Early every morning Australians are walking their dogs, driving to work, or hitting the gym with the voice of New Zealand finance expert Bernard Hickey in their ears. He’s the host of ANZ’s 5 In 5 podcast designed to get its audience quickly up-to-date with the finance news and information professionals need to get started on their day.
If you’re not across the ANZ 5 in 5 podcast, the marketing team at ANZ are actually okay with that. The podcast more than likely isn’t for you. With the podcast the ANZ team are working to deliver an audio product that has value and relevance to C-suite executives and the staff beneath them who work as trusted advisors with influence.
As the name of the podcast implies, 5 in 5 offers tells its audience the five things they need to know about the global economy and markets in under 5 minutes. To do that it relies on respected finance journalist Bernard Hickey as the host and a number of finance experts from across APAC. Every daily edition of the podcast is capped with a short deeper dive interview exploring emerging trends and issues. It caps out at around nine minutes every day.
Helen Kerr is GM Institutional marketing at ANZ. She conceived the podcast alongside Elizabeth Rudall who was, at the time, heading up communications for Institutional Banking at ANZ. She’s now Head of Strategic Communications at ANZ.
The podcast was highly strategic in its purpose. Rudall explained that “It started off as part of our comms and marketing planning, which was looking at how we could differentiate ourselves from our competitors. If you look at ANZ, I think we objectively are the most international of the banks. We have a presence in close to 30 markets. We’re different to CBA. We’re different to NAB. We’ve got this really broad international presence. Our focus is on trading capital flows in the region. And we are also the number one institutional bank in Australia. But if you ask anyone, you know, in the street, what an institutional bank is and who would be the number one institutional bank in Australia, they would not know.
ANZ’s Helen Kerr
“So we really wanted to think about how we could get that across that differentiation. We reviewed our content and channels as we do every year. And we noticed we were doing podcasts, but they were quite ad hoc. So if there was a topic of interest, we’d do a podcast about that, whether it was payments or something like that. It was an interesting podcast, but it was just one off.
“There was no consistent audience. So it was very hard to build any kind of message to your audience or anything, any sort of character through that. So we thought through what to do.”
ANZ’s Elizabeth Rudall
Regardless of the medium or strategic intent, content marketing only succeeds if it can transcend its slightly cynical reason for existing and resonate with the audience in terms of feeling authentic and providing a valuable experience. For the ‘5 in 5 with ANZ’ podcast, Kerr and Rudall were focused on producing an outstanding product for the audience.
“People are choosing to come and spend eight minutes in a branded environment three days a week. Said no one ever,” Kerr said. “I mean, I’m giving you the averages. We’re not advertising. We’re not promoting product. We’re not giving financial advice. But we are genuinely demonstrating ANZ really knows what it’s talking about.”
The content is resonating with an audience that is growing. The reason for the continued growth of the podcast owes to the value it provides its audience.
Every morning the podcast comes out like clockwork for audiences as they begin their day – whether that be while out walking the dog, hitting the gym, commuting, or any of those early morning activities that encourage podcast listenership.
5 in 5 is produced out of Auckland by finance journalist and podcast host Bernard Hickey. Thanks to the 2-hour time difference, Hickey is able to have the show ready for those early morning listeners in Australia.
5 in 5 With ANZ host Bernard Hickey
“We wanted to get a punchy, tightly edited snapshot of what had happened overnight, but also what’s ahead that day and snippets of important themes that were coming through in the market. We had all this great talent. We had these economists all over the world and they are so smart and have all these great ideas. It was how we could bring them together, get them in the right channel, and feed them to the right audience for our business to get our objective reached,” Kerr said.
The podcast takes on a global feel with a very broad range of accents in every episode. Hickey as host has a New Zealand accent, but the accents of his multiple guests and experts on each episode reflect the broad array of professionals that one might meet in their day to day work within finance. It lends to the authenticity of the podcast.
“We really saw a gap or an opportunity for podcasts that were short and sharp, informative. And one thing we were really focused on is the diversity of the voice. We really wanted to try and get more female voices, but also really importantly the culturally diverse voices of Asia Pacific. That was something that really we saw a real gap in. So that’s where the thinking started, Rudall said.
What you are not going to get from the podcast is sold to. At least, not overtly. There is no doubt that you are listening to an ANZ product. It is right there in the name. But during the branded podcast, you are not going to be sold on ANZ products. That’s very much by design.
“We’re very clear that we’re not trying to sell financial products. It’s really thought leadership,” Rudall said.