Transcript:
 
Beck Marlar:
Welcome, everybody. My name's Beck. I am the Customer Success Manager here at uStudio. Oh, thanks for joining us. We're really excited you can be here. I'm excited for you to hear from Jackie here in a minute. A couple of housekeeping things. If you want to ask questions, please do that, but we ask that you put them in the Q&A section here in the webinar, and we'll compile those and we'll let Jackie answer those after she's done presenting. So, we're monitoring the questions. Feel free to fire away all the questions that you want to ask. So, yeah. So, anyway, excited to get started here. Jackie Sidoti is with us with Wakefern.

Wakefern's the largest retailer owned cooperative in the United States. I'll let Jackie tell you more about Wakefern, but wanted to mention that. And Jackie is a senior communications leader there, as well. They started their podcast journey sometime around 2021. So, they've been with us for a little bit, and they've just had meteoric success and done such a great job with their corporate podcast launch and adoption. And so, we asked Jackie, would you come on and share your success journey with us? And so, that's what she's going to do today. I'm going to get out of her way and give her the floor. So, Jackie, take it away.

Jackie Sidoti:
Thanks again, Beck. My name is Jackie Sidoti, and as he said, I'm a senior communications leader at Wakefern. I've been at Wakefern for a little over three years now, and prior to coming here I was with PricewaterhouseCoopers doing Global and US Change and Communications. And I've worked in various capacities in corporate comm space from strategic change management, employee comms, thought leadership, web/internet development, social media, and now podcasts. So, I appreciate Beck inviting us on to share our success story with you about Startup. We're going to go over some key facets regarding our podcast journey. We're going to focus on how our podcast came to be. It's a new and exciting and sought after internal communications vehicle for us, which we're happy for. It's particularly popular among our leadership, which is a really important segment to get buy-in for any organization. And I'll touch on how we're honing our strategy for success for this vehicle.

The various tactics that we've employed to break through the everyday clutter that people at work have to do so that we stand out and have our stories heard. We've had several hurdles to overcome, from a technical standpoint, to actually produce the internal podcast versus companies that post external programming. So, there was some challenges that we had to accommodate for there. But clearing those hurdles has enabled us to really take advantage of the great opportunities to capture a genuine and receptive and repeat audience for our podcast episodes, which we're happy to have achieved. Our show has had great impact on our target audiences at Wakefern. So, it's a testimony, I think, for us in terms of doing the homework to prepare and make sure you strike the right chord with the audience that you're looking to engage with and staying true to that in order to sustain your success.

We've been able to do that with Startup, which we're happy about. First, a little bit about Wakefern. As Beck said, we are the largest retailer owned cooperative in the US. We're made up of almost 50 member companies who, together, own and operate more than 360 retail supermarkets. And we are range throughout the northeast. And maybe some of you are familiar with names like ShopRite or Dearborn Market or Gourmet Garage. We've got six banners all together. So, we're a thriving company and in a really interesting industry. We were founded in 1947, and so, we're in our 76th year in the grocery industry. And we're continuing to grow and innovate in that space despite the highly competitive landscape that it is. But we proudly serve our communities and our member families and the banner stores that they operate. The communities that they operate in are more than just customers.

They are part of that family. For last year, which was our 75th anniversary, we had planned a lot of different activations, and we naturally thought about the people who built and formed the cooperative over the years. And as you do when you're planning an anniversary, you go through photos, old footage, all kinds of different archival pieces, and we were just scratching our heads to figure out what would be the best way to bring that history to life for a newer generation of a Wakefern associate, educating them about the beginnings, but also instilling in them a sense of pride about the organization, and showcasing where they fit in. And then, for our more seasoned associates, we wanted to demonstrate to them how much we value our roots and all the people that contributed through the years to our growth, particularly at a time, now, where growing and innovating is so necessary and things change so rapidly.

So, we wanted to pull through both the newer generation and the older generation of a Wakefern associate and give them a shared sense of purpose and pride for the organization. In the past, we had looked at podcasts as a potentially new communications vehicle for us. We had done a lot of research. We looked at the competitors in our industry to see what they were doing in terms of podcasts. We looked at other industry people in terms of what podcasts was providing them and what they were putting out. And then, of course, we looked at the entertainment podcasts. And up to that point, we really hadn't found our lane.

We really couldn't find the right hook that would really be true to our organization and work well with our culture. Well, the 75th anniversary kind of changed that for us. Suddenly we had an opportunity to put down an oral history and have our members who were founding elements of our organization through to our leadership tell those stories, get them down on tape, if you will, and do so in the casual and in a more intimate fashion than they would've just standing up in front of a podium or just if we wrote an article or two about it.

So, we began to put our launch concept together and get to doing our very first podcast. And thankfully, that's also when we hooked up with you uStudio, and they really helped us take it to where it is now. We launched our podcast on July 28th in 2021. To date, we've produced about 40 episodes, plus a handful of teasers that we put out there from time to time. And we've launched our second season now about a month and a half ago. But I have to say from day one to now, our metrics have been amazing. We've had a high level of adoption out of a possible 1700 to 2000 associates given the day we have about 884 activated user accounts, and we actually saw a jump from 700 users to that number as of March of 2022. And that was interesting to us because, as we got into the summer months, we took a summer hiatus from producing the programs, and the number continued to climb from 700 in March up to 884 in the October timeframe.

And that's with just running best of programming. So, we know that we're hitting a cord here, we are getting a great engagement. And for an internal comms vehicle, that kind of engagement is really stellar. You're happy if half the people in your organization are really not only hearing what you're saying, but engaging in interacting with you. So, we know that our people are listening because actually they want to, and that's a nice feeling. So, since we started, we've had episodes played a total of 7,415 times, and the amount of maintenance collectively is about 97,250. So, we've been very fortunate. And I think we feel that there are three ingredients that have been key for us to hit that mark. It's finding your voice, it's finding your audience, and building your home. And I'm going to run through each of those elements now.

So, these definitely are our three key ingredients for success. Finding your voice. Figuring out what your angle is super important. It's what I talked about a little bit earlier. We listened around to try to see what people's angles were when they were putting together a podcast program. So, we did a lot of soul-searching to see what value add, adding a podcast to the mix of cool communications if you will, would do for us. We listened to a lot of others. We sampled our target audiences. We knew that we were going to be reaching out to our associates and our leadership. So, we did informal polling to see what they were listening to, if they were at all, and what things worked, what interested them, what didn't. We don't want to produce something that's going to make people fall asleep if they click in at all.

So, we were really interested into hearing formats and presentation styles worked for them. And then, we thought about who would be the ones to bring those stories to life for the audience. The storyteller role is huge. We knew we wanted our members to tell the stories of how their families came into and grew the business, and so we were lucky that we do have a lot of wonderful spokespeople in our members. But the linchpin for it really was the host of the program. That role was going to be the one to pull those stories out of those individuals and bring them to life. And we're very fortunate. Our host is our Chief Communications Officer, Karen Meleta, and she's been the perfect storyteller. She literally wrote the history book of Wakefern called A Symphony of Soloists for Wakefern a few years back. She also knows the members and the leadership very well, and she's also just got a strong sense of what podcasts are.

She's an avid listener to her own series, and she just has a very endearing and naturally and comfortably inquisitive character about her. So, she's really able to bring a nice genuine conversation tone to the programming. So, that's been really helpful. I think that's really been one of the main components, I think. If we didn't have Karen, we would do a nice podcast, but she's definitely brought it to another level, I think, for us. Now that we're kicking off our second season, the stories from our founders are morphing a little bit to how we do things at Wakefern and how we're engaging in business now. But we're still keeping that Startup concept close to our true north moment for this because we want to make sure that we're engaging and still delivering on the programming that we initially started with. We want to make sure that we stay true to our strategy, and we're carefully bridging the gap between where Wakefern started and where we are now, and telling stories about how we're growing and evolving to deliver to customers in a way that stays true to that original effort that the founders made.

We're not trying to be something that we're not. We're never going to be the Jeff Rogan of podcast internal comms. Now, we're not going to steer from a natural tone, and that's an important thing to remember. Finding your audience. We talk a lot about why we were doing the podcast, and we wanted to provide them with that oral history in a way that spoke to them, that moved them. It was really important that people share in the good fortune and in the success story and feel that they're a part of that success story. So, with Startup, our effort is to really look to inform and educate, as well as entertain our associates, all levels of leadership and the members. Our associates, in particular, they're the ones who are making the work happen every day, and they're doing it in different places. They're doing it in the office, and they're doing it remotely. And when I say remotely, it's not just people's working from home. We have people who travel from store to store who are going from supplier to farmer. And so, we wanted this to be portable for them.

We wanted it to be so that they could take with them and have a sense of, yes, this is Wakefern information, but in a welcome and an interesting way. So, that was a big part of why we went with the podcast here, because it's something that you could take and go with you. Communicating out to them to let them know that we have a lot of bits was a combination of both push and pull communication mechanisms. So, then make sure that we connected with them and let them know the programming was available. We wanted to inform our people about Startup. First thing that we do is, once we publish a show, a uStudio notification comes out, which is great. We follow up with an eCard, an email that gives them the highlight of what's on that day, and we hyperlink that to our episode.

So, all they have to do is click on their email, and they can go into the program. And we invite people to try to access in different ways. Our internet publishes a story. We publish weekly, every Wednesday, and our internet that day has the top news story be that podcast promo, and within that story we have links to go directly to the podcast. But then, also, too, our internet site that we've built for our series, that has a little bit of everything in it from the link to the daily program, but it has a list of show notes pages for all that accompany each episode with different pictures and takeouts that the speaker has talked to in the program. So, we have a nice backup for that. And then, we also make sure that people are able to know how to get to us, whether it's they're listening on their PC, or on their mobile app with the uStudio component.

So, that's important for us. We want to make sure that people are kept up to date with the episode drops, and we also cross communicate with the information that comes from the podcast tapings, information that a leader or that comes up will use in other communication vehicles. As you heard on Startup podcasts, so-and-so said that. So we're, also, we're providing content in other mechanisms, but we're also promoting our show at the same time. One of the things that was really important to us was to promote the program even before it began. And so, we did a great ramp up communications launch. About a month out, we started to run programming, like this teaser video that you're seeing, which hyped what it was going to be about. It got them interested. This promo has little outtakes of some of the programs we had recorded already, so they had a little sampling of the person and what they were going to be talking about, and it was a nice way to get people excited.

We did flat communications through email and through internet saying it's coming and what to watch out for, but this was a piece that we had run in a few different areas, including our town hall that was happening beforehand. So, we had different ways to make sure that people knew what Startup was about and how to get there and listen. And I think we stirred up a lot of good excitement about it. I'm going to continue on here. The other thing, and I mentioned it before, is we wanted to make sure that we had a place for the information. When you start to create a podcast, and you hear all the good content that's happening in it, where do you put all that extra stuff? It's great to hear the person talking, but they're referring to pictures, they're referring to memories. So, every episode that we have, we create a show notes page, like the one you're seeing in front of you now.

And on it is some of the outtake images that we've put together, as well as, in this case, there's a little short clip that we use as a teaser to get out to some people. So, we try to tease individual episodes when we can. You'll see up here, there's a listen now button, which takes you right to the podcast element. But then, we also provide a transcript that they can read online or download. This feature is, actually, even though it's counterintuitive because a podcast is something you want to listen to, it's great information. And if someone doesn't maybe have the half hour or so to sit down and listen to it, but can grab the transcript and run to a meeting and be able to get a visual gist of what was said, that's a great thing. Our leadership is one of our most coveted target audiences. They've really responded well to the podcast. They love the podcast, actually.

So, I do know that several of them grab the transcript in the morning when the show launches before they run into their meetings because they may not have time to listen to the podcast at that point, but they want to know what's being talked about by the member or the guest. And so, when they go into their meetings, they can either refer to it, or if somebody brings it up, they know what they're talking about. So, it's been a really nice aid, I think, to add to that element. We encourage people to download the uStudio mobile app so they can take it wherever they can go. But sometimes, the PC experience and seeing the show notes page is a nice element that they can experience once they know the show is launched that day. So, it really depends on how the work is flowing for someone that day. We're happy that they get there wherever way they can.

The other thing that we do a lot, aside from the actual programming, is a little bit of promo. On the screen here, you'll see a few different outtakes of things that we've done through the year and a half that we've been live. We had Who Said That quiz, which literally we took outtakes from several of the episodes and over a course of five or six weeks, ran that blurb, and then, had people write in on who they thought said that. It did a couple of things. It allowed people to get involved with the programming who may not have been listening all along, but if they saw or heard a clip, and they thought that was interesting, they maybe took a guess and they'd go back and listen to the podcast. That was great. And then, we would do random drawings of the winners and give them some swag. You've got to have the swag, right?

And that's a great little reminder around the office, having that mug or the cap about Startup and letting people guess what is that if they don't already know. The other way we got people involved is to invite them in. We wanted to make sure that people were engaging, and so, what better way but to have them, maybe, participate in a program. And so, that was something that we did that was very fun. So, the other thing, and you'll see on this screen in the middle, pictures that were from our live taping. We picked the top three listeners based upon minutes listened to the podcast, and we pulled them in and we talked to them about why they listened and what the podcast meant to them and how they listened and from where. But we also learned a bit more about them and what they did in the business and what their contribution to Wakefern and success was.

So, that was great. It was great for us, it was great for them. And then, it also gave us a lot more listeners because people know people. They know that they're going to be on this podcast. People tell people, and you have a new listener because I know that person, and we hope that that would stick and pull them into the other episodes. The other thing we did, we put a very tight branding package around Startup. So, a lot of what we used around the office and on the site for Startup and any communication that we do are our images, and these images are people. So, we're, again, pulling people in to back up and promote and stand up for Startup, which is great. And then, in our series, and each episode runs anywhere from 16 to 30 minutes, we always have what we call a commercial break. And a lot of times we'll run our programs for our own brand products, or we'll have a leader come in and do a quick congratulations to someone or a special announcement.

And then, we also invited our people in who are listeners to talk about their favorite own brand products. That was the latest thing that we did. We had about eight or nine people come and tell us what their favorite product was and why. And then, we had our little photo shoot with them, and now those little snippets are running as the commercials for the programming. So again, continuing to invite people in to be part of it so that it's not just something that's being laid out to them, but they're having a mix. They're being able to mix it up with them, and hopefully, people like hearing from their friends and colleagues. The other piece of it, the third leg of this journey for us, has been building the home, and I've alluded to that. We have our email push, our eCards, that go out every Wednesday.

We have our digital home, which is the podcast microsite, and then mobile home, which is the uStudio app. All of these components really come together to help us take advantage of the different elements that we can reach out to people. But our hope is that it's giving us a door that we can open for our audiences to come in however it best suits them. People, again, work in so many different ways and have different preferences, and we want to just make sure that we're there where they are and make it an easy lift for them to join us. The other thing I would say is, along our journey, I've been blessed. My colleague, Marla Caymans, really was the lead project manager on this, and I was lucky to work with her and we had a great relationship, really jamming on ideas. And then, working with our Chief Communications Officer, Karen Meleta, I mean, who has been very supportive and open to all kinds of ways to really make the programming rich and just a great part of our mix for Wakefern in terms of communications vehicles.

The other partner that we had that's been so strong is uStudio. And I'm not saying this is because it's the uStudio podcast, but our customer success managers have been amazing along the way. When we were starting up, not just on the technical components, but on the content components, really great sounding boards, sharing with us the best practices and ideas that they were getting and observing from other clients, learning really about our business and how we worked, and challenging us to look at things in a different way, which is great. There's also a bank of resources that they have, the knowledge base, with great thought leadership there that we tooled through and germinated on ideas from. And I just think having people to work with in your space that get it, and get you, and can help you dream is really important.

So, I just want to hike that for anyone that's doing podcasting out there, whether it's internal or external, especially, just take advantage of the knowledge and the resources that you have in uStudio because it's been really remarkable. We have a very creative and resourceful group, but having the validation, at the very least, and the support has been immeasurable. So, I think with that, I want to say thank you. This is the high level of the things that I've prepared. And I'm happy to take your questions if you have them and really talk more about podcasting. I'm going to stop sharing.

Beck Marlar:
Thank you, Jackie. That was really great. We really appreciate you sharing you all's journey. So, I think we do have some questions. I'm going to bring on Jackie Logan who's the director of product at uStudio. She's been monitoring your questions. Jackie, we have some questions for Jackie Sidoti, sorry if that's confusing.

Jackie Logan:
Yeah. So, I'm the uStudio Jackie here. And we have really great questions in the chat. So, we had some questions about when you say members, what exactly does that mean in your organization? Is it only internal employees? Or is it a little bit broader audience?

Jackie Sidoti:
So, being a cooperative, our members are the owners that are connected with us who actually operate the stores. So, they're not technically Wakefern associates, they're independent companies. But obviously, because of the cooperative arrangement, they are our leadership, in essence. So, they are part of communications mix, and that's why we wanted to reach out to them because they have their finger on the pulse of the business every single day. And so, we wanted to raise them up and help our corporate associates understand the business from their point of view because that helps us do our job better to support them, if that makes sense.

Jackie Logan:
Yeah, that makes total sense. I think it's very similar to how a lot of organizations would would handle with employees.

Jackie Sidoti:
Exactly.

Jackie Logan:
It's just a little bit different structure.

Jackie Sidoti:
Yeah, yeah.

Jackie Logan:
Another question is in your company, what do you use to measure success beyond downloads and listens?

Jackie Sidoti:
Beyond what? I'm sorry.

Jackie Logan:
Downloads and listens? How do you measure the success of the podcast program?

Jackie Sidoti:
Sure. I mean, we get anecdotal comments in from the uStudio interface. Comments are able to come through there. On our internet page, there's a provide comments box, also, and we do get comments there. And then, on our internet when we run that Wednesday story, there's a comments element there. So people, a lot of times, will put, "Great show, Mike," or whatever. We'll get some [inaudible 00:30:51] if it's there. And then, we have done some polling. We've done it hardcore with the Qualtrics type of survey. And then, we've done informal focus groups because we do want to keep a finger on the pulse of what people are really thinking about it, and also what they really want to hear about. We have a strategy that we stick to, but we do go out and poll informally, as well as through the Qualtrics feature, what it is people are interested in hearing about, and to the extent that we can weave that in with our Startup concept, we try to do that.

So-

Jackie Logan:
Yeah, that makes sense.

Jackie Sidoti:
... we have a lot of different ways that we reach out. I mean because, yeah, clicks and views are great. We have the metrics board on uStudio, and so, we know how many activated users and we know how many minutes listened, and we saw 97,000 minutes. Well, that's great. Is that the same person just driving around? You don't know. So, you do want to dig into that a little bit because, as we know, I mean, it's automatic tracking that, but it only tells us a small piece of the story.

Jackie Logan:
Yes. So, very good. Another question we have is how many people are involved in making this happen? What does your production process look like?

Jackie Sidoti:
So, there's about three or four people now. And when I say that, this is not a full-time job for any one of us. Our communications team is a total of four people, and not all of us are involved in the podcast production. Marla and I were the primary folks. While it was the main project manager keeping things on track, scheduling, getting the guests, that sort of thing, I handled the promotion piece, and we together shared the, mostly Marla, but we together shared the taping of the programming. So, we were the home base in terms of who's on first, what's happening, that sort of thing. Karen Meleta, our Chief Comms Officer, also very heavily involved with getting the guests, and setting the course, and all that sort of thing. And then, we do work with a contractor who helps us with the production piece of it.

So, we tape over Zoom, getting that person the feed, getting them our music and our commercials, and they put it together. And then, we also work with someone who does the transcripts for us. So, lots of little pieces that come together. But I would say two people fully on board to do the production and the dreaming and the promo, that kind of thing. The other element that we do is we do a pre-interview with the guests before Karen sits down with them, which means that we're able to collect a lot of content, the pictures, the whole nine, and give her a lay of the land in terms of where they're going. And that also helps get the individual comfortable with the interview process, helps them settle down and think a little bit about what they want to talk about, so that when he does connect or she does connect with Karen, then he or she has already got some ideas in their head of where they want to go, and the conversation flows a little bit more smoothly. It's not a deer in the headlights moment for anyone.

Jackie Logan:
I like that. It sounds like you're really begin with the end in mind.

Jackie Sidoti:
Yeah, yeah.

Jackie Logan:
Yeah.

Jackie Sidoti:
We want everyone happy with it. And people do like to talk, but we're so wired to work and be focused on the daily grind that to give someone that time to step back and think about, "What is it that I want to talk about," is important. And they won't do it unless you make them. So, we make them.

Jackie Logan:
Very good. And a little bit more about the structure of how you distribute your podcast. I'm going to read this with him.

Jackie Sidoti:
Sure.

Jackie Logan:
Is the podcast shared with your members, store owners of the organization, or only to internal employees? It sounds like it's both?

Jackie Sidoti:
Yeah. Our major push is to our corporate associates, but we also share the taping with the member that's been featured, and then they'll share it with their organization. We did go back and forth a lot with do we make this external? Do we make this internal? Our programming, the stories that we've told, I mean, honestly, could be shared externally. They're just great stories. But you always worry about proprietary things with business. So, we are careful as any other organization would be with that. And if someone's comfortable with sharing their taping a bit more broadly, that's great. But we put that on them. Our focus is really to keep it as an internal communications tool.

Jackie Logan:
I see. Okay, that makes sense. And what is your publishing cadence? How often are episodes released?

Jackie Sidoti:
So, we are weekly, but we do schedule breaks. So, right now we're coming up to our winter break. We started early October, and we'll be doing a two or so week break, which we're going to do some best ofs. So, we're still having a weekly Wednesday drop, but it'll just be in a different form, revisiting some oldies but goodies kind of thing. And then, we'll start up again in January with some more new ones. We try to stay about five or six shows ahead of schedule. So, we already have things produced in the can ready to go and are just waiting for a final sign-off. And that's important because you don't want to break cadence. You want to become that regular thing that people look forward to. So, it's important to line things up as much as you can. And things will happen, but if you've got a good stock of episodes ready to go, then you're okay with that because you have something else you can switch over and do.

Jackie Logan:
Yeah. Those are a lot of good points, having a lot of episodes ready. And you seem to get a lot of miles out of your content. You really seem to repurpose it in a lot of ways to get your message out there.

Jackie Sidoti:
Well, yeah. I think it's important because everyone's into making the most today. And also, it's interesting, you can find interesting ways to repurpose the information and bring it into new elements that really accent that. Like, for example, with our 75th anniversary last year, our annual meeting happens every year. The audience is members. And so, to have those outtakes come in packaged up around a theme, they're hearing their own voice talking about business or progress, and it was really impactful. So, it's a great thing to try to do when you can.

Jackie Logan:
Yeah, certainly. So, I think we've addressed all the questions in the chatback. I will hand it over to you.

Jackie Sidoti:
Great.

Beck Marlar:
Great. Thank you. Yeah. So, I think then we're almost up against our time here. So, Jackie, I just want to say thank you again for putting this together for us, and we just love our partnership with Wakefern, and I love what you're doing. Your creativity really shows, and the way you all promote your podcast is just wonderful. So, thank you for sharing all of that with us and sharing your email address, too, for people to email you. So, I really appreciate it. You didn't have to do that. So, thank you for doing that.

Jackie Sidoti:
Okay.

Beck Marlar:
And, yeah. So, thank you all for joining us. We recorded this. We'll post it on our website as a blog, this recording. We'll also send a follow-up email so you'll have access to that. If you want to share that along with any of your employees or peers that you think might want to hear this webinar, feel free to do that. If you have any more questions that didn't get answered, or you want to go a little deeper with uStudio, please reach out to us. You can find our contact information on ustudio.com, our website, and we would love to schedule a meeting with you all or answer any questions you might have. So, thank you all for being here. I really, really appreciate the time. Have a wonderful rest of your week, a wonderful holiday break, if you get one of those. So, thank you all for being here. Thank you again, Jackie. I really appreciate you. Take care, everybody.