It’s happening all the time: I arrive for a workshop in a newsroom and before I even sit down someone is telling me about “this exciting Podcast we are creating”. This New York Times article cites that:
By some estimates, there are now as many as 750,000 podcasts, so it’s not necessarily a surprise that major companies are creating their own. What’s more surprising is that consumers, conditioned to skip past commercials on YouTube and install ad blockers on their browsers, are actually listening to them. Within a day of its release last year, “The Sauce” broke into iTunes’ top-100 podcast chart, reaching No. 94.
So, I am not at all surprised that the folks who brought you the Big Mac and your favorite flavored milk shake, are now going for your ear. \
For MacDonald’s it all began last year with The Sauce, a three-episode “investigative podcast” released by the media company Gizmodo. It was, in a sense, a company’s way of explaining the“mystery” of how McDonald’s underestimated demand for a popular dipping sauce, enraging thousands of its customers.
Enough people listened to it to inspire MacDonalds to continue to explore other topics via The Sauce.
No question about it, it is all about sound. Podcasts are popular with millennials, and they are becoming ever so important for publishers, and for those in corporate communications as well.
I think the next big thing will be Podcast Newsletters, especially morning editions that will allow you to get all the information you need while you get ready for work.
Listen to The Sauce
https://player.fm/series/the-sauce-2065757/episode-2-the-szechuan-sauce-riots
Of related interest
Mario’s speaking engagements
Keynote presentation: Business Information & Media Summit (BIMS).
Order print edition of The Story from Amazon
You can order the print edition of my new mobile storytelling book, The Story, from Amazon already here:
Pre-order The Story
The newspaper remains the most powerful source of storytelling on the planet. But technology threatens its very existence. To survive, the Editor must transform, adapt, and manage the newsroom in a new way. Find out how, pre-orderThe Story by Mario Garcia, chief strategist for the redesign of over 700 newspapers around the world.
Order here:
https://thaneandprose.com/shop-the-bookstore?olsPage=products%2Fthe-story
The Story will also appear in print
I am happy to announce that we will, indeed, have a print edition of my mobile storytelling book, The Story. I thank you for expressing your interest to our publisher, Thane Boulton, of Thane & Prose. Now the print edition will be a reality, and you can already see the cover and back cover here:
An interview of interest
http://www.itertranslations.com/blog/2019/3/11/fd60ybflpvlqrgrpdp5ida5rq0c3sp
The Inquirer is a brand that always resonates with me, as it was one of my projects in 1996, so I am aware of the traditions the Inquirer folks hold dear. After all, this is a newspaper that even Benjamin Franklin wrote for. I recall, as we were doing the redesign of The Inquirer, when Max King was editor in chief, how I was reminded, at every step of the process, about the newspaper’s history, the brand’s tradition and how to make sure that it was all preserved as we added more color and created a new set of story structures.
TheMarioBlog post # 3097