Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Successful PodCasting Stories




Hilary in her last post PODCASTING is wondering about the influence and effectiveness of podcasts in public relations programs and I have to admit that I also doubted about that. Searching the net for successful podcasting stories I found out that this simple technology has surprised the field about its popularity. The number of listeners downloading podcastings is just remarkable!
Some examples include BBC: “In early 2004, the BBC tried out podcasting with Radio 4’s In Our Time. It’s a heavy weight programme presented by the intellectual, Lord Melvyn Bragg. 30,000 people a week were downloading. The Guardian: “has been publishing a podcast by Ricky Gervais (Of The Office). It’s been receiving about 180,000 downloads a week, and is top of the iTunes podcast parade. The Daily Telegraph: “has appointed a former BBC Radio Presenter to edit theTelegraph’s podcast , which currently is an audio rendition of various stories in the newspaper”.
(source: Blog Relations)
It’s amazing how well some programs have taken to all this!

5 comments:

Sherry said...

Podcastings could not only be used by organisations to publicizing their products and services, they could also be used in an alternative way. Here’s the link of a campaign raised by Cancer Research UK, the organisation integrates podcastings in one of its campaign.

http://info.cancerresearchuk.org/youthandschools/scienceeventsandcompetitions/sciencepod/

It is an ongoing campaign called SciencePod Competition, aiming to appeal teenagers around the UK to use podcasts to air their opinions about health-related topics, which would be featured on charity’s websites. Additionally, prize winners in the competition will get digital products.

Mattias said...

All the successful examples you mentioned were media organisations (BBC, The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph). For more specific PR purposes I think it’s harder to find such successes outside of the mediasphere. I was just commenting on Hilary’s post on podcasting though, that I do think in more long term strategies to establish awareness of a company among a specific public, podcasting might be used successfully.

In political/product/awareness campaigns it can also be an effective tool, as you gave a great example of Sherry. In that context it might be seen as marketing rather than PR tool however; but I think the line between the two are increasingly blurry, especially when it comes to charities (such as Cancer Research UK).

IRENE said...

Mattias thank you for your clarification. Actually, I wanted to emphasize the popularity of this technology. To put it in numbers,
According to the latest research by Edison Media Research in their study, The Podcast Consumer Revealed, found that:

"The audience for audio podcasts grew 38% in the last year;
The audience for video podcasts grew 45% in the last year;
About 30% of regular Internet users have downloaded a podcast;
Awareness of podcasting has leveled off at about 37;
People listen to or watch podcasts primarily on their computers (about 75%)".
(source:http://www.podcastingnews.com/ [accessed: 16/04/08]
Taking this into account, many PR practitioners believe that, by using it strategically, it can become a powerful communication tool.
Sherry's comment provides a very good example on that.

Evi said...

Hey Irene!

My name is Evi, also from Greece, and I was in Stirling last year, studying Public Relations as well...

Surfing in the internet through facebook, which Derek introduced to us last year, and which is sooooo popular now in Greece, I came across your blogs, through Derek's facebook account. Just wanted to say good luck to everyone, and I hope that you enjoy this project as much as I did last year...

By the way, working for a PR company here in Athens, I've realized that neither podcasting, nor other interesting and useful PR tools have anything to do with Greece :-( ..Hopefully in the near future PR practitioners will discover their usefulness and Greek companies will be more open-minded when approaching their target groups!!

Good luck to everyone and don't forget to enjoy Scotland!!!

xxx

Georgio85 said...

How about podcasting PR and sports!!! I just fell into a PR practicioner expressing his dilemmas for the ways an audio podcasting could be attractive for the fans of the sport (Ice Hockey)

http://nyipointblank.blogspot.com/2008/04/islanders-pr-podcast-anyone-anyone.html