Podcast Week: Crybabies

Our fifth and final featured podcast is Crybabies (click here). The hosts invite guests and then talk about the stuff that makes them cry ... be it Spock's death in Star Trek 2 or The Carpenters or when Prince died. You've gotta be in the right mood to enjoy this series, of course, but when you are in the right mood, this is a good one!

What does this have to do with low cost / no cost customer acquisition programs fueled by having a unique point of view?

Take Ross-Simons for instance (click here). Valentine's Day is just around the corner. Why not produce a show where the host of the show covers all of the lovely Valentine's Day deliveries - sharing customer stories that would make anybody with a modicum of a soul cry? A weekly show featuring engagements, make-ups, and surprises.

I know, I know, you can't do that.

But think about this for a moment.

I'll bet the folks at the Seincast Podcast told them they were nuts to invest 180 hours of broadcast time reviewing television shows that folks have witnessed hundreds of times.

I'll bet the Men in Blazers are told daily that they are nuts to focus on a verbal narrative of a Crystal Palace / Swansea City match that nobody cares about.

I'll bet the folks behind Welcome to Night Vale are told daily that they are crazy for drafting a 2x-per-month narrative about a fictional desert town where paranormal activities happen every minute. Who'd listen to that?

I'll bet folks criticized Starlee Kine for creating Mystery Show - who'd want to listen to a mystery about a belt buckle? And then her show was cancelled - proving the naysayers right. And yet, Gimlet keeps her show up and makes money off of it regardless, right?

And who in their right mind would say it is a best practice to create a podcast about things that make you cry?

There are a million reasons why you shouldn't take a risk - why you shouldn't seek a unique point of view. It might not work - imagine how miserable you'd feel while being criticized by co-workers and the public alike?

But what happens if your idea does work?

The digital revolution - we're now at least twenty years into this thing - stripped so much creativity out of our business models. That's what happens when you solve for short-term return-on-investment - the video of a person getting a Valentine's Day gift from Ross-Simons only gets 194 views and is quickly forgotten and therefore didn't deliver short-term ROI and therefore we should never try again, should we? So we don't try again.

It's time to start trying again.

Right?