Why Most Branded Podcasts Fail: The JAR Framework That Fixes Everything

Most Branded Podcasts Are What Jen Moss Calls “Ramblecasts”

You know the type.

Hosts talking about interesting things without any clear value proposition.

No focus. No strategy. No measurable results.

Just expensive audio that nobody listens to past episode three.

Over my 10-year career in podcasting, I’ve seen this pattern repeat endlessly. Brands throw money at podcasting because everyone says they should. Then they wonder why it doesn’t work.

The problem isn’t the medium.

Podcasting creates unprecedented access to your audience’s attention. Literally positioning your brand between their ears during commutes, workouts, and daily routines.

The problem is that most brands fundamentally misunderstand what makes podcasting work.

They treat it like another broadcast channel for corporate messaging instead of recognizing it as an intimate conversation requiring genuine value exchange.

Meet Jen Moss: The Anti-Ramblecast Crusader

Jen Moss is Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer of JAR Podcast Solutions.

She’s worked with Amazon, lululemon, Cirque du Soleil, Wharton, and Deloitte.

Before that, she spent decades mastering audio storytelling at CBC, learning from broadcasting legends like Dick Miller, Yvonne Gall, Anne Penman, and Sheila Rogers.

These are people who know how to hold audience attention over time.

Now Jen teaches creative writing for podcasting at the University of British Columbia. She thinks deeply about the relationship between story and form.

And she’s developed a framework that transforms branded podcasts from expensive experiments into strategic business assets.

The JAR Framework: Job + Audience + Result = Engagement

Most brands never properly answer three deceptively simple questions:

1. What job does your audience need to do for you?

Not what you want to tell them. What specific action or mindset shift do you need from them?

Attracting investors requires fundamentally different content than increasing employee engagement.

Establishing C-suite thought leadership demands different storytelling than driving product awareness.

You cannot do all of these things in one show.

2. Who exactly is your audience?

Generic targeting creates generic content.

The difference between “business professionals” and “mid-level marketing managers struggling to prove ROI to skeptical executives” determines whether your show resonates or gets deleted after one episode.

Specificity wins.

3. How will you measure success?

Without clear metrics aligned to your primary goal, you’ll waffle around wondering if the effort is worthwhile.

Reach, engagement, and conversions all matter.

But which matters most for this specific show?

This is what Jen calls the JAR framework: Job, Audience, Result.

It prevents the ramblecast.

Audio’s Intimate Advantage That Video Cannot Match

Jen makes a compelling case for audio-first podcast strategy.

Yes, YouTube offers discoverability advantages.

But here’s what the data shows: audio-only consumption generates longer engagement rates on the same content.

Why?

Because audio requires active co-authorship from the listener’s brain.

When Jen describes “a rotten apple that has fallen in my back garden that is slowly turning brown and wasps are gathering around it,” you’re not passively watching.

You’re actively imagining.

That cognitive engagement creates deeper connection than video’s “sit back and entertain me” dynamic.

This is classical storytelling wisdom applied to modern media.

The theater of the mind has worked for millennia because it engages the imagination.

Video shows you everything. Audio invites you to participate.

That participation creates intimacy.

Here are three example shows from Jen’s podcast library.

The Audience-First Mandate (Or Your Show Will Fail)

Jen’s most valuable insight: picture a Venn diagram with three circles.

What the audience needs. What the brand hopes to achieve. Creative expression.

The podcast lives in the middle.

But if you ignore audience needs while transmitting brand messages, you’re essentially yelling through a megaphone.

“It feels like an ad, and it doesn’t work,” Jen explains. “It will show in the consumption rates.”

This audience-first philosophy extends beyond content to production decisions.

Jen’s work on Genome BC’s “Nice Jeans” podcast demonstrates this beautifully.

They needed to attract the next generation of scientists to genomics.

But genomics has a bad reputation. People think about genetically modified monster strawberries.

So they created a show that addresses topics young people actually care about: climate change, whale communication, environmental conservation.

They built a “sonic orchestra” where different whale species became different instruments.

They made complex science accessible and engaging through creative audio design.

The show charts consistently in science categories across Canada and the US.

Why? Because they put audience needs first while achieving their brand goal.

The Strategic Imperative: Do It Right or Don’t Do It

Branded podcasts succeed when they solve specific problems for specific audiences while advancing clear business objectives.

They fail when brands treat them as another channel for corporate messaging.

Over my 40-year career, I’ve seen this pattern across every medium.

The principles don’t change.

Audience as hero. Brand as guide. Clear transformation. Measurable results.

Jen Moss and JAR Podcast Solutions have proven that strategic focus, audience-first thinking, and creative excellence aren’t competing priorities.

They’re the essential combination that transforms podcasts from expensive experiments into measurable business assets.

The question isn’t whether your brand should podcast.

It’s whether you’re willing to do it right.

What’s In It For You

• Define your Job-Audience-Result framework before recording one episode
• Respect the intimate power of audio-only storytelling
• Put audience needs at the center of every content decision
• Avoid the ramblecast with sharp focus and clear value propositions
• Measure success against your primary goal, not vanity metrics

Chapters:

Links:

• JAR Podcast Productions
• Jen Moss on LinkedIn
• Nicholas Kristof’s Advice for Saving the World
• Craft your vibrant brand story with the StoryCycle Genie™
• What users are saying about the StoryCycle Genie™

Deepen Your Storytelling Mastery: Three Essential Episodes to Explore

To amplify your transformation from today’s conversation, these carefully selected past episodes provide complementary classical wisdom:

How to Effectively Position Your B2B Brand With April Dunford – Builds foundational understanding of positioning methodology and complements Jen’s JAR framework with tactical positioning implementation for branded content.

Growing Revenue and Retention for Your SaaS Brand with Dan Balcauski – Demonstrates how strategic focus drives measurable business outcomes, showing the direct impact of singular problem-solution dynamics that Jen emphasizes.

The Five Essential Elements (the H.E.A.R.T.) of the Perfect Pitch With Ben Wiener – Reveals how audience-first thinking translates into compelling presentations, applying Jen’s Venn diagram philosophy to pitch storytelling and stakeholder communication.

Each recommendation selected to deepen your mastery through The Business of Story’s archive of classical storytelling wisdom enhanced by modern application.

Connect with me:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/parkhowell/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/BusinessOfStory
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0ssjBuBiQjG9PHRgq4Fu6A
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/ParkHowell
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/parkhowell/
• Website: https://businessofstory.com/abt/

Transcript of Show:

Park Howell: Good morning, Jen. Welcome to the Business of Story.

Jen Moss: Thank you. It’s nice to be here.

Park: and you’re coming to us all the way from British Columbia. And I once made the mistake of calling that the Northwest, but it’s actually the Southwest of Canada.

Jen : It depends on your orientation for sure, but yeah, it’s the lower corner of Canada, but it is part of the Pacific Northwest region, I suppose you could say.

Park: you Yeah, well, it’s absolutely beautiful. grew up in Seattle, so I’m practically Canadian. We spent so much time up in your beautiful part of the world.

Jen: Seattle counts as Canada. Yeah, for sure.

Park: Fair enough. Well, it is great to have you here. And when you all had sent out, you know, the note, Hey, Jen would like to be on the business of story. was going through your company jar podcast solutions. And my first take was, and I think it might be wrong is that you are about creating fictional broadcasts with fictional stories to help build commercial brands. Right, right, right.

Jen: Yeah, they’re not fictional podcasts. Like to be clear, they are real. But no, actually, we don’t just make fiction. We have made some fiction podcasts, but actually we’re a branded podcast company. So what that means is we make the podcast that most suits the sponsoring brands business goals. So that might be fiction, but more often it’s more of a narrative style, documentary style podcast or an interview podcast. But we just try to keep kind of creatively agnostic so that we can do what the solution, what is the best solution for the client, for their business goals. Yeah.

Park: Now I’ve been doing the Business of Story podcast for well over nine years, a new episode every Monday. And man, that is a lot of hard work. What is the one big mistake we podcasters make and, or if someone is getting into the podcast world, what do you caution us against?

Jen: Okay, first things first, I think sound quality matters and a lot of people make the mistake that they just think they can record it on their computer with no microphone and stuff like that. So like, cover your basics in terms of sound quality because if you want people to stay with you, it’s got to sound alright, it’s got to not be annoying. And same goes for video quality and framing. If you’re doing a video podcast, lighting, these things matter. So, but aside from the basic technical things, which to me are like sort of table stakes, right? Beyond that, I think a lot of times the focus that people bring is not clear and sharp enough. Like you have a very clear focus for your show. Not everybody has that. So people are like, I just want to talk to interesting people about interesting things. And it’s like, yes. And you need to, you need to be able to make that value proposition.

Park: Mm-hmm.

Jen: very clear to the audience within a few minutes of your show starting. So like we understand that this is a show where you can learn about the value of storytelling in a marketing context, right? But if you have a show where the audience has to work really hard and listen to 45 minutes of a ramble cast with no real goal, unless you’re literally a bunch of professional comedians who are gifted at improvisation, that is not an approach I would recommend. I would recommend

Park: Mm-hmm.

Jen: a nice sharp focus, know who your audience is, know what they need, and know how your show is going to serve that need.

Park: And one of the points that you made in your notes that you sent over to me and prepped for this is that you really have to have a singular problem solution dynamic for every show. You’re not trying to solve every world problem. You have a singular focus.

Jen: Yeah, at JAR, JAR stands for Job Audience Result. so we try to get our clients to really hone what is the job that the audience needs to do for you. Because there’s a big difference between, let’s say you’re trying to attract investors versus you’re trying to increase employee engagement. versus you’re trying to promote your C-suite as thought leaders in your field and you’re trying to stimulate some interesting conversations versus, I don’t know, you want your audience to learn more about a complex suite of products or a system that you are selling. mean, so those goals range from thought leadership, education, Awareness, brand affinity.

Park: Thank

Jen: There’s a lot of different ones and a lot of people kind of come to us going we want to do it all and a good healthy podcast can Help in all of those regions, but I really think it’s important especially when you’re starting to really understand What is your primary goal for the show? What is the biggest thing that you want it to achieve? Right. Is it conversions? Like what is it reach? Engagement these are all different and they require different storytelling approaches.

Park: Yeah, and it’s interesting because all of that great advice you gave right there is true to any form of communication. Not overwhelming, but have a point, have a point of view and have a singular problem that you are solving for.

Jen: Yeah, and a way of measuring the results. So it’s job, audience, who are you talking to and what do they need, and result. Like, how will you know if it’s worked? How will you measure that success? And if you’re not really clear on those things going in, you’re gonna kind of waffle around and then it’s hard to know if all the work you’re putting into it is worth it, right?

Park: I like that term you used earlier, the ramble cast. I’m going to talk about this, I’m going to talk about that. Well, but you have a very a history, if you will, steeped in storytelling. Can you give us a little bit of your back story?

Jen: The Ramblecast. Yeah.

Jen: well, thank you for asking. I do love talking about stories. So I teach creative writing at the University of British Columbia. And it’s funny because I’m actually a graduate of that department as well. So I’ve been learning about and working with story for a long time. And after graduating, I worked for some newspapers in Hong Kong doing print journalism. So I learned how to kind of boil down messaging in a kind of compressed format. but I really felt hemmed in. And so when I moved back to Canada, I got into audio storytelling with our national broadcaster, the CBC, where I was very fortunate to get some really directed audio storytelling mentorship from some incredible people at the CBC. I mean, in Canada, these people are legend. Dick Miller, Yvonne Gall. Anne Penman, are all Sheila Rogers. These are broadcasters and producers from the CBC who really know how to hold audience attention over time. And so I learned from them and absorbed a lot of that. And then I went to work for the National Film Board of Canada doing more modern contemporary interactive storytelling. So digital storytelling for AR and VR and all these different forms. So I really started thinking about the relationship between story and form. And now that’s essentially what I teach at the University of British Columbia. teach creative writing for podcasting and new media. So I think a lot about how to hold attention in various formats. Yeah.

Park: So your first foray into it was in the audio storytelling realm. So, you know, I mean that to me too, you know, 40 years ago when I was a very, very young copywriter in the advertising world, I absolutely loved radio and it was still my favorite medium today because of all of the pictures you can paint in the theater of the mind.

Jen: That is definitely my first love, yeah.

Jen: Uh-huh.

Park: Now fast forward to what I’ve been doing with the Business of Story. People say, why aren’t you doing a video podcast? And I recorded all on video like we’re doing right now, but I very rarely release them as video podcasts. And I think it’s my affinity for being between someone’s ears and trying to help paint that story.

Jen: No, it’s such an intimate medium. It’s very powerful and it requires an act of co-authorship from the audience’s brain. So it is de facto more engaging. We know this because we’ve got data that shows that the same podcast consumed on YouTube versus let’s say a fully audio platform like Apple Podcasts, the engagement or consumption rate will be longer typically on the audio only format versus on the video format like YouTube, they tend to have shorter engagement rates on the same content. However, on YouTube, of course, the discoverability is very high. So there are a lot of benefits to doing that as well.

Park: Mm-hmm.

Jen: But I believe in respecting, like I said, the relationship of story to form. And so if people prefer shorter content on YouTube, then that’s what we should be delivering there in my view. And with audio, really think that you can, 99 % of the podcasts out there are failing to lean fully into the potential of the audio medium. So you reference that theater of the mind, that immersive quality. Like if I describe, I don’t know, you know, a rotten apple that has fallen in my back garden that is slowly turning brown and wasps are gathering around it. Like you’re imagining something as I’m saying that, right? And that active imagination is… is really powerful, it’s really intimate, and it’s gold for marketers because it actually is sucking people in in a way that video can’t because in video people tend to sit back and it’s a bit more of a here we are now entertain us attitude that the audience brings.

Park: Mm-hmm. Good job.

Park: Well, and the thing too, for me with, with video is we are so bombarded with such beautiful, brilliant video images, film, TV, and so forth that to watch two people yammer on, I don’t know. did to me, I think it kind of maybe takes away from that theater of the mind experience.

Jen: Yeah.

Jen: Okay.

Jen: Yeah, I think so. So I think there’s a few things I would say about that, though. I feel similar to you. However, I am not a Gen Z audience member. And I think that there’s a few things that video can do well. One is it can offer that kind of behind the scenes glimpse of kind of a show in the making. It’s like going to the puppet theater and being able to see the strings.

Park: Mm-hmm.

Jen: And sometimes audiences like that. The other thing to remember is that when people are consuming a podcast on YouTube, and I consciously use the word consuming, we don’t have strong data on how many of them are listening versus watching. They’d need to do eye tracking studies or something, and maybe they have, but they certainly haven’t released that data that we have seen. So… of the people that are discovering podcasts on YouTube. And this is born out kind of anecdotally when I survey my students about how they consume their podcasts. Most of them will say they find their podcasts on YouTube because they’re already there. But then a lot of them will put their hand up and say that they’ll follow that same podcast as an audio podcast when they go out to walk their dog, right? So it’s like, think Tom Webster,

Park: Mm-hmm.

Park: Mm-hmm.

Jen: from Sounds Profitable explain this really well. Sounds Profitable being kind of a great kind of industry advocate, helping to kind of standardize and explain how advertising in the podcast industry works. And Tom Webster is an authoritative data-driven person who I really respect. And he said that what he thinks is that audiences want choice. So it’s not audio versus video, but audiences want flexibility. They wanna be able to start here on YouTube, but if they need to go out and walk their dog, they wanna finish the story on audio. So yeah, and then the other thing is, the problem for brands though, because I know like in a marketing context, some brands are okay with a sort of scrappy video production. Depends on the brand, depends on the target audience. Some brands are not comfortable with that, in which case they’re going to need to spend a lot more money to get a high quality video podcast that looks like bordering on a TV show, right? And, and or a documentary, at which point they tend to balk at the spend. So to keep it in that podcast pocket, which needs to be kind of authentic, real, a little bit, even a sense of DIY, you really have to kind of consciously work with the brand to understand that that is the aesthetic of the target audience, right? Sometimes, sometimes. So again, it’s really about who are you talking to and why, and what do you want them to think about you? Do you want them to perceive you as an authentic DIY scrappy brand, or do you want them to perceive you as a smooth, we’ve got all the answers brand? Because those are two different approaches, video or audio.

Park: Mm-hmm.

Park: So let’s talk about story and story structure that you bring. Is there from the people that you learn from these brilliant storytellers, is there a structure that you always have in mind when you are creating a podcast that kind of helps you outline the format of the show and then even finding the little anecdotal stories inside that outline to make your points for you?

Jen: Mmm.

Jen: you

Jen: That’s a great question. So I’m a total structure geek and I don’t always go with, you know, your basic three act structure, right? So it really, I can be persuaded to use experimental structures if the subject matter warrants it. But I guess where I start is you’re putting this… content into a busy place with a lot of competition. It’s like a busy podcast marketplace, right? So, and audiences, especially on YouTube, have a lot of distractions, right? They’ve got those thumbnails down the side, but even on audio, they’ve got lots of different things that they could easily click on. So, I think it’s very important to hook people very quickly, right out of the gate. And I hear a lot of podcasts that use kind of a pre-recorded intro. I don’t really recommend that. recommend starting with a nice clip from the middle of the podcast that says something controversial, exciting or interesting that you’re gonna fill in later if people listen. Or maybe something fun like an archival montage of headlines or go out on the street and get some opinions that represent how people on the street feel about the topic that you’re about to discuss. So start with something active. is what I usually do. And then from there, fairly quickly, you need to introduce the show, introduce the host, make sure the value proposition is clear, like why should the audience stick around for this particular episode? So explain that. And then you get into the messy middle, and that’s a little bit more freeform, I think, and you can, there’s a lot of different ways you can go there. But anytime you can mix up the the straight up interview with something like, I don’t know, a game segment or a quiz or drop in a clip and go, what do you think of this? know, like anything like that that can kind of just texturally break up the interview is a good idea to hold attention, pull people through. And then,

Jen: what people really like is if at the end after you thanked your guests and let them go and you you know helped them you don’t want to leave your audience in despair you want to leave them with some hope and some learning so if you can either sum up some key points or make your last question a forward-looking question things like that are really helpful and then some kind of a call to action to listen to the next episode so i mean I think that there are important mechanics like that that have to happen in order to hold people’s attention. And then on top of that, you’re trying to build tension. You’re trying to have an arc that goes from the beginning of the episode all the way through to the end. And then across the season, you might have a theme that you’re unpacking that the audience starts to recognize. So now is the time on the show where we always ask this certain question because this season on the show, we’re focusing on this issue. So that the audience then feels rewarded for being a repeat listener or a repeat viewer. Like, I know this. This is the part of the show where they do this thing and I’m part of the club and I recognize that signpost. So those kinds of things I definitely look for. And then, you know, on top of that, sound design, right? You got to use the sound as a character and lean into that as much as possible. So there’s so much to, you know,

Park: There is.

Jen: There’s so much and a lot of, really think that 99 % of the podcasts out there don’t bother with that. They just don’t bother. They’re just like, so what do you think about, you know, mushrooms? And they, well, let’s talk about them, you know, and there’s much more that you could do. Yeah.

Park: You

Park: Yeah, I mean, I try to as well. And I think maybe I get kind of stuck in, all right, doing sort of the same format thing, but I like to throw in some sort of surprising novel audio that they weren’t expecting, or I might start my show differently without my theme music and without my one minute intro as to why this matters. It could be something like totally out there in hopes that they go, what, what was that?

Jen: Yeah. Yeah. I heard a great example of that. Rob Rosenthal, who had Transom.org and runs that whole organization. Transom.org, they may have changed their name. You can fact check me on that one. But Rob Rosenthal, another really great, wise podcasting guru. I once heard an episode that he did where he started the episode by saying, okay, we’re going to do something completely different here, folks. I’m going to…

Park: Okay

Jen: talk to you about story structure and I want you to follow and I’ve got some drawings on napkins that I’m going to be referring to during this podcast as an audio podcast but I’ve put the napkins on the website and I want you to go to the website and look at the napkins while you listen to this podcast. I mean that’s very particular but it was quite effective and it made me go to the website and check out the napkins you know because I was an obedient audience member.

Park: Mm-hmm.

Park: That’s a great idea. I might have to think about that. Going back to this idea of the singular problem solution narrative, how often do you work with clients where they come to you and they say, know, Jen, we want to cover this and this and this and we got to do this and you’ve got to rein them in. And then they will say, in effect, well, I’m afraid if we don’t cover all these other points and we’re going to lose all these other listeners.

Jen: Yeah.

Jen: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, in storytelling, we call that kitchen sink storytelling. Like, you know, when you’re packing for a trip and you pack everything in the kitchen sink, and it is just simply less effective. We also call that sometimes storytelling by committee, where it’s like you’re trying to serve a whole bunch of different bosses in making sure you’re ticking every box. And it can end up to the listener feeling like some sort of a cross between a PSA and an ad. Right? And, and certainly unfocused, like the, the value proposition will be less clear. So, what I try to do, and I have varying degrees of success with this when I’m dealing with clients is I try to say like, look, you’re used to marketing products to customers. When you’re actually, making a podcast for an audience and audience is not the same as a customer. might contain customers in the audience. but they are a wide range of people with a wide range of interests. And what you need to do is be very kind of clear about what it is that you’re offering them. Yeah, so I try to help them, I try to help them focus the conversation and explain from an audience perspective what it is that because the show, if you picture a Venn diagram, okay, for every podcast you’ve got You’ve got what the audience needs. That’s one circle. You’ve got what the brand is hoping to achieve. That’s another circle and sort of what they stand for. And then you’ve got your creative expression. That’s the third circle that you have to play with. And the podcast that you’re going to create is somewhere in the middle. But if you ignore that audience piece because you’re so busy transmitting your message as a brand, Like this is what we’re all about. It’s sort of the equivalent of yelling at people through a megaphone. Like it’s overkill, it feels like an ad, and it doesn’t work. And it will show in the consumption rates. So I do get into it with people sometimes because I’ve seen the evidence and I know that if you don’t take the audience’s needs seriously, you will not see the results that you’re hoping to see. So you will have ticked all your boxes.

Park: Mm-hmm.

Jen: but you will not see growth at the same rate that you would if you had an audience forward show.

Park: Yeah. One thing we point to a lot when we get clients, customers pushing back saying, you know, I kind of need to be all things to all people and talk about all these different, wonderful things we do is this remarkable article in Outside Magazine back in 2009 by New York Times columnist, Christopher, Christoph, Nicholas Christoph. There, just butchered his name appropriately. And he was talking how you can save the world and using marketing.

Jen: Huh. Huh.

Jen: Okay, yeah,

Park: ideas around communicating big, you know, social problems to get people to get engaged. And he was over in Darfur talking about this or experiencing it. And in his article, he comes back and he talks about this idea. And they did this kind of test as they were looking to raise money for famine in Africa. And they focused on first a little girl, think her name was Masu or no, she was Roki and said out and they, you here’s what Roki is going through and by, you know, she represents a million other kids, but they’re not talking about a million kids, they’re talking about her. And then they did a second mailing with Masu, a little boy, about the same age as Roki, and it pulled pretty well, not quite as good as the little girl, the little boy still pulled well. But then when they put the two together in a mailing, contributions went down by half. And they did a bunch of different studies on this sort of thinking and the University of Oregon and other places. And they said, you know, it goes back to that whole thing. If we care about the individual and by proxy, they resent, you know, represent the community that you’re helping. But if you start selling the entire community problem, then we start losing.

Jen: Yeah.

Jen: Mm. Mm.

Park: interest and it goes down to that singular narrative on a singular person with a singular problem and how you can actually help to transform that into a better future.

Jen: 100 % and I think that that’s a great anecdote and I’m going to use that because the personal angle is the bait, right? That’s the thing that hooks the audience in and make them care first and then explain the problems and the nuances of the situation. But that kind of like personal experience. is very important in order to make your content feel accessible. I was actually just listening to an interview with Dr. Jane Goodall, the chimpanzee specialist. mm-hmm. And she’s older now, I think she’s in her late 80s, but she’s still going strong, she’s still sharp as a tack. And she said, I think the interviewer was on a CBC radio and the interviewer asked,

Park: Another famous primate scientist. Yes.

Jen: Well, Jane, what do you say to people who come to you and say the world’s going to hell in a handbasket and I have no hope and there’s so many fires to put out, literally, I don’t know where to start. And Jane said, start in your community, start with one issue, start with something you care about that’s close to home. And she was very, very particular about that. And when I think about my journey as a storyteller, I started telling stories. close to home. was the 50th anniversary of the Little League across the street from my house. So I started there. started talking to local people who were immigrants from Vietnam, like boat people, who had come to my neighborhood and were working different jobs, like selling parking and things like that in my neighborhood. I started talking to them about their stories. And by starting to talk about things that I cared about, I found an audience of other people who cared about those things. And so with brands, how I would translate that lesson is like, what do you know about? What area of influence do you have some authority in? So, for example, way back during COVID, we did a show with Expedia and the show was supposed to be about exotic destinations where you could go with Expedia and how to save money while traveling. But then COVID happened. So we had to pivot the show to be about how to get your flight refunds and how to get your kids home from Southeast Asia from their backpacking trip before they get put into a holding tank for a month. And the people who knew the most about that were not the airlines. It was actually Expedia because they understood the nuances of all the booking systems. So suddenly they were… They had a very valuable expertise that only they could offer. And so we made that the focus of the show. And I think that’s like brands have that. Sometimes that expertise is in-house. Sometimes that expertise is more of a community that they can access, like a community of partners that they work with or something like that. But there’ll be a conversation, like a larger conversation that’s out there in the wild.

Jen: that the brand is well positioned to weigh in on. And my advice is, is don’t be shy about that. Weigh in on it. If you know what you’re talking about, then talk about it. And if you know that people you liaise with in a business context can add value to a conversation, bring them in. That has a great effect because you look smart, but you also diversify who you’re talking to so that it doesn’t feel like an advertisement, right? You kind of…

Park: you

Jen: Plus, your partners thank you for the extra exposure. it’s like a, it’s a mutually beneficial arrangement that you can do that increases the credibility of your show and improves your relationship with your business partners. So.

Park: Tell us about the story behind Genome BC and what you all did there.

Jen: Well, Genome BC is an organization in British Columbia, Canada, where I’m from, receives quite a bit of government funding and its mandate is to stimulate investment and awareness around genomic science. So the CRISPR gene and mapping the human genome and all that, that’s their territory. They fund tons of really important, interesting research in that area. And so they wanted to make a podcast. And in fact, they were making a podcast, but unfortunately nobody was watching it or listening to it because it was very dry. was sort of like, and this is how genomics works, you Yeah, it was like snoozer. So what they did is they said, okay, look, we need to get like the next generation of scientists excited about genomic science and genetics, genomics, these things can have,

Park: Yeah, I can hear it right now.

Jen: a bad rep, like think about genetically modified strawberries, monster strawberries and things like that. People are uptight about gene modifications. So they wanted to show the breadth of what it can actually achieve and how genomic thinking and genomic science can be used to tackle really hard problems like climate change, right? Things that the younger audience actually does really care about. So we revamped the show. We found a fantastic kind of nerdy, cool, younger university professor to host the show, who’s a lot of fun called Dr. Kayleigh Byers. We took a really fun approach to the scientific storytelling. So we would do things like when we were trying to talk about how whale song is evolving across species and across regions. We created something called a sonic orchestra, like orca-stra, and made a whole, know, like certain whale was a certain instrument and another whale was another instrument. And we built a whole beautiful sonic section illustrating the calls of whales. And that’s just one example. We’ve done a lot of kind of fun creative things like that to aid in the storytelling. But we also interview scientists and we talk to the research partners of Genome BC and we’ve had very good results. It’s a steadily growing show. It’s charted very well in both Canada and the US in the science category. And I would say that it is achieving the goal of attracting the next generation of scientists and science curious people into understanding in a deeper way. what genomics is capable of. And so, yeah, so they’re really happy and we’ve done several seasons with them and we continue to evolve and ideate and create and they’ve given us lots of trust to do that. And then the proof is in the numbers, right? The proof that that approach works.

Park: Yeah

Park: And you called the show Nice Jeans. So that was very prescient to what Sydney Sweeney has been going through with the Good Jeans commercial for American Eagle.

Jen: Nice jeans. Yeah. Like G E N E S. Yeah.

Jen: Yes. Yeah, I know. Well, this show is very aware of all that sort of eugenics history and is very careful in how it tackles issues of race. So, you know, that’s another part of branded podcasting specifically is you need to make sure that you’re aware of the context that you’re putting your content into. And so when you talk about genetics in any context, with certain folks, Indigenous people, Black people whose genetic data has been stolen and misused, there’s sensitivity there. And so the way you talk about it is very important. So for shows like that, we’ll usually bring on a co-host from that particular community. who is able to bring forward some of those issues and then have like a nuanced conversation around it. So like that kind of thing, that kind of journalistic awareness of where your content is going, the complexity of reactions that it could engender, that’s very important.

Park: Did you guys take on or comment on that controversy at all with nice jeans?

Jen: I didn’t know, but we may in future. Yeah, I’ll have to talk to the team about that one. That would be a group decision and it would involve the client for sure. Yeah.

Park: Mm-hmm.

Park: One of your stories from when you were just getting involved was you were producing, I think maybe your very first show for the CBC. And tell us what went down.

Jen: This is a what not to do kids, don’t try this at home. Okay, so the story is I was a young journalist and I had sort of scrappily fought my way into CBC radio in Vancouver and had finally been given a contract on a show. So I wasn’t just freelancing, but someone had hired me for a period of time to work as an associate producer on this show. So my job, it was a national show and my job was to find interesting stories and guests and pitch them to the head producer whose name was Anna Bonikoski and is a friend of mine. So I think I can say this. And so anyways, I had this great idea. I noticed that in Victoria, BC there lived one of the world’s preeminent Bob Dylan experts and he had just written a new book on Bob Dylan and I was like, that sounds interesting. That would be great. And he’s local and probably lots to say about Dylan and where he’s at in his career. I booked this guy and we got him on the radio and it was a show as a co-hosted show. the two hosts just had the hardest time dragging anything other than like a simple, like dry, like one sentence answer out of this guy. was like the work like, He was smart and he knew a lot of stuff, but he could not do an interview. He could not do an interview to save his life. And I should have assessed that ahead of time, but I had not. And so after that on air, live air debacle, I think the hosts had a word with the head producer, Bonikoski, and she came to me and she said, listen, if the person can’t talk, I don’t care how many letters they have. after their name, do not book them on this show. And I was like, right, got it, lesson learned kind of thing. And I’ve never forgotten that. so I deal with a lot of medical shows, finance shows, we do an insurance show. mean, these are not necessary. These are sometimes very clinically focused people who are not like raconteurs, right? So.

Park: Mm-hmm.

Jen: How you handle that kind of intelligence in a podcast, think, you get really specific points out of those people, but you don’t give them a ton of real estate on the show itself. You need to frame them with something else that’s more listenable. Yeah.

Park: Right.

Park: Yeah, I’ve had that same exact problem and the more credentials they have after the name, the less I am likely to put them on the show. had a guy and he was a wonderful guy and this is four or five years ago out of Ireland and he was a PhD expert.

Jen: And you would think gift of the gab coming out of Ireland. mean, would almost give any Irish person a pass. Yeah.

Park: Yeah. Yeah. And he was a real great background on story in Shakespeare. And he was the whole story was about taking classical story structure and how is it being used in modern day politics and social communications and so forth. And the poor guy got on and he was always trying to catch himself and think about the next thing he was going to say. So it was and.

Jen: Mmm.

Jen: Mmm.

Jen: yeah, yeah.

Park: And I had to stop him like three minutes into the interview. And I said, I’m sorry, Dr. so-and-so, but we’ve got to clean it up. I just need you to flow when you talk to me because you actually don’t sound like you know what you’re talking about when you’re doing. And that was the wrong instruction I gave him. So he said, okay. So we went on with the interview and he did clean it up, but he was pissed at me the entire time. And I did the interview and I go.

Jen: Mmm… Mm-hmm. But… Yeah, pissed and a bit nervous and yeah, right.

Park: Okay, probably shouldn’t have said that, but I just want to let him know. I mean, if he’s on stage and he’s doing that, he is damaging his credibility. Yeah.

Jen: You know what, you did him a favor. You did him a favor because hopefully he’ll file that piece of information because he sounds like a smart guy. I mean, some people it’s like, you know, you say someone has a face for radio. Some people some people’s intelligence is better in print. That’s just how I would put that. Like, it’s not like they’re stupid. They’re just better in print when they can control every word and every thought. But I mean, I mean, his area of expertise sounds fascinating, you know. Yeah.

Park: Yeah.

Park: Yeah, without a doubt.

Park: yeah, he was great. And then on the other hand, I had an astrophysicist woman from Lebanon, the first Lebanese astrophysicist, and she was working at Oxford. And her whole thing was about getting young girls into science, getting them interested at an early age. Her last name is Halabi. I’ll have to look up the show real quick. I can’t remember what show it was on. She was absolutely brilliant. In fact, it’s still one of my favorite

Jen: Hmm. Wow.

Jen: Mmm.

Park: all time episodes. Dr. Gina Halabi, show number 188. if you, yeah, and Jen, if you want to hear really an expert, brilliant storyteller with lots of credentials and a hell of a story to tell, Gina Halabi is it. Yeah. So they are out there, but they are few, you know, in between.

Jen: Hmm.

Jen: Go look it up, folks. Go look it up. Yeah, she sounds great.

Jen: Yeah. she sounds amazing. Yeah, I will. Thank you. Thank you.

Jen: Yeah, yeah, so it’s like, as storytellers, I think we have to work with the truth of the material that we gather. So if the truth of that material is that it’s a little bit dry, which happens sometimes, especially in the branded podcasting space, it’s like, I mean, I can give you an example. do a podcast, it’s for Alliance Allianz Trade Credit Insurance. So.

Park: Mm-hmm.

Jen: right out of the gate, I’m like, seriously a podcast about trade credit insurance? Like, how am I going to make that interesting? How? I ask you. But then I started looking into it and I started realizing, you know, there are really human stakes involved in like when you’re talking about insurance, it’s basically like ensuring your business so that you don’t get screwed if your client or business partner goes under. So think, Like a real example we used on the show is somebody had an entire shipment of rotting at some port like in Odessa or something that was like, because when Russia attacked Ukraine, there was a bunch of trade embargoes suddenly slapped on and this shipment of meat was sitting in the hot sun just and somebody’s entire livelihood was hanging in the balance. You know, and, and I think when you think about that in terms of human stakes and investment and risk and reward and all of those aspects of business, it’s actually pretty compelling stuff. The other thing we did for that show is we knew that we would be having to explain some kind of complex insurance related concepts. So we created a game show format for that show. made it, we called it wheel of risk, kind of loosely modeled on wheel of fortune. And we had all kinds of quizzes on the show and kind of just a game show format that helped kind of increase listenability. We became a very high ranking insurance podcast because of that. Nobody else is bothering to try anything to jazz it up, you know?

Park: Well, you’re talking about the human dynamic in it.

Jen: Yeah, the human dynamic and also kind of the conceptual framing or framework to like making it more fun and learning based as opposed to like these dry conversations about covering your butt, which is what most insurance podcasts are. So, yeah.

Park: Right. well, this is fantastic. Now, we, of course, put your brand through our story cycle, Genie, to see how well you were telling your story. And you guys did pretty good. What did you think of the output?

Jen: I got goosebumps when I read it and I was like, what sorcery is this? Because it actually reflected back to me a lot of the things that we’ve been working on trying to describe. However, we started this interview by saying you thought maybe we made fiction podcasts. So I need to look at what aspects of our presentation made you think that. I think it might be the use of the word narrative storytelling.

Park: in my PM.

Jen: Because it sounds like once upon a time, like a narrative, when in fact, in podcasting, that is just a genre that is basically a documentary slash interview hybrid, right? Script and clip is another way to put that. But the term narrative podcasting, which I did not invent, I think is misleading. So I think maybe we need to do some work on that, yeah.

Park: Mm-hmm.

Park: Might be something you want to clean up. Yeah. And all I did is took your URL and fed it to the genie in about two minutes. gave me first the overall brand assessment. And I said, okay, yeah, think that’s 90 % accurate just cause I didn’t know your brand that well, I’m thinking it’s 90 % there run it. And then it ran the whole story cycle, uh, system narrative strategy in it. And it broke down your three audiences. And I want to read just the ABT from your audience, uh, number one, and you. We, you and I have not talked about the ABT, so you might not know what the and, but therefore narrative framework is. Right. So it is a framework that we use to teach, you know, primarily business leaders, branders, sales and marketing experts. And it is embedded in the story cycle, Jeannie, and a place to what we’ve been talking about this entire show, that singular problem solution dynamic. And it also places your audience at the center of the story. So.

Jen: Mm.

Jen: Mm.

Park: Once the genie reveals your top three audiences, and you may well have more than that, but we want people to really focus on just the three audiences to get them rolling. Here’s the ABT it wrote about your number one audience, which is progressive marketing leaders. And it says, as a progressive marketing leader, you want branded content that drives measurable business results and transforms your brand. into a trusted industry voice that attracts ideal customers. Right? So Jen, we call that our statement of agreement. We’re simply setting the stage and we’re getting, we just want that progressive marketing leader nod their head, say, you know, you understand me. You appreciate what I want. Now we introduced the problem, but you feel frustrated because most podcast production services focus on technical delivery rather than strategic business outcomes, leaving you with polished content.

Jen: Mm-hmm.

Jen: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jen: you.

Park: that fails to generate meaningful engagement. So that’s the problem you all are solving for. And they’re going, yeah, that is a big problem. What do I do about it? Then we move into the therefore statement of consequence. Therefore, you can achieve strategic content marketing success that drives quantifiable business growth with jar podcast solutions, outcome driven approach that combines pioneer expertise with engagement first philosophy.

Jen: Yeah, that’s great. And the only thing I would add to that is, how can I put this succinctly, data monitoring on an ongoing basis, like we monitor audience data and feed that back into the creative. So I think that’s everything you said 100 % accurate. I would just put like an ad on the end that we also believe that podcasts.

Park: Mm-hmm.

Park: Yeah.

Jen: can and should evolve, like it’s a serialized format. And so if your brand needs change, if your audience isn’t responding, anything like that happens, we need to be aware of that and be able to pivot creatively. So that’s the other piece.

Park: So you would definitely, you know, working inside the genie just iterate in there, tell it that it would rewrite it with, you know, adding that information to it. And every time you iterate inside the genie, it becomes smarter about you and your brand and how you like to talk about it. So you are just continuing to build this brand brain. And then of course, it’ll create any strategy you can think of as well as all the content. I use it now after this show, I will. take the transcript of our conversation and I’ll take your bio and I will feed it into the genie. I’ve got a particular agent in there that will do this for me, knowing the Business of Story brand voice and it will create everything from the intro script that people heard at the beginning of this show to all of my show notes, to all of my LinkedIn posts, to my email campaign, all in the Business of Story.

Jen: Mm-hmm.

Park: voice but focused on your expertise in that one problem solution dynamic theme we’ve been talking about this entire time.

Jen: That sounds like an amazing tool you got yourself there.

Park: Well, we’re having a lot of fun with it. We launched it just over a month ago and we’ve got, I don’t know, nearing a hundred users now. So if you know anyone, but I always like to ask guests this because I’m always surprised by the answer. So Jen, I’ll ask you, do you have a unique value proposition for your company that is set in stone?

Jen: Amazing!

Jen: Yeah, I think it boils down to our job audience results philosophy and that we are going to start by saying that a podcast should achieve results. If you’re a brand funding a podcast, it’s not good enough to just make cool stuff. It has to be cool stuff that serves a purpose for your brand and also serves an audience. And it needs to be the right audience. So I would say that we’re very strategy forward and that’s maybe our competitive edge. And then the other piece that hasn’t really been mentioned is that we very strongly emphasize customer service on an ongoing basis. So it’s not a kind of set it and forget it thing. We work really collaboratively with our clients and in the end, we’re building capacity for them in-house. So that’s another piece of what we do.

Park: Mm-hmm. That’s something too that maybe the genie wasn’t picking up from your website that you might look at and say, there’s maybe a potential gap in there that we should just go ahead and fill in. It did write a unique value proposition for you starting with strategy. said strategic podcast partnerships that transform brand communication into measurable business assets.

Jen: Yeah.

Jen: Yeah.

Jen: Snap, 100%, you got it. Yeah, that is the goal. That is the goal. If I had to boil it down to one sentence, and I also thought that the progressive marketing leader description was bang on, like that’s exactly who we’re looking for. And by progressive, we mean creatively brave, right? Yeah.

Park: There’s your UVP. Yeah.

Park: Mm-hmm. And it came up, the final thing as it goes through all the story cycle system is your brand purpose statement. And like we tell the genie, this is what the brand stands for beyond making money. We know you got to make money to stay in business, but how do you elevate people? And it says jar podcast solutions exists to empower marketing professionals to transform their brand communication into strategic business assets that drive measurable growth. and establish lasting market authority.

Jen: If you were to ask my CEO, he would say that is our purpose. I would actually say there’s an even wider purpose, which is a social purpose, which is to stimulate dialogue across difference. And we help brands do that. We help brands place themselves within larger conversations that are ongoing in the society that people care about. Yeah.

Park: See, and I like that better. I like that better because it is more human.

Jen: Yeah, I mean, that’s to me, that’s why I do this work, right? And I think I want to work with people who have similar goals. But along the way, if we’re not serving your brand goals, then we’re not doing our job. my view is that brand goals can include being more influential in the wider world. Right. And so like we’re focusing on large brand goals in that sense. But societally,

Park: Mm-hmm.

Park: Mm-hmm.

Jen: I think podcasting is a listening-based art form, and it’s a really important, nuanced way to have a conversation. We need a lot more listening in this world right now, you know, and I think podcasting is one of the ways that we can do that.

Park: I love that. yeah, I would have you go back into the genie and iterate on that and say, okay, I like what you’ve got here, but now I want you to consider this, this and this. Give me three different options on it to dial it in for you. And then again, every with every iteration, it gets smarter about your brand. So, well, this is great, Jen. Last thing, what are the one, two or three tips?

Jen: Mm.

Jen: Mm-hmm.

Jen: Awesome. I’ll have to play with that. That’s cool.

Park: that you can leave with our listeners so they can transform their, and maybe they don’t have a podcast, but just their communications in general.

Jen: Okay, wow, great question. Okay, tip number one, be your authentic self, don’t try to be perfect. So the audience doesn’t want slick, the audience doesn’t want over polished, the audience wants you to be real, so be real. Tip number two, respect the audience’s needs in terms of audio and video quality. Do what you can to elevate your audio and video quality within your… within your budget. And tip number three, grow a pair. Be creatively brave. Try something that is maybe unexpected for your brand that’s gonna help you reach over the fence to a wider audience. The people who have already drunk your Kool-Aid have already drunk your Kool-Aid. So they’ll consume whatever you put out, right? It’s the people that you haven’t reached yet. that you need to really think about that you want to call into your tent, right? To feed them some Kool-Aid. I don’t know why I’m using like a mass murder analogy here, but I didn’t think that through. But like, think definitely do something that is going to get attention and be a little bit unexpected for your brand. And that is going to give you a lot more traction than doing the expected and safe thing.

Park: Mm-hmm.

Park: Will you send me three of your top favorite episodes you’ve produced for brands so that we can put them in the show notes and direct people there and they can go and listen to some of your work?

Jen: Sure, I’d be happy to do that. we also make video podcasts, so maybe I’ll send you one of those as well.

Park: Yeah, whatever works for you. Just send us the top three that really represents the work that you all do there at Char Podcast Solutions. And Jen, thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it.

Jen: Okay.

Jen: Thank you, it was a fun chat.

Listen To More Episodes