Caring for Tomorrow: Podcast with Cleveland Clinic
The Partnership
Cleveland Clinic wanted to raise awareness among thought leaders, healthcare influencers, and potential patients that they are not just at the forefront of technology in healthcare, but also invested in human-centered care.
Based on their target audience of highly affluent and informed individuals, The Washington Post Creative Group proposed partnering to create a custom podcast - a format that over-indexes on highly educated and high income listeners. We also proposed a healthcare-centric podcast as this would fill a white space in our roster of newsroom podcasts, despite the topic performing highly across the site.
The WORK
As well as writing the original content strategy in pre-sale, I led the creative development, casting, and production of a custom podcast series that explored some of the key challenges facing the healthcare system—and the advancements that are transforming it for the better.
The series, hosted by Joan Lunden, featured roundtable discussions between third party experts and Cleveland Clinic guests. As we were nearing launch of the series, Covid-19 emerged as a global pandemic. Rather than be daunted by this development, we looked to expand the breadth of the series and ultimately added on a final sixth episode focused on Cleveland Clinic’s response to the virus and how their response might help inform and educate our audience about the healthcare system’s response.
Listen to the full series here.
My specific responsibilities on the project included:
Creative Development: Wrote the original pre-sale strategy, pitched episode topics and guests, established the episode structures, and crafted the audio treatments and scripts and discussion questions
Crew Contracting & Briefing: Briefed audio technicians, hired post-production editor, established scopes of work and contracts, and served as central point-of-contact for any logistical and/or creative decisions
Casting: Researched, pitched, and contracted celebrity host for the original podcast; served as the day-to-day contact for all talent updates
On-Set Production Direction: Oversaw all recording sessions, giving real-time feedback to host and managing client expectations
Paper Editing: Constructed detailed paper edits for editor to strictly follow
Cut Direction: Provided feedback and direction on each step of the edit process, including music and mixing
Promotion & Distribution: Researched and created custom promotion plan for our original podcast
Client Presentation: Served as the client-facing production representative on all calls, walked the client through deliverables as needed, responded to feedback, and pitched/explained any unique production approaches or elements being introduced
The results
We published and promoted the series across The Washington Post and major podcast platforms. Page views and unique visitors were nearly 10 times greater than benchmarks for podcast programs.