Form Follows Function—Why A Branding Agency Launched A Podcast For Its Client
At Karma, we have an unspoken manifesto. It includes things like: There is no such thing as a design emergency, never grovel, and acronyms seriously suck. (See Elon’s all-staff email).
Another tenet: Never go more than 10% outside our comfort zone.
Why?
In our experience, going more than 10% outside your wheelhouse increases the risk of something going awry. You’re exploring, after all. To you, it’s uncharted territory. To others, it’s the deer trails they know like the back of their hand and walk every day.
In short, going more than 10% outside your comfort zone leads to poor results. But this situation was different. Let me tell you the story.
We’ve been working with the groundbreaking startup, Cadence Neuroscience , for over a year. As a branding agency, when we do this, we make our client our whole world. We meet their staff, listen to their concerns, familiarize ourselves with their vocabulary. We get embedded in their culture. We put ourselves in their shoes, and never lose sight of whom they’re working for.
Early on, during a shareback meeting, we listened as the CEO leaned back in his chair and shared the challenge of building trust. You see, they’re launching an implantable medical device to treat children with drug-resistant epilepsy. If you think a parent or two might cringe at the idea of their kid’s brain being operated on, you’re right.
As our projects with them progressed, we noticed something was missing: the voices not only of those who would benefit from the product itself, but those who were creating it. What if we could find a way to show the world how genuine and committed their staff were? Many of them have kids themselves, and would be first in line to enroll them in clinical trials if they fit the profile.
“What if you started a podcast?” we suggested. The CEO loved it. In fact, he continues to love it months later, and it’s one of the only things he jumps out of his office chair for (or rather, jumps into it, right before he puts on his headphones and leans into the mic).
At first, I wondered if I was making the right decision. I spoke with my partner about it. “Do you think this is more than 10% beyond our comfort zone?” I asked. “No,” he replied. “It’s all the same stuff you already do, it’s just ending up in a different medium.”
So we did what we do whenever we’re tackling a problem that involves the healthy kind of fear—not the legit kind where you should probably turn around—but the nervous and exciting kind when you know you’re on the brink of something: we went and found the right people.
A quick call for referrals on LinkedIn later, and we connected with our person: Shannon Perry. Her style, a mixture of what I would describe as a seasoned punk rock concert goer meets fond aunt with whom you find yourself letting it all out over a mug of coffee at her kitchen table, she was able to melt those nerdy electrical engineers’ hearts in an instant, making them feel comfortable; and, she had more than enough of the technical know-how and gear to transform a simple conversation into a powerful narrative.
In one email, the CEO said:
Hi Shannon, Holy cow, how did you do that! You must be part alchemist :) Thanks so much for making us sound good, and really importantly, extracting such a spot on message out of the very raw material we provided you with. I feel like you are really "getting us"! Just wow!
The name, Seizure Diaries, also came to us easily. It’s what people with epilepsy do—they journal about what triggers their episodes, where they were, what might make them go away. And that’s what this podcast aims to do on a macro level.
So no, we’d never produced a podcast before. But the same foundational principles that apply to branding apply to podcasts: tell a good story, know your audience, launch it well, measure, report, iterate and improve. Plus, we’d spent months building their messaging framework, speaking with investors and stakeholders, including doctors from Mayo Clinic.
I’m incredibly proud of the work we are doing, but most of all, I’m happy to see how happy it makes Cadence. More than anyone, founders must work within their Zone of Genius. Otherwise, they will lose their passion—the same passion they felt when they first came up with the idea, but a passion that wilted over time. But just like a plant in the wrong environment, all we needed to do was move it over to the right pot, drainage, soil and light. Sometimes, it’s hard to hit all of those in one fell swoop. But that’s what we were able to accomplish, by listening, bringing in the right expertise, and being bold within our comfort zone.
You can listen to Seizure Diaries here: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Youtube