How do you reach a large part of your audience while supplying them with interesting information, captivating stories and networking opportunities? One great way to accomplish all of these is through a podcast! When our friends over at Boston University reached out to get their official alumni podcast up and running again, we were happy to help create an engaging and great looking product. With a full branding package, new video component of the podcast, as well as shareable social clips, the Proud to BU Podcast is a great example of how to give your alumni something special!
From the beginning of the project, we worked closely with the BU team to figure out what our plan of attack was for this new season. As they already had 2 previous seasons on their site, we could use those as reference when thinking about look and feel of branding and for the kind of content their team wanted from the episodes. For the podcast graphics, the school’s branding was still apparent through colors and fonts, but the BU team provided us with a great new logo for the show that we were able to use in creating a slew of thumbnails and other graphics for each episode as well as an overall show opener for each video episode.
Speaking of graphics and deliverables, the BU team really wanted to focus on marketing this new season through all of their different alumni social channels. This meant that for each episode, we worked together to create 4 thumbnails that could work wherever they were posted i.e. websites, Youtube, Instagram reels, etc.
To record each episode, once a guest and time were booked, our team would create the speaker graphics and gather any video assets needed for the live recording. On the day of recording, 5 Tool, the BU team and the guest would all join a Zoom call to quickly debrief about the episode and record some short promotional bumpers before jumping into the real conversation. We would then take the host and guest’s video feeds into our switcher system and be able to overlay graphics, play videos, and switch around different camera views to record a fully live produced podcast episode. This method helps make the post production edits easier and allows us to have a very close-to-finished product right from the live recording.
After our team had recorded with the guest, we were able to take that live production and add the episode specific intros, outros, ad breaks, and extra pictures and videos right on to that recorded episode. This fully produced and edited treatment gives each episode its own distinguishable cold opens and visuals, while maintaining the tone and branding of the series as a whole. A viewer could listen to a one off episode or subscribe and listen to a few back to back and both would know exactly what show they are tuning in for.
Branded guest speaker box with name, title and graduation year
Host & guest box with university branding
The team over at BU was able to schedule and record 6 whole episodes by their target season premier date. They launched their new season by premiering 3 episodes for their audience on the alumni YouTube channel, podcast website and streaming services like Spotify and Apple Podcasts. BU’s team plans to release their podcast in a weekly episodic cadence as they record more interviews with their impressive alumni base.
Each episode was accompanied by its 4 thumbnail variations, 2 social clips the team could share out and a separate video & audio export of the episode. Along with each recording and edited episode, our team was able to create a show intro, various logo reveals to fit different formats, and the promotional video that is featured above.