s growth is attributed to content marketing.
Audience
With some experience of making a weekly social media advice podcast, Buffer came to us to help them develop and create a more editorially complex narrative show that targeted a specific audience of potential customers they’d identified.
Specifically, the podcast, Breaking Brand, was created to reach marketers and founders of direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands with the aim of building brand awareness, engaging customers and attracting new users.
The narrative series followed notable New York branding agency, Gin Lane, as they packed up shop to relaunch themselves as Pattern Brands, an ambitious new company that will house a family of DTC brands, starting with a cooking brand called Equal Parts.
Pattern Brands, a family of brands that are designed to help us slow down and enjoy daily life, were the subject of the podcast.
So, why is a podcast the right way to reach this audience?
Alignment between the market they wanted to reach and long-form podcast audiences – many DTC brands advertise or create podcasts themselves. Ash Read, Editorial Director at Buffer told us, “We've noticed that this is a medium where our DTC customers are investing money themselves, and there appears to be great synergy between the age, interests, and aesthetics of the people who work at these brands and the type of content available through podcasting.”
More engaged audiences than other mediums — Spotify reports that 60% of their audience say they tune into podcasts to educate themselves, and two out of three podcast listeners give them their full attention.
Expanding on success across content marketing and building a new audience — content is in Buffers DNA. Their blog has been a huge driver of customer acquisition since day one, and Buffer saw potential for this new medium. Ash told us “This type of content is unlike anything we've done in the past so producing this podcast enabled us to test out a new format and create an immersive, captivating content property that will keep people's attention and help us to connect with customers.”
“Message Heard helped us to take our idea and turn it into a show.
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Production
So, Buffer had a good idea of who they wanted to reach and we were all confident that podcasts were the best medium. Next up, we set about shaping the project and ensuring they met their goals with a Discovery Workshop.
This is where the details and practicalities of the production were nailed down. For Ash, “The Discovery Workshop helped to get all the ideas out in the open and enabled us to begin forming a narrative. After Discovery, we were able to begin thinking about all the moving parts of the show and how we could bring everything together. ”
From here we worked with Buffer on every element of the production to deliver a podcast that was audience ready; plotting the narrative, organising interviews, scripting, recording, transcription, editing, sound design and offering distribution advice.
“Message Heard was incredibly helpful, professional and creative throughout the production of the show. Whether we had simple questions about how to make a podcast or more complex issues, the team was always there to guide us along the way. ”
The show has been receiving positive feedback online and across in reviews, including from the subjects of the podcast! Emmett Shine is one of the founders of Pattern Brands.
Challenges and Scope
Every project comes with challenges and this was no different:
Firstly, this was an ambitious production which involved many moving parts — multiple locations, an international team and busy interview subjects who were launching a business of their own. Using our network of studio and producers, we were able to handle the logistics of the project whilst keeping the shows narrative and audio quality on point.
Ash was also on first time hosting duties. Stepping behind the microphone can be incredibly nerve wracking however with an experienced producer and editor by his side through the project, Ash did an incredible job.
The result? A stress free production process and quality final product.
“There were some challenges we identified before working with Message Heard that we didn’t know how we’d get around.”
Impact
The show launched in November 2019 to a great response from Buffer’s target audience. The show was featured on Apple’s New and Noteworthy section alongside some of the biggest names in the podcasting game, and garnered praise across social media and podcasting apps.
Breaking Brand appeared on the Apple Podcast homepage, alongside some big names.
One of Buffer’s key measures of success was how long listeners spent listening to the show.
And the show is seeing really strong completion rates — on average, people are listening to 83% of each episode.
This means that the audience isn’t just showing up, they’re sticking around and engaging with the content. For Ash, this has a lot of potential “If we continue to publish content in this feed, they’ll continue listening. That feels really valuable for us.”
Find out how you can create an engaged audience which sticks around. Reach out to jake@messageheard.com. Let’s talk podcast!