Why Every Brand Believes It Deserves a Podcast (Spoiler: It Doesn’t)
A café in Ponsonby. Oat flat white in hand. Next to me, a brand manager chewing the ear off a producer about launching a podcast. I’ve heard this exact conversation ten times in the past month, and I still don’t know who told everyone that 'voice equals value'.
Everyone wants a podcast. Every single brand. Skincare brands, tyre shops, car insurance companies. The level of delusion is impressive. As if the guy buying new wiper blades needs a 40-minute episode about windscreen clarity featuring a local niche influencer. Even more amusing, half these brands have nothing to say. No opinion, no story, no point of view. Just a jingle and a dream.
Here’s the truth: great branded podcasts are unicorns. There are maybe five globally. The rest? Reheated agency decks turned into low-fi monologues with a guest who once wrote a LinkedIn post that went 'kind of viral.' This is not a content strategy. This is brand karaoke.
If you don’t have something real to say, maybe don’t talk at all. Silence can be incredibly on-brand. Silence says, 'We have taste.' And taste, unlike content, can’t be batch-produced. So unless you’ve got a voice people actually want in their ears while they fold their washing or drive their kid to footy practice, maybe sit this one out. Or at least buy an ad on someone else’s show and call it a day.
Everyone wants a podcast. Every single brand. Skincare brands, tyre shops, car insurance companies. The level of delusion is impressive. As if the guy buying new wiper blades needs a 40-minute episode about windscreen clarity featuring a local niche influencer. Even more amusing, half these brands have nothing to say. No opinion, no story, no point of view. Just a jingle and a dream.
Here’s the truth: great branded podcasts are unicorns. There are maybe five globally. The rest? Reheated agency decks turned into low-fi monologues with a guest who once wrote a LinkedIn post that went 'kind of viral.' This is not a content strategy. This is brand karaoke.
If you don’t have something real to say, maybe don’t talk at all. Silence can be incredibly on-brand. Silence says, 'We have taste.' And taste, unlike content, can’t be batch-produced. So unless you’ve got a voice people actually want in their ears while they fold their washing or drive their kid to footy practice, maybe sit this one out. Or at least buy an ad on someone else’s show and call it a day.