My latest assignment is to create a marketing campaign for a podcast. It’s not as easy as it sounds. Ten years ago I would be able to put together a campaign in my sleep. But not for this particular podcast,, not now.
The Adelaide Show is a long-running podcast and labour of love for its creator, Steve Davis. Steve, a highly experienced and well-qualified professional marketer, makes a living out of helping small businesses maximise their marketing in this age of social media. This includes not only the usual suspects of the online life—Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok—but also podcasts.
Steve and I entirely separately but contemporaneously started exploring and eventually consulting on the business use of social media in the very early 2000s. We led the pack and created paths for other business communicators around the world to follow. When podcasting emerged as a viable communication technology, independently of each other Steve and I became among the first podcasters in Australia. When YouTube and vidcasting emerged, we once again led the Aussie pack. I moved onto public speaking stages around Australia and the world, evangelising social media for business, and wrote some bestselling books on the topic, while at the exact same time Steve dominated Adelaide, South Australia, and Darwin with precisely the same enthusiasm and results. I wrote, and Steve built an enviable client base.
I mention this because with such a pedigree and vastness of experience, it is going to be very difficult to a) find any fault with what Steve is currently doing to promote The Adelaide Show podcast, and b) come up with something new and fresh, because if he’s not currently doing it, he has already tried it and found it underwhelming in its results.