Caspian Studios likes to shake things up.
Take Murder in HR Podcast.
Many agencies listen to their clients’ needs and then develop plans to match them. But Caspian took the opposite approach—first coming up with an interesting idea and then pitching it to potential customers.
Another unexpected factor upends expectations for B2B content. Rather than featuring experts from a certain brand or industry, Caspian capitalized on the trend of true crime podcasts by launching a series of fictional audio stories featuring the voices of A-list actors.
This unexpected strategy helped Caspian win Podcast/Audio Series of the Year for his HR Murder podcast. Content Marketing Award. It also won Caspian Studios CEO Ian Faison Nominated as a 2024 Content Marketer of the Year Finalist.
Here’s the twisty story of how this unconventional B2B marketing strategy was put into practice.
A novel for B2B podcasts? Really?
Yes. and HR murder casePremiering in 2023 with 12 episodes, it’s not even Caspian’s first B2B novel series.
The studio also created Hacker ChroniclesIt tells the story of a woman (voiced by well-known actors Michael C. Hall and Chloe Taylor) who turns to the dark web and hacks into a large food conglomerate. Cybersecurity company Tenable released 22 episodes of the podcast in 2022 and 2023.
“I really believe in the B2B myth,” Ian said. “No one does it, and the reason why is it’s really hard.”
But hard work can pay off. Premiere of “HR Murder” Season 2 Late September. Production on seasons three and four has already begun.
This true-crime style story centers on a talented 30-year-old woman who quit all her jobs but ended up working in human resources at a technology company.
When a murder occurs, she tries to solve it. Along the way, she discovers that the company is a front for an assassin’s business, and if she leaves, she will be killed. This detail explains her commitment to the job and ensures Caspian’s ability to tell the story across multiple seasons.
“It’s a fun story with a really crazy twist,” Ian said.
The first season of the podcast features the voices of A-list actors Kate Mara and Brett Gelman and is published by Gympass (now Wellhub). Season 2 is published by Wellhub and Bamboo HR.
Caspian’s third B2B serialized fiction podcast, scam hunterdebuting this fall. This “business thriller” centers on a disgraced CISO (voiced by Greg Kinnear) who takes a call from a Miami reporter (voiced by Erin Moriarty). for help investigating a scam targeting terminally ill patients. Information security compliance platform Thoropass publishes this podcast.
Develop surprising B2B content ideas
The Caspian Studios team starts with an idea, not a client. The idea, Ian explains, was, “Let’s make something amazing. Let’s make something consumer-grade that people can listen to.
caspian team Brainstorm possibilitiesand then whittled down about 50 ideas to a handful. From there, it shares the concepts with potential partners. In Murder in HR, this question is asked of CMOs and other marketing leaders in HR.
The pitch goes something like this: “Hey, we’re thinking about doing this podcast — a fictional murder mystery set in the human resources department.”
Caspian received several responses, which read: “You’re crazy. Good luck.
However, former Wellhub chief marketing officer Ryan Bonnici had the opposite reaction. “The team at Wellhub loved the creativity and crazy twist of the story,” says Ian.
Ryan likes the idea of a “very big thing” targeting the audience that buys Wellhub products.
Wellhub is a brand focused on employee well-being, and HR Murder is set against the backdrop of the most toxic companies. Luckily, the hero of the story is an HR professional who turned the place into a toxic-free environment.
The story also reflects how fictional characters use Gympass services, such as accessing the Calm app and fitness classes.
The chief people officer reviewed the script for accuracy. “It’s the same thing that HR handles in real life – well, hopefully not the assassin part,” Ian explains.
Achieve huge marketing results
About 20 Caspian team members worked on HR Murder, along with about 10 people from the Wellhub side.
This fictional podcast series has proven to be extremely successful. Although Caspian and Wellhub targeted just 50,000 listeners in their marketing campaigns, the first season was downloaded more than 1.1 million times in its first six months.
HR Murder ranks No. 1 in the Fiction category on Apple Podcasts for a week, No. 1 in the New Noteworthy category, and No. 39 on Apple Podcasts. It raises audience awareness of Wellhub and highlights the company’s versatile and flexible platform.
Wellhub can swap new ads and messaging into episodes to keep messaging relevant. Wellhub also promoted the story in different areas, from marketing and media to webinars and sales conversations.
What did the audience think? “We had a ton of feedback from people saying, ‘We love this. This is a really cool story. We even had a group of people reach out and say they wanted to do an event for the season two premiere,” Ian said.
Tell stories that senior executives will buy
In the B2B world, using fictional stories as podcasts can seem risky, as marketers and executives often prefer to demonstrate their expertise to educate audiences.
The business case for HR Murder was to create a hit show for an audience that has traditionally been the butt of workplace jokes (think Toby from TV’s The Office). public.
For Ian, Types of storytelling There is no risk. “The brand risk is talking about politics on LinkedIn — alienating people,” he said. “The stakes are pretty low in telling an interesting detective story.”
Caspian plans to take this concept to the next level. The studio is working to create what Ian calls a “murder universe,” a set of interconnected stories that could appeal to many brand partners. The format can be anything from a podcast to a feature film.
“We had all kinds of crazy ideas,” Ian said.
B2B audiences are people too
Some executives believe these fictional stories appeal to the masses but are not applicable to the niche audiences their brands are targeting.
However, Ian believes podcasts with consumer appeal can play a role. On the one hand, it speaks to its target audience through inside jokes and Easter eggs. It also works for a wider audience.
One chief people officer told him: “I listened to this song with my daughter on a road trip and it was so much fun. We were trying to figure out who the killer was and I talked to my daughter about work.
That’s the point, says Ian. Most B2B content doesn’t require listeners to follow an entire episode, let alone watch an entire season. “The whole premise of HR Murder is trying to change that.”
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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute
