bite-sized berliners
fresh food for thought for your coffee break
little listens, big ideas
For more context, the Berlin School’s global ‘Berliner’ community is a who’s who for folks in the creative industries. Showcasing the community and their stories, ultimately sold our Executive MBA program because people wanted to go to school to brush shoulders with the Michael Conrads of the world. This Bite-sized Berliners series did just that: it spotlit influencers of the community to drive viral traffic to the podcast for further ‘community combing’ but, at the same time, sold €53K EMBA programs.
Bite-sized Berliners was a fun, new podcast series I came up with and creatively directed at the Berlin School of Creative Leadership. The school already had an existing podcast called Meet the Experts, but those episodes were at-length interviews and required a lot of time investment from the listener and maker (the in-house team) alike. This spin-off was a ‘short and sweet’ series that served up fresh, under 10-minute food for thought to be savored during a coffee (or tea) break. The goal was for both students and alumni of the school — of whom we called Berliners, which also happens to be a jelly-filled donut in Germany — to offer up their juicy observations on life and work in the new normal and beyond. It was a platform for Berliners to nurture the community through spreading the good word of their new initiatives and real world creative leadership learnings in lockdown all the while continue to build awareness for the well-renowned school and its creative student body.
pain point
There were not enough resources in-house to consistently create content for the “Meet the Experts” podcast from scratch. For context, a full-fledge 30-45 minute “Meet the Experts" episode required several weeks to produce; from brainstorming and arranging an interesting creative expert to interview, researching found expert and his/her story in depth, coming up with the right questions, holding the interview, listening to the recording to find the story and hook, making edit notes for the producer to adjust flow for said story and then, ultimately, promoting it. Another thing to note was that at the start of the pandemic we needed to hold off on selling our Executive MBA program while we waited out the new hybrid logistics. Instead, we looked for creative ways to cultivate the community more than ever in these trying times.
how it worked
I sent a call out to the community asking for eager self-made podcasters who were keen to use the Berlin School’s podcast and social channels as a soap box to promote an exciting new initiative and/or their personal brand to the world. It was proven to be a great idea from the get-go as we had many early takers keen to share their story.
From the initial batch of keen casters, I shared with them simple production notes for recording (i.e. do NOT record with screaming children in the background, but, surprisingly, under a duvet cover worked best!) and a script for recording their intros/outros so we could maintain brand cohesion of this series. We promoted each new episode across all of our social channels and batch shared the latest and greatest bites in our bi-monthly newsletters.
results
Community engagement doubled upon its launch. Everyone wanted to hear what their fellow Berliners were up to and they wanted to make sure their own story was heard. We generated more buzz for the school and lead interest in a time when it was rare to think about spending €53K on a program that, at this point in time, required world travel.