The Infinite Dial

I presented highlights from our major new Podcasting study (watch this space for more on this) at the Corporate Podcast Summit yesterday. There were lots of surprising little tidbits on podcast consumers, but here is a pretty basic one to chew on: 48% of the people who have ever listened to a podcast are women. Now, it may be the case that the people producing podcasts are more male (or not) but podcasting is a lot more female--and family--friendly activity than you might have guessed. Content, of course, is the main reason for this--and the convenience of podcasting has made the channel into a popular one amongst both busy moms and harried Web Administrators (and harried moms who are web administrators.) I have talked about Mommycast before in the pages of USA Today, but here is another great family friendly podcast from Whirlpool. Yes, Whirlpool--makers of the washing machine in your utility room (fairly likely, actually, since they also recently purchased Maytag.)

Audrey Reed-Granger from Whirlpool spoke at the summit about how their podcast, The American Family has grown over the past year. They began with just 800 downloads in their first quarter, but are now at 700,000 per quarter with no advertising and almost no conceivable way to get to the podcast from Whirlpool's home page. How? Word of mouth--because the show is good. They have a number of basic tenets for the site--among them, no advertising (EVER), no appliance tips, and really nothing about their products at all--as Audrey said, Whirlpool spends a ton on advertising already; you can't watch a soap opera in this country without seeing a Whirlpool/Jenn-Air/Maytag ad. Instead, the show is about the family, presented in what Audrey called a "Charles Kuralt" style. Clearly, lots of American Families appreciate the American Family. What a fantastic (and low cost!) way to build your brand by focusing on your core values, not your dryer.