Backing up a Brand with Personality: B2B Podcasting in the True Crime Genre
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There’s no rule that says your B2B podcast needs to be interview-style. It so often becomes the default for brands. Why? Some see that it could open doors for never-ending content by leveraging interviews with experts. Also, it can be slightly easier to produce. But this interview format leaves many podcasts sounding too similar.
We believe that using a narrative-style podcast approach for brands can help them truly differentiate themselves. Narrative podcasts mean more work - more preparation, and more editing time. But the end result is a unique podcast that stands far out from the competition and makes your brand even more memorable in the minds of listeners.
Here to prove our point today, we’re sharing the case of Early Warning, and their true crime podcast - Nickel & Crime.
The Background
Early Warning used a narrative podcast to make their brand more engaging and exciting in an industry (financial services) that can be perceived as– dare we say– a little boring. Early Warning focuses on protecting and advancing the financial ecosystem.
Early Warning is a critical part of the financial ecosystem in the United States. We help detect and prevent fraud and keep money moving smoothly. We help identify bad actors before they enter the system. That’s what I would say we really are here to do.Debra Caron, Sr. Content Marketing Manager at Early Warning
Back in 2022, their marketing team had the idea to bring a little fun personality to their brand. They thought it would be interesting to also explore a new content medium. They saw a gap in the branded podcast field that fit perfectly with their offering - the true crime genre. True Crime remains one of the top 5 podcast genres, with an immense potential audience.
Nickel & Crime was born as an in-house podcast project, mainly a one-woman show. The show shares the stories of financial crimes and scams.
“Nickel & Crime was put together as a fun way to give our brand some personality and be a little more engaging. True crime is a popular genre. As humans, we're interested in understanding the motivations behind people's actions, so our team initially wanted to have a fun take on financial crime and how it happens, and then dovetail into how we help stop it and how we help educate consumers so they can avoid becoming victims.”
While Early Warning’s marketing is primarily aimed at a B2B audience, the podcast opens up a way to also speak to a wider B2C audience. The entertaining content also serves as a tool to educate listeners about financial safety.
After producing one season of seven episodes on their own, the marketing team decided they might need a little help to grow and improve. They began searching for a production company. Once they found Lower Street, we were ready to work together to transform Nickel & Crime into a leading podcast in true financial crime.
The Starting Point - Nickel & Crime’s First Season
Early Warning was very happy with their narrative podcast. They had fun making it and believed listeners had fun tuning in. It helped them add a layer of entertainment to the subject of financial security.
A narrative true crime podcast let them share real stories as “warnings” to listeners. But it also gives listeners the tools and tips to be more aware of their financial security.
Nickel & Crime had originally been an internal project, with only one member of the marketing team writing the script, recording, editing, and publishing. It’s a lot for one person to do. This resulted in some episodes lacking in finer details, and publishing to be inconsistent. This irregularity made it difficult to grow. They realized if they wanted to keep it going and improve, they might need help.
“When we realized we wanted to put a budget toward this project and level it up, I researched many companies. ”
In the search for a production company, Early Warning was often met with hesitation and the thought “You can’t do a true crime podcast as a B2B podcast!” They were told that they should switch gears and go the interview route, but that isn’t what they wanted.
“I spoke with many agencies that completely wanted to change the direction and didn't understand the goals, and the fact that we liked what we had. We liked the idea. We just wanted to make the idea better”
Luckily they found Lower Street.
“What I loved about Lower Street was that you embraced what we were already doing and you said, this is cool. We're going to give you some ideas to make it better. I love that you guys were supportive in that regard.”
Together, Lower Street and Early Warning improved their podcast to release a successful second season. The new stories and improved production help both entertain and educate their audience to protect them from fraud and scams.
The Transition - Working With Lower Street
Lower Street helped Early Warning improve their storytelling, production, and editing for impressive growth. They successfully launched a second season that brings a fun personality to the brand and spreads brand awareness.
Beyond just a storytelling podcast, it would also serve to educate their listeners and keep them aware of risks in financial security.
While season one told stories of scams, Early Warning wanted to focus more on current trends around financial fraud. They wanted to focus on what listeners should be on the lookout for right now.
With season two, Early Warning was also interested in taking more “risks” to share real details. Season one stories were true, but they had chosen to change names. This was largely due to restrictions in legal, in order to include names they needed the time to research and meet requirements from their legal team.
By hiring Lower Street to assist on production and post-production, they had more time to do this research and include true names. Lower Street producers could assist with extended research and find resources with court documents for Early Warning’s approval. These resources helped build their confidence in sharing the finer details of the stories. In addition, by stating every true detail of the cases the stories became even more engaging for listeners.
The record of details and documentation helped the stories of financial crime in Nickel & Crime come to life even more.
Their stories also took a turn, rather than focus on the crime or criminal, Early Warning aimed to focus on the victims of financial crimes.
“We melded together a couple of different stories to make the narratives a little more victim-focused. We wanted to focus on: How can we help people learn and how can we help people prevent being victims themselves?”
Lower Street was able to source timely stories that would share a valuable perspective with Early Warning’s listeners. We looked for stories that were more up-to-date and could still share warnings of modern fraud and scams.
Once Early Warning and Lower Street decided on the stories to tell, Lower Street producers would roll up their sleeves and get researching.
“By finding stories that were more timely, doing the research, the crafting of the story is so much more compelling now. We’re able to frame the story in an intriguing way that makes people want to keep listening. Lower Street has taken that just way above what I would have been capable of on my own.”
Apart from research, our team got to have a lot of fun with creative storytelling during recording and post-production. To add more layers to the narrative, our producers seconded as voice actors. They would recreate scenes, newscasts, or phone calls.
Our goal really was to pull the listener in using the stories of real people with real stakes. The whole team put our heads together about how to make the show feel authentic and immersive, but also ensure that the listener walks away with some genuine education about how these crimes work and how to protect themselves. So the research was hugely important, but it was also crucial to think closely about sound design, and our engineers have done an incredible job making it all come to life.
-Marion Gruner, Lower Street Producer
While it seems like just a bit of fun, this actually has a great impact on the listener experience. This brings the audience even more into the story. Listening to one host's voice for an extended time, a listener may zone out. Having changes in voices, sound, pitch, and emotion, all act together to keep the audience hooked.
“The sound design, bringing in additional voices, the team acting in our podcast, and doing a fantastic job. The true knowledge of where that's best inserted and what is the actual right sound, it just really adds so much.”
With additional creative elements, and more research season two episodes extended from about 15 minutes to 30 minutes.
“We're building out each episode a little more and it's created an emotional listening experience. Before we were just telling a story, running through the facts, now it’s like you go on a full ride with the host. You feel into the story more, and it’s made every episode bigger."
At every step Lower Street worked side by side with Early Warning, sharing a few creative options, and letting them make the final decision. We were there to guide them from story selection to production, and even keep them on track for recordings.
“The producers are great about reminding me like, hey, we need this so we can stay on production schedule. I didn't have a consistent publication schedule before and it doesn’t help podcast growth to only publish once, and then a month later, complete inconsistency doesn't help your listeners connect.”
Together we planned for Nickel & Crime to release a new episode every two weeks and record ahead of time. But of course, things can come up, Lower Street helped Early Warning stay on top of the show while remaining creative and flexible.
Lower Street was able to offer a lot of support to Early Warning, and put together a team that was compatible to create a great podcast.
“Sometimes, I'll read the same sentence like 15 times in a row and then they've got to, pull all that out. Every once and a while they’ll ask to rerecord one line, but they are so kind about it. They have so much patience to have to edit all of my flubs. And I will also say what an incredible group of people to work with. They are so talented, so understanding, and so patient.”
Adding the Brand, to the Brand Podcast
Nickel & Crime created an entertaining true crime podcast to add personality behind their brand. But that’s not all they did to ensure the name “Early Warning” stuck with listeners.
The aim of this podcast was to be educational, to help listeners protect themselves from future frauds. To reach this objective, they added a final tips section at the end of each episode.
“We weren't necessarily doing that before. We would kind of hint that you could protect yourself, but now we are giving five concrete tips, relevant to the story. This does make a podcast, and there are so many ways it’s improved!”
The Outcome
390% growth rate with season two
Two 2024 W3 Awards including Gold for Crime & Mystery Series
Bronze and Listener's Choice Signal Award in Money, Finance & Investment.
Nickel & Crime’s second season has been a hit. And not just for Early Warning’s typical B2B audience, but for listeners from a range of demographics.
“My own friends that are listening to it because they think it's good. Many of them work in completely different industries, they would never be our customers. But, I think it's still an important thing for consumers to understand who we are and what we're doing to keep people safe.”
In the end, people love true crime. Early Warning found a great overlap between their business and one of the most popular podcast genres. The genre allowed them to create an entertaining podcast, that reaches a much larger audience than most brand podcasts. But more importantly, it allowed them to spread awareness of the work they do, and financial security practices.
“People do want to feel safe. Some of these financial crimes, the concept is that this could happen to anyone, so people need to be aware of that.”
Lower Street was able to take Early Warning’s idea and help them make it better. Through story selection, research, creative voice acting and sound design, and solid tips, Nickel & Crime brought stories to life but also educated listeners. It truly stands out in the area of B2B podcasting, as well as the genre of True Crime.
Hiring an outside production company took a weight off the Early Warning marketing department’s shoulders.
“I think it's just having other people with expertise to pull you through that and guide the direction is huge. It's so much better and so much easier on me to produce it with you guys helping me out.”
With the gained attention of season two, season one has also seen an increase in listens. Nickel & Crime season one saw an impressive 390% growth in listens since season two kicked off. This growth was instant with the release of season two, showing that the uplift came from the production switch. Yet, it is still too early to see the full impact of gained listenership from this switch.
At the same time, Nickel & Crime gained enough attention that it was awarded two W3 Awards in 2024, including the Gold for Crime & Mystery Podcast Series. Plus, in 2024 they took home the Bronze and Listener's Choice Signal Award in Money, Finance & Investment.
Creating Entertainment in a Brand Podcast
Nickel & Crime’s goal was to give a little more personality to Early Warning. This would add another layer to the content they could share across channels. They knew from the start that the ROI might look different with this project. They focused their objectives on reach, bringing personality to the brand, and creating a new entry point for their B2B audience. With this in mind, they were set to create a narrative podcast. Using a podcast medium, and focusing on these topics from a new perspective has given them even more content to share across channels.
“It's a different entry point to get people to notice what we're doing. Because we're typically promoting on LinkedIn, which is where the actual decision makers that might use our services would live, but, they're still humans. They're still going to consume content. And hopefully, this is something that's intriguing to them.”
We couldn’t agree more. Even your B2B audience is still human. And all humans enjoy compelling, entertaining content. Brand podcasts serve to target key decision-makers by putting out content that will grab their attention and interest. Many B2B marketers, and podcasters, might assume that means content surrounding the latest trends in the industry, or hearing from experts.
We all like to be entertained, we all like to put our headphones on, take a walk, and escape a little. Narrative podcasts that go against the norm provide an entertaining escape, and an alignment with an industry audience simultaneously.
The feedback from clients, connections, and internally has been constantly enthusiastic. They enjoy the podcast so much that they share it on their own social media and recommend it across industries.
Internally the team at Early Warning is very happy with the podcast.
“Everyone says, this thing is amazing. It's gotten so much better. I get unsolicited messages from teammates when they stumble upon the show and they're like, ‘my God, this podcast is so good!’ So that makes me feel amazing. I just love that people are genuinely enjoying it.”
While everyone may have pushed Early Warning to try a classic interview podcast, their choice to lead with a narrative true crime podcast truly made them stand out. Not only in financial security, not only in branded podcasting, and not only in true crime but successfully in all three.
Never be afraid to divert from the norm, and get creative with your brand podcast. If you are interested in exploring narrative podcast options for your brand, get in touch. Our team would love to help you create a great show.
Author
Steven Bonnard
Head of Marketing
Hi, I'm Steven. I'm a globe-trotter who loves running long distances and listening to podcasts, especially from the news, politics and fantasy categories.
