Annalise Nielsen: Branded Podcasts and Beyond

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  0:02  
The sound off podcast, the show about podcast and broadcast starts now.

Matt Cundill  0:13  
Meet Annalise Nielsen. She's the head of podcast strategy and development at lower Street. Lower Street is the UK company that bought Pacific content from Rogers. Rogers is the company that abandoned Pacific content. It was lower street that rescued it from the scrap heap. Rogers is also the same company that laid off part of the dedicated podcast team at frequency Podcast Network earlier this month, thoughts, feelings and impressions about how we feel about all that are posted on LinkedIn. If you feel like it, you can go look all that up. I mentioned that so we don't have to talk about it at great length on this episode. Annalisa was caught up in all that, but today we're here to tell you there's a happy ending. Today we will find out how she worked her way into this amazing story telling role at lower Street, and what it takes to make a great branded podcast. And now Anna Lisa Nielsen joins me from Toronto. Annalisa, when you were at Queen's University, what podcasts were you listening to?

Annalise Nielsen  1:12  
I was not listening to podcasts. And I was at Queen's I had never really heard about podcasts. Actually, my major was film and media, and there was a course that I took that was around marketing and media, I believe, or something like that, and the professor said that she was going to make podcast episodes for each lecture and publish them after the fact. And at the time, I assumed that that meant that she was just recording the audio from the lecture and then putting that up. But it wasn't. She actually was producing full length episodes based on the content of the lecture. Anyways, I ended up skipping pretty much all the lectures because I figured I could just listen to them after the fact, and went back to go listen. And she had only made two episodes and then stopped because nobody was downloading it, and she thought that it wasn't worth it, so there was no content at all available. And I was screwed, because I had not gone to any of those lectures, but yeah, that's the first time I really heard about a podcast. That's the first time I opened Apple podcasts. And that was probably 2011 I want to say. So yeah, kind of earlier days, but podcasts hadn't really taken off yet by the time I graduated queens.

Matt Cundill  2:15  
So that's one of the early indications that podcasting is very difficult, is when your professor can't kick out the episodes.

Annalise Nielsen  2:21  
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And she was kind of at the cutting edge too. She was ahead of the curve. But you

Matt Cundill  2:28  
said something, when podcasting took off? When did podcasting take off? I

Annalise Nielsen  2:33  
guess, like when serial came out? Right? That's sort of like the marker that everybody uses. When was that 2014, and when Apple added Apple podcasts in the iOS update to people's phones automatically, yeah, that's like the marker that we use in the industry, right? So yeah, I was out of Queens around then. So it was, like, before my time. It wasn't actually until I went to grad school that podcasts were more of a of a thing, and that's when I was more introduced to them. And I'm, I mean, such a cliche, like I listened to serial first, like everybody else,

Matt Cundill  3:05  
where was grad school.

Annalise Nielsen  3:07  
I went to Tmu, formerly Ryerson, and I did an MFA in documentary media there. So this is good, because

Matt Cundill  3:15  
I can hear you sort of inching closer and closer to what you know, the things that podcasts, you know, offer.

Annalise Nielsen  3:21  
Yes, exactly, yeah. Truthfully, I had a degree in Film and Media from Queens and Queens. Kingston doesn't have a bustling film industry, right? There wasn't a lot of opportunities there to, like, work a paying job in the field, and I didn't I'm not from Toronto, so like in the summers, it's not like I had an opportunity to work in Toronto as an intern, an unpaid intern, in those days. So I couldn't afford to, like, live in Toronto and work for free. So yeah, I had no experience at all, and I just went to grad school because I was like, I don't know what else to do. I have no job prospects. So, but yeah, that's definitely when I was introduced to podcasting.

Matt Cundill  4:01  
So this is the great you know, media, how do we get over the hump? Question here, if you want to make it media, the most opportunities are in Toronto. If you want to make it in French, you know, you go to Montreal if you want to make it internationally. You know, you can start with New York, Los Angeles and go from there. But that time in Toronto, what was the big break where now I can afford an apartment, now I can afford life. What's the job that got you there? Honestly,

Annalise Nielsen  4:29  
I just I got a lot of OSAP, and that's how I was able to afford an apartment living here. But yeah, I mean, truly, it was barely. I lived in a one bedroom apartment, and I had a roommate that I met on Craigslist, and he lived in the living room, and I lived in the bedroom. So it's not like I was all of a sudden, had money, it was flush, and could make it work. I actually, like, when I first moved to Toronto, was working at a long ghost in a grocery store, and I worked there for a while, but my first, like, I guess real job in media was working at a cat. Like television station, and I'm not, I'm not Catholic. I wasn't raised Catholic at all. It just happened to be that that was the job that I got, and, yeah, I was programming ads for the TV station at the time.

Matt Cundill  5:11  
Wait, there's a Catholic TV station.

Annalise Nielsen  5:15  
You can Google it, and you'll find it. It's actually very, very popular. I'm hesitant about how much I can say, but

Matt Cundill  5:22  
well, is this over? Is this over the air, on the internet, over

Annalise Nielsen  5:26  
the air, broadcast? Yeah, there's a lot of a lot of known as that tune in all day, every day. Yeah, it's a pretty big deal. And they, they do produce a lot of documentaries. That's how I sort of got connected to them. I was doing kind of like an internship, but some volunteer work, essentially for the doc Institute in Toronto, so like documentary organization of Canada, and then the doc Institute, and they would run events. And then at one of these events, actually, it was the woman that I was working for and volunteering with who introduced me to, I guess, the head of operations at this Catholic TV channel, and then she gave me the job. So that's how I was connected. But yeah, it was finally being in Toronto and being able to do some of that unpaid work that led to finally a job. Hopefully, there's less of that nowadays. I don't know how much unpaid work people have to do nowadays, but there was a lot of that back then.

Matt Cundill  6:18  
Actually, as you're speaking and talking about this, it sort of rings true that, you know, nothing's changed, and that your first formative years in media, much like mine, were, were spent on a couch, and we also didn't have Craigslist back then. Yeah,

Annalise Nielsen  6:33  
yeah. Honestly, was lucky that that roommate was pretty great. I hadn't even seen the apartment before I moved in either. It was like one of those things where we had a call and he seemed nice, and so I just went for it. But it was really lucky.

Matt Cundill  6:47  
Congratulations on winning the Craigslist lottery.

Annalise Nielsen  6:50  
Yeah, I really did. I really did. And one of the things that really strikes me

Matt Cundill  6:55  
about that job that you did in TV is, you know, you're scheduling ads and doing, you know, what is in traditional media, known as traffic. So that's a that's a good learning point for when it comes to, you know, dynamic audio and putting the mid rolls in, and knowing how the ads flow and that sort of thing in the future,

Annalise Nielsen  7:11  
in a lot of ways, is a lot clunkier for TV. But I mean, also with broadcast television, you have, there has to be something on the air at all times, like, it's different than digital. So most of the job was figuring out, like, Okay, we've got, here's a bumper here for five seconds and another bumper for 10, and I've got this ad that goes a minute 30, and I've got, you know, that was sort of the job was like, you don't want to repeat the same ad over and over again. You want it to be the other complication is that the Channel broadcast in four languages, so the ads had to be aligned with the language that was broadcasting at that time. But yeah, coordinating a live event was hell. They had a lot of live events also for like things going on at the Vatican Apple addresses and things like that. So that was also very difficult to coordinate around.

Matt Cundill  8:03  
And that would be some early mornings too.

Annalise Nielsen  8:05  
I didn't work that many early mornings, but yes, I think the people who were actually in the booth were working a lot of early mornings. Yeah, you're up when the Pope is up. Exactly,

Matt Cundill  8:17  
yeah. What happened between when you were working there, and then when you found yourself getting to Rogers, is there something else in the middle?

Annalise Nielsen  8:24  
Yeah, yeah. Actually, that Job was not very long lived. I was only there for about three months, maybe even, I don't even know, it wasn't very long basically, they found out I wasn't Catholic, and then that was the end of it, which is fine. I mean, it is what it is. But I quickly got another job working at Antica productions, and so I worked there for a few years, and I was working there at the end of my grad school time. By that point, I had decided that my thesis project for grad school was going to be a podcast. And so that's how the podcasting thing kind of came into the picture. And so at Antica, they had a podcast network already. It was sort of a collection of mostly independent podcasts. There were a few podcasts that were being produced in house. And then the vision was to sort of make it more of a collective of independence. And so yeah, the podcast network, I sort of identified that. That's where I wanted to be, and then weaseled my way in and sort of like forced my way into the podcast network side of things,

Matt Cundill  9:26  
that's another great media trade if you want to succeed, and that's finding a way in. Weasel your way in, force your way in without, you know, going to jail, breaking entry is generally no good. So you know what constitutes weaseling in.

Annalise Nielsen  9:41  
I guess I kind of noticed that it was probably the area where people were the least, there was the least focus on it, right? Like, at that time, it was really early days of podcasting. It's not that people didn't care about it. It's just like they were also producing feature length documentaries. And like, you're gonna spend your time on that feature length documentary with. The Tragically Hip, and you're not going to be focused on this, like independent podcast. So there was an opportunity that I saw there to make it, to volunteer, to take on more of that work, and then from there, just like I spent a lot, I just I really loved podcasting, and I was really passionate about it even then, and I spent a lot of time listening to a lot of podcasts, and a lot of time reading about podcasting. I was subscribed to hot pod and to pod news and to all of the newsletters, and I, like, carved out it was like, the best part of my day was Tuesday mornings when I could read hot pod and really learned a lot about the industry and what was possible. Because back then, it was, like, right at the beginning of dynamic ad insertion, for example, and we weren't using dynamic ad insertion. And so, like, one of my jobs was to sort of track, okay, how many ads ran for this sponsor on each of these podcasts. And it was, it was all manually done, and it was so difficult because all the ads were embedded, and it posed all kinds of issues and and we had to pay out to each independent podcaster, because that's how it worked back then, right? So, yeah, like, I saw sort of an opportunity there that like, hey, we could use this technology, it would be so much more beneficial for us and make our lives so much easier. And then it was like, Okay, well, now it's my job to implement it, because I'm the one who brought it up, right? I mean, it was really good opportunity for me, because it was something that people weren't paying as much attention to. It gave me a lot of room to learn on my own and to kind of, like, make mistakes, and it wasn't the end of the world. And yeah, like, I got to, I shouldn't say I got to. It was very tedious work, but like, transitioning everything over to dynamic ad insertion. You know, that's not an opportunity that people would normally have gotten, but I got to have that experience, which gave me a lot of insight into how that technology works, and that was hugely beneficial for me in my career. So

Matt Cundill  11:56  
in my mind, I'm watching you peel out all these stale ads that are sitting in there, and you peel that out, and then you put a marker in. And

Annalise Nielsen  12:03  
exactly, yeah, it was that for every episode of every podcast that we had, yeah.

Matt Cundill  12:10  
And for those who are listening, you know, you said, Antica, I believe that's the company behind The Tragically Hip documentary that is now, you know, that was recently released and is quite popular. And, you know, Mike Downey, brother of Gord Downie, had a hand in that. And you know, when you mentioned Kingston, first thing that comes to mind is, you're probably not going to be in media unless you're starring in a big film. And there you were working with, you know, Kingston's biggest story at a company that releases that film.

Annalise Nielsen  12:39  
It was pretty cool. It was pretty cool. I will say I got invited to a party that Gord was supposed to be at. It was like a tragically hit party, like a release party for one of the docs that they were working on, or so I don't remember the context of it. Anyways, Gord ended up passing like that week, and so the party became, like awake instead, or not awake, but like a memorial service, I guess. And anyway, I was still invited, which was really nice of them. But I was like, I can't go to this thing. I don't even know these people like this camp. I'm way too personal to, like, walk in and I don't know. So, yeah, I didn't go. But I mean, certainly it was a cool I mean, now that we're talking about it, I'm like, maybe I should have weaseled my way into that instead of podcasting, I don't know why I let that one pass me by, but yeah, I was not very involved in the I wasn't involved really at all in any of the feature like documentary side of things, but very cool to be around all of the people who were and

Matt Cundill  13:35  
then you found your way to Rogers.

Annalise Nielsen  13:37  
Yeah, I had a coffee with Jordan Heath Rawlings, and we talked about his plans for podcasting and what they were working on, and it sounded really great. And they had a an opening a couple months later for a digital editor position. And that's, that's how I got in. But it was not a the digital editor role was, like, pretty loosely defined. So again, it was kind of like one of like one of those things where they knew that I had a lot of knowledge about things, and we, we kind of figured out together what that role looked like.

Matt Cundill  14:07  
At the beginning of this, did you spend most of your time working on the big story?

Annalise Nielsen  14:13  
Actually, no, the big story was always not as much my focus. I mean, everybody on the team worked on the big story and, like, obviously, I love the big story. I listened to the big story all the time. And there were parts of my job that were big story focused. But compared to everybody else on the team who sort of had to be at the time, like, full on big story focus, I shouldn't say that there were people who were working on other shows too, but it was much less my focus. Then I would do things like post on socials about the big story, or like, draft tweets send out, like, recommended social, you know, copy for all of the different radio stations at Rogers, things like that. So I was, like, kind of involved in the big story, but not very. Much I was more involved, and I guess the rest of the network, and looking at how all of those things kind of fit together. And again, like pretty quickly, my role was everything except for actually making the audio, which is sort of what it was at Antica as well. It was like we worked with a bunch of independent podcasters who were producing the audio, and my job was really to manage ad campaigns and figure out the tech side of things. And so again, that was sort of where I fell in, which, again, like at the time, that wasn't my intention. It was just that's what the need was. And I loved podcasting enough that I also enjoyed that. So it's like there were so many more opportunities in positions where you were not the one making the podcast, but you were the one, you know, doing the marketing or doing that ad campaigns. So it was just, it's not that I wanted to be there. It's just that no one else was doing it. Someone had to do it, and I didn't mind doing it, and there was an opportunity. So it was kind of like that at frequency too. It was like that. That's where the opportunity was. So I that's where I fit in to the picture.

Matt Cundill  16:10  
You have a front row seat to this, and this is one of the things that I profess to my radio friends who don't listen to me, but maybe they'll listen to you tell me about how important or how effective using radio to promote podcasting is, because you're writing the copy, and I know you hear it on the radio, and I know you see the results. I'm

Annalise Nielsen  16:31  
very interested in your opinion on this, actually, because you didn't give me a lot of context into which way you go, either direction. But I think that if you have that, if you have the inventory, if you have the ability to promote it on the radio, then why wouldn't you like you should use every single channel that's available to you. I think it can be very effective if the talent is also the podcast host, like, for example, Roz and Mocha, they have a podcast that is massive and hugely popular, and a lot of people who listen to them on the radio also listen to their podcast. And a lot of people listen to the podcast because they miss the radio show, you know, and it's different content. Typically, there's some repeat segments, but most of it is like all new content in the podcast, and that's super effective for their target audience, for the big story. I think we did what we could. I don't know that it was like a huge wave of people, but it certainly was better than starting with nothing, right? Like getting to start off with, like, radio ads. And radio spots was certainly helpful. And Jordan would go and record those every day, and he did a really good job of, I mean, Jordan's a phenomenal writer, and he only got better and better at writing for the year. So he would, like, write these little tags that would run every day and that were, he's pretty good at enticing you to go listen. So yeah, they did a good job with it. It wasn't just like a hey, check out the book story. That's a podcast. You know, there was like, Jordan coming in and saying, This week, we're talking about this, and today we talked about that. And yeah, so they did do a job with

Matt Cundill  18:02  
it. Yeah, we were lectured a few weeks ago on this very podcast by Steve Goldstein, who said, Yeah, you're just telling people to check out the sound off podcast. You're not really giving people a reason to do it. So we've since rewritten the promo.

Annalise Nielsen  18:15  
Nice, yeah, it makes a big difference. I think, yeah, I will say a lot of podcast ads that I hear on the radio now are just that, like, it's just like, go listen to this podcast. Or, I don't know, like, there's a lot of podcasts where it's like, Hey, I'm so and so, and I'm so and so, and we have a podcast where we have unfiltered conversations that don't just stay on topic, and we talk about anything and everything. Go check it out. And it's like, okay, well, I have no idea who either of those people are. And like, I don't know what you're talking about on the podcast. Like, why would I listen to that? I don't want to hear your ramblings. Like, what, what? So, yeah, there's a lot of bad radio ads too.

Matt Cundill  18:54  
I sometimes imagine just walking into a bar, and if two people stood up and gave me that pitch to sit down and have a beer with them, I would probably leave the bar.

Annalise Nielsen  19:03  
Yeah, it's weird that that seems to be what people think that people want to hear. I've noticed this more and more with podcast ads. That seems to be the thing that people, I don't know, podcasters assume that listeners want, which is weird.

Matt Cundill  19:21  
I think, when they say, when they think of a promo of some sort, that's sort of in their mind, what they hear, and so they're just replicating it without really giving, you know, sort of the reason and the enticing part to go speaking of somebody who's written a lot of bad promos. To

Annalise Nielsen  19:37  
be fair, I don't think I'm particularly good at it, either. So it's definitely a skill.

Matt Cundill  19:43  
Well, I think this does speak to one thing, and that's, you know, if you do a show, you want a lot of people to listen and come to the show, so you try to write it, so a lot of people will come instead of just focusing on the two or three. And I, by the way, I do have a question related to that coming up in just a sec, because. Will talk a little bit about marketing podcast, but I wanted to talk a little bit about, you know, your experience getting into the branded podcast space, and how did that happen? And I guess the first question I would ask is, why would it be important for somebody who's in the B to B marketing to get in and have a branded podcast? Two big questions.

Annalise Nielsen  20:20  
So your first question, How did I get into it? I actually produced my first brand podcast at Antica. We were making a show for Accenture. It was called the AI effect, and I was part of the production team on the first season, and then ended up fully producing the second season. So yeah, that was my first kind of insight into why a brand would have a podcast, and how that would sort of work, and what that relationship looks like, and how you work with clients, and then, yeah, at frequency, I don't know. Do you know the lines were much blurrier than about what a branded podcast is compared to today? Like everybody was kind of doing branded podcasts in different ways. If you had a podcast network, or if you made podcasts, it kind of felt like that was just something you would potentially do. It wasn't as divided like this is a company that doesn't do branded podcasts, and this is a company that does or like podcast network without brand apart. You know, it was blurrier then, so I feel like there was a little bit of that, even at frequency before. Frequency, before they bought Pacific content. And then when Rogers bought Pacific content, that was pretty early on to when I was working at Rogers, and I was there for, I mean, the Pacific content team kind of integrated with the frequency team, so we all sort of worked together in a lot of ways, yeah, and then eventually just kind of made the full move over. So

Matt Cundill  21:44  
if you have a branded podcast, and you're working with a company, and I know we see this all the time, like we have difficulty understanding some of the best things that we have, but in terms of marketing a branded podcast, what are some of the tools that a lot of people just sort of overlook as being, hey, you know, you could really be using that to promote your podcast. Good question,

Annalise Nielsen  22:06  
newsletters, that's probably the biggest one. Most companies have a newsletter, and newsletters actually do convert quite well. It's pretty good vehicle for getting people to download a podcast, compared to some others. Like a lot of people just turn to social. And like social, as has been discussed over and over again, is not really the best way to get people to listen to a podcast. It doesn't really convert to a lot of listeners. Still useful to use. It still worth doing, but not necessarily going to lead to the most downloads.

Matt Cundill  22:35  
And I've heard you say that at a conference before, and probably twice, and then I say to myself, Why do I spend all this time doing that when I'm being told not to, or it doesn't convert as much, but I'm still addicted to the allure of doing it, because I feel I haven't done my homework unless I do it.

Annalise Nielsen  22:55  
Yeah, I don't know it's tricky. Like I feel more conflicted. It's not super black and white, and white, and I feel more conflicted about it now than I used to like I think that there's still value in posting on social media about your podcast. It's like having a billboard to tell everybody that you have a podcast, right? People aren't gonna stop right away and download the podcast, but the more that they see it, and the more that you get it in front of them, the more that they hear about it, the better it is, like, the better chances that they're gonna go download it. I think that social also requires a lot more repetition than other channels, like, I need to see an ad on social 30 times before I, like, click on it, you know, whereas I maybe only need to hear a podcast at once before it sticks. So I don't know, maybe that's part of it too. It's the consistency of posting on social?

Matt Cundill  23:42  
Yeah, and I really like what you said about you know, it's a billboard ad. You're driving down the highway, and the billboard is there, and we know people are scrolling on the information super highway. So here's my easiest way that I market a show, because it doesn't take any time out of my life and it doesn't hurt too much, so I like to watch football, and they have some commercials. And instead of watching the commercials, I'll pick up my phone and I will go to Spotify, and I will share whatever podcast episode I want and put it on the Instagram feed, and it has a direct link to Spotify. And it may not be necessarily about getting somebody to listen to that show, but the artwork is going in front of their feed, and it's free, and they're passing the billboard on the information superhighway,

Annalise Nielsen  24:31  
yeah, and I mean, if you're a brand, it also provides you with positive like, it provides you with brand lift, just for people to know that you have this podcast, like, if You're a brand and you're trying to create an association with some, like, bigger cause or something, for example, then posting about the fact that you have this new podcast about sustainability or whatever it is that's still providing you with this, like, positive brand association that's still giving you a brand lift, even if people don't go and download it. So I think there's still. Benefits to it, and especially like, now that everybody's recording video with their podcasts, and now that there's like, clips that people can see, I think there is value in those clips. Like a lot of people are just watching the clips, and you can grow your your social media audience off of that as well, even if they don't go and download the whole episodes. I don't know. I think a good example of that is, like Diary of a CEO. Everybody talks about this podcast all the time, and I have seen so many clips from that podcast that I didn't want to like the podcast. I don't want to like the podcast because I was resistant to sort of like corporate culture. I guess maybe corporate bro culture that I thought it was. But I have enjoyed some of the clips from that show on social media, and then just yesterday, I went to download that podcast to listen to it for the first time in full. And I hate it. I don't want to listen to any of that podcast, but I probably will still enjoy the clips. I just really don't like the full episodes of that podcast.

Matt Cundill  25:56  
Well, that's tough to measure, right? So here's some effective clips that are going out that resulted in one download, yet you're highly engaged and highly interested in the clips and don't care much for the show. And I think most of us who are deep in the podcast, and let's say we have like eight, nine podcasts that we listen to, have at least one show where we just watch the clips and don't care much for the show. I will out myself for me that has calmed down with Aaron Andrews and Clarissa Thompson and the clips are great. I just don't think I can dedicate 45 minutes to listening to the episode. I'm already spending time with them on my television and with the clips. I don't know if I'm going to invest the 45 into the podcast. Yeah,

Annalise Nielsen  26:39  
I feel that way about any like, re watch podcast. Like, every now and then I'll get a clip from the new girl re watch podcast, for example. And I'll watch the clip because I'm like, I like to new girl. I like these characters, whatever. But I'm not listening to an extra 45 minutes about each episode that ever came out about new you know, I don't care about it that deeply. I just like, will enjoy watching the clip. So, yeah, I agree with you. I think what it comes down to is, what's the goal of you launching the podcast? Right? Like, if the goal is advertising revenue, and that's why you're making this podcast, if you're like a big podcast network that is trying to increase your ad load so that you have more inventory, so you can sell more ads, you can make more money, then people watching clips of the podcast on Tiktok does nothing for you, right? That's really not valuable unless you're monetizing that Tiktok and you're like monitoring it to that point that you're actually going to turn that into a whole other monetized channel. People watching clips is not helpful unless they go and download the show. But if you're you know, a celebrity that is an actor who's maybe a little washed up and is like, looking to maybe inspire a reboot of the TV show you were on 15 years ago, then you actually really don't care if people go and download the podcast or if they see the clips on Tiktok. What you care about is how passionate they get about a reboot of your show, because that's where the real payoff is. So like, I think it just depends on the goal, but for brands, I mean, the goal for brands is really just creating that association with the content that you're talking about on the podcast. And so yes, there's a lot of benefits for brands to having that sort of like, long form connection and building that relationship with listeners of the podcast, but, but I guess, if the equation is like, either they watch a clip of the podcast or they don't consume anything of the podcast at all, because there's somebody who's never going to go download the full episode, I would rather have them at least watch The

Matt Cundill  28:38  
clip, right? Something's better than nothing. Yeah,

Annalise Nielsen  28:41  
it's still worth something, and I think it's worth the cost of creating that content.

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  28:48  
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Matt Cundill  29:21  
How do you pick between the socials? And we say this at a period here when blue sky is beginning to take off. I'm not sure how much X audience I have left to help me figure all this out.

Annalise Nielsen  29:32  
I think it really, really depends on the audience that you're trying to reach. I think for the big story, for example, back in the day, Twitter was the biggest channel, because that's where the target audience was, like people who are really invested in the news, who really care about the news, that's where they are, at least in Canada, and I think it's similar, like for Canada land, for example, probably they did a lot of their audience, I think is probably their invested audience. There's their paying audience, I think is probably on. Twitter, or was now blue sky, I guess. But I think if you're like a Lifestyle podcast or like a more of a chat show, particularly if you're trying to reach millennial women, for example, then like, you're probably better off on Instagram and focusing on that channel. So yeah, I think it just really depends. I think if you're like, for example, we've worked with some brands where, if you're, like, trying to reach a developer, or, like, somebody working in tech, you might be better off focusing on Reddit, for example, or maybe, like, really putting a lot of emphasis on YouTube and your YouTube strategy, because that's where those people are most of the time. So I think it's important to just think about, like, Where does your target audience live?

Matt Cundill  30:42  
And you touched on it briefly. So when it comes to, oh, I want to start a podcast, I feel like it's now not even really a question anymore. Should we do video? And you know, the answer is yes. I think the answer is also, you have to figure out what your video strategy is. But you know, if I come to you and I'm like, I really only wanted a podcast in audio, convince me of the video argument and what I should be considering, I

Annalise Nielsen  31:13  
don't know if I'm the person to do that, because I actually don't know that I feel super strongly that every podcast should be video

Matt Cundill  31:20  
well, then all you need to do is validate my feelings. Yeah, exactly.

Annalise Nielsen  31:25  
I think video can complicate things quite a lot. It also is very limiting, like, if you have to work with video, then you're limited in what type of show you can make, because now you can't make podcasts that, especially if you're trying to make a full length video episode. Say, like, not saying, video can't play any role at all in the podcast. I actually think it would be smart to have, you know, some stuff recorded in video that you can use as clips for social later. But if we're talking full length video episodes, I actually would strongly recommend not doing that most of the time, because I don't think the cost is worth it for most people. And I think it's super limiting, like you basically have one option for a format. If you're making a video podcast, there's nothing wrong with that format, but that's the only one you have to work with now, right?

Matt Cundill  32:13  
Yeah, so I'll use an example, though, because you worked on the gravy train, tremendous podcast, and you know, number one on Apple podcasts, and why Doug Ford is still Premier is beyond me, because I listen to that and go, do people really know what they're voting for? And so some compelling arguments, compelling stories. Anyhow, I feel bad sometimes when I hear all the stories come out of Ontario. But you know, you've got the stories, and you've, you've painted these wonderful pictures of what's going on. I'm like, what are you gonna do for the video? And I can only guess that you just take the audio and put a slide card in there and let the ball bounce as we listen to this on YouTube, and wear a t shirt that says I'm here for the search.

Annalise Nielsen  32:52  
Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think it's interesting that you bring that up, because when we were making the gravy train, we were really trying to push for marketing, for the gravy train. And what I really wanted to do was buy a bunch of ads in other podcasts. And we were lucky that we were able to coordinate some cross promo campaigns with some like, really great shows. Like, we got a lot of buy in from Leon nafock, the producer of the first season of slow burn, which was very much an inspiration for the podcast. So that was really exciting, that he was willing to work with us and to do some cross promo there. So we were able to secure some pretty great ad spots on other shows just through that. But we wanted to buy some ads on other podcasts, and that was something that, you know, was sort of unheard of at Rogers, and like, not something that they did. And so instead, we kind of went the route of, there was a video trailer that was produced that included, it incorporated some stock footage and some like photos, and both video and photos that were owned by City News, which was great. That was a huge asset to us. So we could do that, and they were able to cobble that together and make like this. It was a really great little video trailer. Honestly, it was awesome. But then that was promoted on social. And the problem was that, I think people saw the video trailer as like an ad, and they assumed that this was like a documentary, or like that there was a video aspect to it. They didn't understand that it was a podcast. And so it led to, like, no downloads of the show, because people just didn't know what it was from that. So, like, I don't know it's, it's interesting because, like, I think the visual aspect of the Rob Ford story is so important. Like, there were so many stock photos that we would we tried to publish them on social I'm not sure how effective it was. I think it could have been really cool if we'd had, like, a website that was interactive, where you could go and just find all of these photos, or find these, like, video clips, or find the stuff. Because, like, I'm sure that listeners were listening, and like, wanted to see the video clip. Like, you know, I mean, the whole thing revolves around his whole story revolves around a video clip of him, you know, in a questionable situation. So like, I'm sure people wanted to go and find that after the fact and having. A website where things were more curated, I think would have been really beneficial to the podcast, making it more of like an interactive experience for people who are interested in that. But it's a lot of extra work also, and a lot of extra money.

Matt Cundill  35:14  
I triple everything, so triple the time, triple the money, if you want to really make the video experience, a true video one, and I might even be under serving that.

Annalise Nielsen  35:24  
Yeah. I mean, turning those episodes into feature length video episodes would have been but you're making a documentary at that point, like you're making a video documentary.

Matt Cundill  35:33  
One of the things I think that really holds traditional broadcasters back from really understanding podcasts is what you just mentioned about how we're going to be promoting this, and the idea of we're going to buy ads in other shows. That's something that, if you go to I just I'm having like flashbacks in my time going into a room and coming up with an idea like that, and I think you'd probably get all their heads to blow clean off, because Rogers is not buying ads on CTV for anything. What

Annalise Nielsen  36:05  
do you mean? We're gonna give money to other to our competitors. Why would we do that? Yeah, yeah. I

Matt Cundill  36:11  
mean, traditional broadcast has no concept of rising tide, lifts all boats, which also speaks to like, this is live, right? You did so much work in trying to put together, you know, live television, and it's live, live, live, and the mentality is completely live, and nobody really understands sort of the on demand aspect of it. So anyhow, this is why they fail. I thought I'd throw that out there. You said it not me. No, that's fine, because I've got lots to say about this stuff, but I get to speak to somebody who's, you know, been through it, and last couple years has been pretty interesting for you. So because you're at Rogers, and then they end your time at Pacific content by, you know, Okay, we're done with this now, which is probably one of the strangest things I've ever come across, where you have this great Canadian brand called Pacific content, and, yeah, we're not going to be working on that anymore. So in that time, how long did you stay on the beach after I got the news?

Annalise Nielsen  37:05  
No time at all. Actually, I did not spend any time relaxing, and I wish I had, but you don't know what you don't know. I'm not very good at being unemployed. I'm too anxious for it. I'm not very good at freelancing either. So I've tried freelancing a few times, and it's I'm too stressed about it. I'm too I'm too much of an anxious person to do it. So I pretty much immediately launched into a contract. I went back and did a little bit of work with Antica. Again, I did a little bit of work with at will media, so I had some like kind of contracting opportunities, and then basically got the job at lower street where I am now. So there was really no time off, there was no there was no break. I was right into it.

Matt Cundill  37:50  
And so one of the things that came to my mind is like, oh, lower Street, which does branded podcasts and branded content in the UK is buying specific content, and why would you want to? I mean, that's just a question that comes to mind when I read the press release. Yeah, no, it's

Annalise Nielsen  38:08  
interesting. I think the vision and the strategy there is, like there's an opportunity now, with specific content closing its doors, to sort of fill a gap in the market of the sort of, like higher end narrative, like, really high production value content that Pacific content is known for, and lower street has produced some shows that are of that caliber. Like, it's not like they don't don't have that experience already. They did have that experience already with these sort of, like narrative, highly produced shows. But it was an opportunity to be in market with like this, sort of like another tier of content that we can do. The other distinction, I think, that I'm kind of excited about, is, like, lower street has been very focused on being a brand for B to B advertisers. Specific content was not specifically for B to C advertisers. We didn't go one way or the other, but definitely worked with more B to C brands. And so that's an opportunity there too, to like, be able to sort of be in market without muddying the water too much with like, another brand that's focused on consumer facing content. I was actually really trying to pivot Pacific content even further towards the sort of like B to C brands. And the reason for that was that there's a huge influx of a lot of podcast companies that are coming up that are focused on B to B. And the reason for that is that a lot of B to B marketers are interested in podcasting right now. You know, you fish where the fish are, which I get. But the truth is that, like most B to B marketers weren't looking for the kind of products that Pacific content was selling anyways. So it's very hard for us to it was hard for me to sell those B to B podcasts anyways. We weren't really closing a lot of those deals in the first place. And so I just figured like there's an opportunity here. There's a gap where not a lot of people are looking at sort of B to C podcasts at this time. So. Yeah,

Matt Cundill  40:00  
that was sort of the thinking there talk about closing. Because, you know, I've had this conversation with Steve Pratt before, and you know, when you have enter into conversations, says people, it could be anybody, by the way, it comes to, I want to start a podcast. So you tell me a little bit about winding your way through the conversation, because we can talk a little bit about, I mean, all day, about, oh, microphones and setup and audio and music and sound and all the things that go into making the show, until, you know, we hit record and start talking. And where does it fall off for the client, where it's like, not going to do this?

Annalise Nielsen  40:36  
Yeah, to be totally blunt, it's the price. I know that's crass, but people just don't realize how much it costs to make a podcast a lot of the time. And I'm not talking like, you know that they don't want to shell out six figures for their podcast. Like, fine, I got that. That's, that's a big cost. This is a significant investment. I'm talking people think that it costs like, $200 an episode. And like, that's, I would say that's where the conversation ends most of the time. If it's going to end like that, if it's going to end with them, like not wanting to make the podcast in the first place, it's, it's usually really just to the cost. So it's not really that they don't want to work with us. It's that they, they just didn't realize what goes into making a podcast in the first place. And I actually, I think other than that, a lot of times they actually do start the podcast. Somebody in the company does actually start making the podcast. They set up a Blue Yeti microphone, they get some people in a boardroom together, they have them chat. Some young person at the company is sort of assigned the role of editing the audio. Maybe they're like a social media manager, and they happen to know their way around Adobe suite of products, right? So they get assigned to the job of editing the audio, and then they drop off after five episodes, because they don't realize how much is going into it.

Matt Cundill  41:57  
Sorry, I have to interrupt you. You missed a step, and that was upload to Spotify for creators

Annalise Nielsen  42:03  
and only be available on Spotify or they get like a developer, something I've seen a lot too, is a developer in the company who has built their website or handles their back end of their website, spends a butt ton of money and a butt ton of time inventing some back End hobbled together way using like blueberry and feed burner and all these other tools, WordPress plugins, to post the podcast files instead of just going with like a simple cast or somebody else, and then that, that's how they post their podcast. And then they get no data or analytics. They don't see any information about who's listening. Yeah, that I see very often as well.

Matt Cundill  42:46  
So I've had that conversation as well with some they said, we started a podcast, but it's not working. Can you help? And then I'll see that it's on feed burner. And then I'll say, did you have your IT? Person set this up? And they said yes. And they go, how did you know? Just to

Annalise Nielsen  43:00  
guess, yeah, that's, I think, very common. I get it. That's what that person's there for, I guess, right? Like, that's, but yeah, that's a big challenge too. Yeah, at the end of the day, honestly, it cost more money than it would cost if you calculate all of the people time. It's like, better off just starting off strong and working with it outside of agency. But yeah, anyway, I get it. People, time is hard to calculate. When you're looking

Matt Cundill  43:25  
at the success of a podcast, we talk a lot about downloads. So you know, getting to number one with the gravy train was really about downloads in Apple, but now you're working with some branded podcasts. What are the numbers that you're looking for? To say, Yeah, this is working.

Annalise Nielsen  43:42  
It's such a tricky question, and every client asks it, but the answer is that it really, it depends, and it depends on your goals. A lot of our clients are really looking to reach very targeted audiences, right? If you're making a B to B podcast, your total potential audience could be 1000 people. So if you have a podcast that's getting downloads of like 800 an episode, you might be doing really well and really saturating the market. And a better indication of success would be, you know, if we did a brand live study and or if we did a listener survey, for example, a listener surveys may be a better example. We do a listener survey, and we see that the vast majority of the listeners of the podcast are people within your target audience, and that they love the podcast. Well, then that's hugely successful. You know, this podcast is killing it, and you're doing amazing, but you're only getting 800 downloads an episode. I think downloads are really, really matting the water, and a lot of times people focus on them because they're not sure what else to focus on, because we don't get as many analytics podcasting as digital marketers are used to compared to radio. I think we're doing good, but for some reason, everyone compares it to social media and expects to get those same kind of analytics, and we don't get those in kind. Of analytics. So, yeah, I think you know, when we look at success, I prefer to focus on things like episode retention and listener retention, like, are people coming back for every episode? That's a big one, and are people listening to the entire episode? Because those are indications that the podcast is resonating with people. You can spend a lot of money on promotion and get people to click play on your podcast, and that'll increase your downloads. But that doesn't mean that you're making any impact with the podcast. You can be reaching the wrong people. And, I mean, I'm not saying it's great that you're getting all those people to sample the show, but if they're not sticking around, if they don't like the podcast, then you could be having a negative effect, right? Like they could be walking away thinking worse of your brand than they did before. So that actually is not necessarily an indicator of success. So yeah, I think how much do people actually enjoy the episode? That's one of the more important things to be looking at.

Matt Cundill  45:58  
Give me something that you learned at lower street that made you say, Oh, I wish I'd known that back when I was working at my previous job, because this is really a great way to do things. You know?

Annalise Nielsen  46:10  
What lower street does a really good job of is marketing. Lower street has some very sophisticated marketing that I was not on my radar at all at Pacific content, and I wish that I had been more in tune with it. Laura Street is very sophisticated when it comes to tracking MQLs and SQL and SEO and like Google rankings and, you know, keyword searches and all of these things that I'm still trying to figure out and understand better. But lower street does a really good job of that. So yeah, that's something that I would have liked to have known more about.

Matt Cundill  46:53  
This is tremendously unfair, and I'm going to do it anyway. 2025 around the corner, any form of looking into the crystal ball a little prediction or two, something that you're looking forward to, even, and it's only unfair because I didn't prep you for the question.

Annalise Nielsen  47:08  
No, I think it's a fair question. It's a good question. I mean, I should be thinking about this more myself already. It's hard not to be pessimistic. If I'm honest, I'm trying to come up with, like, a positive answer.

Matt Cundill  47:21  
It's okay to voice an area of concern. I think that's important. Because a couple of years ago, people were like, well, what do you see ahead for 2022 23 I said I expect to encounter a lot of churn with people dropping off their podcast post pandemic. And I was right. So I think it's okay to come up with an answer that something you're keeping your eye on,

Annalise Nielsen  47:41  
I guess, if I'm talking about the podcast industry broadly, I could see a lot of podcasting moving back, swinging back towards more independent creators, rather than, like, big investments from large companies, because we've seen that it just doesn't work for these big companies, like they're not able to make it work, and they are pulling back their investments. And in some ways, I see that as being very problematic. But on the other hand, the creator economy is thriving, and, you know, maybe podcasting will be moving towards a model that is more like being a social media influencer, right? Like, that's that'll be more the model. I think people are understanding more and more how challenging it is to become an influencer, and that it's not as simple as just publishing pretty pictures on Instagram every day. There's a lot of work that goes into it, so I think, and a lot of networking, and a lot of money that you have to invest up front and, like, there's a lot that goes I have a few friends who have, like, kind of bridged to that, into becoming influencers, and it's a lot of work. I think people are sort of more understanding of that today, and understanding of the Creator economy, and I see us maybe moving towards that in podcasting as well, where there's a little bit more of an understanding that, like, if you actually want to do this successfully, it's, it's a lot of work, and you have to take it seriously, but it's not impossible as an influencer, as an or, sorry, as an independent so I could see that happening more and like, maybe a really far out prediction, not like a prediction for next year, but I think the video fad is gonna kind of die off a little bit. I think we'll stop talking about video as much. Not that I think video is gonna die altogether. But I think video is really powerful for discovery. I think video clips are really powerful. We talked about that a lot in this conversation already. I think the full length video episode thing, the juice isn't worth squeeze for most people. And I think more and more and more people will start to realize

Matt Cundill  49:42  
that and Elisa, thank you so much for taking the time out to be on the show today.

Annalise Nielsen  49:45  
Thanks for having me.

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  49:47  
The sound off podcast is written and hosted by Matt Cundill, produced by Evan serminsky, edited by Taylor MacLean, social media by Aiden glassy, another great creation from the sound off media. Company, there's always more at sound off podcast.com you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai