How can a podcast extend the life of a festival, when the festival isn't on?
Melbourne Food & Wine
Melbourne Food & Wine Festival
The Brief
A festival of any kind doesn’t have to end on the last day. Keeping the festival going was what organisers at Melbourne Food & Wine Festival had in mind when they invited some of the biggest names in fine food and wine to its talk-series, ‘Theatre of Ideas’. Guests included New York Times food editor Sam Sifton, well known Montreal Chef Joe Beef, and restaurateur Alla-Wolf Tasker of Lake House, Daylesford. Such great names and such great topics of discussion, all under the one roof! A shame for those who couldn’t come to listen, but what an opportunity to repurpose into a podcast. SoundCartel was asked to turn six of the 12 talks into a podcast series. Extending the life of the festival and helping build awareness outside the confines of the event itself.
The Approach
The festival organisers recorded the live sessions. But, as anyone knows with live recording, what you hear on the day won’t necessarily translate into great podcast audio. This is where where SoundCartel came in, to turn live event recordings into evergreen, easy listening content. Emma Breheny insisted, “You have to make it a bit more snackable, and you want the highlights and the best bits of the conversation. People, when they’re talking, things meander and there’s a lot of dead air sometimes.”
The RESULT
Melbourne Food & Wine Festival was selected to feature on Apple’s coveted New & Noteworthy chart for several weeks. Emma Breheny said, “We were thrilled with that result. When we initially started the discussions with SoundCartel, we knew that was one of our goals, and getting on the top charts for Apple was going to be a bit of game-changer in terms of our listener numbers and downloads. So we were absolutely thrilled with that news, and to be placed there and then for eight weeks was even a bigger win.”