“Fashion Brands’ podcasts: The Case Studies Box by My Marketing Toolbox” are back! For this reunion, I chose to study “Voice of jewels”, a podcast by the School of Jewelry Arts.
The previous case studies were about “Dior Talks” by the House of Dior, “Women’s Perspectives” by the House of Cartier.
The objective of this exercise I launched in 2023 is to analyse the podcast of a fashion brand in order to understand how this marketing tool can be used to grow your audience, federate your community and, of course, to develop your sales.
This case study will be composed of 4 main parts:
The podcast identity card
What worked well
What could be improved
The main lessons to learn
Disclaimer. The information and interpretation I am going to share in this new project are my own personal analysis of this brand’s podcast, based on my knowledge of the brand, the fashion and luxury sector, the marketing, and more precisely the podcasting industry. And, of course, based on my own sensibilities. It doesn’t aim at being completely objective and you have the right to disagree with my analysis. In all cases, I would be happy to exchange with you on your own interpretation of the podcast “Voice of Jewels”.
Voice of Jewels - Podcast Identity card
Name of the podcast: Voice of Jewels
Brand: The School of Jewelry Arts with the support of Van Cleef & Arpels, produced by Bababam and hosted on Acast
Podcast description: “Jewels are everywhere. We admire them in the windows of master jewelers, and in the collections of the world's greatest museums.
Young lovers, movie stars, and heads of state each have their treasures: objects of desire, fascinating ornaments, or symbols of power. But every piece of jewelry also holds its secrets. Secrets of fabrication… but also… relationships. Stories of love and separation. Myth and curses. Moments of glory or downfalls. The height of an empire or civilization, the spark of a revolution. Founded in 2012 with the support of Van Cleef & Arpels, L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts has the mission to share jewelry culture with the widest possible audience. Discover Voice of Jewels, unveil the stories and secrets behind History’s most fascinating jewels.”
Format: Stories including a main narrator and different contributors, including lecturers at the School of Jewelry Arts.
Quantity of seasons: 4 (Sentimental Jewels, The Blue Diamond, Gold’s Amazing Saga, Jewels & Comics)
Total quantity of episodes: 17
Episode average duration: 10 minutes
Podcast main topic: The history of jewels and jewelry
Language: English & French
First episode release date: November 30 2023
Last episode release date: April 25 2024 (ongoing)
Podcast objective: Educational
Podcast target audience: Any person interested in and fascinated by jewels, jewelry, their history and cultural aspects.
Where to listen to the podcast: Dedicated page; Apple Podcasts; Spotify, Deezer, Amazon Music, Castbox, Pocket Casts, Overcast, Bullhorn, Castro, Podcast Addict, PodBean, PodHero, Podcast Republic, RadioPublic, Sonnet
What worked well...
This podcast is very recreational and enjoyable. The topics are diverse while focusing on jewels and everything linked with them.
Each episode is organised as a story, following the kind of storytelling you can find in tales. You have suspense and emotion. We are caught in the story of the studied jewel.
Each season focuses on one particular topic, enabling homogeneity in the subjects for the season.
This system of having one main narrator and different contributors reinforces the storytelling and helps to diversify voices and points of view.
The sound background perfectly completes the comfort of listening and this impression of travelling in time and space.
It’s a podcast enabling people to learn more on a quite specific subject without giving the impression we are attending a lecture. It makes the history of jewelry more accessible without the jargon of the industry.
The length of each episode is optimum, not too short, not too long. It enables the podcast to address the main aspects of the subject and to provoke interest and curiosity without becoming too boring.
What could be improved...
My main comment here will be linked with the French version of the podcast where, at least on Spotify, you have an announcement between each episode promoting the other podcast of Van Cleef & Arpels “De Mains en mains”. It’s a bit repetitive, particularly if you tend to binge listen the episodes.
Main lessons to learn from Voice of Jewels
Work on your storytelling. The best way to make people discover a niche or out of reach topic is to transform into a story. The storytelling aspect enables the listeners to dive into a particular environment, to cut them from reality, while making them identifying with the situations and characters of the episode. Found in every culture, tales were, at the origins, used to educate on the risks of life with parables and metaphors. Studying the structure of these tales and applying it to a podcast will appeal to the collective unconsciousness and will be very satisfying for the brain, already formatted into grasping the particular structure of tales.
Give a theme to each of your seasons. If this is compatible with the main topic of your podcast, you could organise your seasons around a particular theme. This will help you to obtain a cohesion in the subjects you will cover in your different seasons. This technique can also reinforce the storytelling of your podcast.
Provoke curiosity. One of the main challenges, no matter the chosen communication tool is to attract people and make them want to read, watch or listen to your topic. One way to do so is, at the very beginning of your episode, to have a short introduction sentence worded in a way to provoke the interest for the subject of the episode. Then, to go on with the presentation of the podcast and the episode.
Manage bilingual podcasts. You can decide to have your podcast available in several languages, depending on your target audience. In the case of “Voice of Jewels”, the chosen languages are French and English. The adopted strategy was to create two distinctive podcasts, one exclusive for each language (“La Voix des Bijoux” in French and “Voice of jewels” in English). This choice enables to differentiate the two languages, particularly for listeners who tend to binge listen. In order to avoid any confusion between the two podcasts, the visual is also different: green for the French version and blue for the English version. This choice, nevertheless, requires to create and manage two different podcasts and their accounts, which can be an obstacle in terms of time, management, resources. Some brands will just mix their different languages in a same podcast. It was the case of Dior Talks.
One of the functions of a podcast is to communicate, to educate an audience on a precise subject. Analyzing how a school operating in the fashion world, in our case the School of Jewelry Arts, uses a podcast to educate was very enriching and from a content perspective and from an organisation perspective. Educating without being too boring, finding the right length for an episode, not too short, not to long, provoking curiosity and interest, having episodes capable of keeping its listeners in suspens… As for now the School of Jewelry Arts with its podcast “Voice of Jewels” is on the right tracks. And I am looking forward to see how this relatively young podcast will keep it in the long term.
Did you listen to “Voice of Jewels” by the School of Jewelry Arts? Did this analysis make you want to listen to it? What do you think of my thoughts on this podcast? I am very much looking forward to read your comments!
Do you feel inspired to launch your own podcast? For starters, you can check out my article “What you need to create your podcast free of charge (or almost)” and download your “Podcast Starting Kit Cheat Sheet”.
And I am always here to advise you on your podcasting journey. Check out my offers and pick the one fitting the best to your current needs and challenges. Apply to work with me now.
Happy podcasting!
Cath @MyMarketingToolbox