What true crime podcasts can teach brands about creating a better customer experience
They’re a hugely popular newcomer in the media mix, but what can we earn from podcasts, and in particular, true crime podcasts? Edge’s Abbie Dubin-Rhodin investigates.
While podcasts were ‘invented’ in 2004, they enjoyed 10 years as a niche market for dedicated radio show listeners until the launch of Serial in 2014. The first of its kind, the show ushered in something of a golden age of podcasts. The genre that’s experienced not only the most rapid, but sustained growth is the one that started it all – true crime.
The true crime podcast genre is noisy. Whereas brands in most categories can differentiate through price discounts or product innovations, podcasts have to figure out a way to stand out despite all having similar formats, platforms, and pricing models (aka free). For podcasts, creating a unique and valuable customer experience is cost of entry for success and, surprisingly, the hosts talking about the goriest stuff have built up some of the most loyal customer bases.
Based on a rigorous, data-driven methodology – aka a couple of weeks of slightly heavier than usual podcast binging – I identified three key ways brands can learn from the CX of true crime podcasts.
This analogy all falls apart because a true crime podcast is (a) pure ‘entertainment’ with no brand message and (b) takes hundreds of hours to produce. There are very few examples of successful content like this with a brand at the centre of them because the brand always gets in the way of the entertainment. It’s pointless for a brand to spend huge resources creating amazing content which can compete with podcasts and films if they have no brand message. But as soon as the brand gets in there it almost always ruins the integrity of the content. You probably don’t mean it that literally but then maybe its not the right example because you can’t just swap out the core of it for something boring and expect the same result.