The truth about podcasts

Are podcasts still a thing?

This cheap and easy communications channel was suddenly hot again last year, but it never really took off among asset managers.

The podcast hype has since cooled, but that doesn’t mean that podcasts are over—or that marketers should ignore them. The New York Times’s Farhad Manjoo is still bullish on podcasts:

“Don’t call podcasting a bubble or a bust. Instead, it is that rarest thing in the technology industry: a slow, steady and unrelentingly persistent digital tortoise that could eventually — but who really knows? — slay the analog behemoths in its path.”

We're bullish too, for the right firm and in the right situation.

Unlike videos, podcasts can be produced quickly, with free technology, inexpensive equipment, and little fanfare. For example, it’s not an unreasonable goal to publish a market commentary podcast on the last day of the quarter—something wholesalers and internals we talk to would love to have.

Podcasts fill a niche no other communications channel can occupy. The human voice is personal and revealing in a way that videos are not. And it excels at stories. For some storytelling experts, it’s better than text.