Marketing professionals are trained to build one-hit-wonder campaigns that last a few weeks or months. Journalists are trained to build long lasting editorial products that are memorable, distinctive, but also built to last years, if not decades. That’s what I bring to the table. I help design editorial products that are sharp and angular but long lasting and self-sustaining.
Hi! I’m Sneha, I’m a multimedia journalist and here’s how I work with brands.
First, we articulate the Why.
Well, actually, we articulate many whys.
There rarely is just one reason for a brand to want to create an editorial product. More likely, there are multiple stakeholders, each with their own distinct needs and perspectives. Some of these needs will have been finely articulated already. Some of these needs may not yet be, and may need probing and refining. Some stakeholders may need to be brought on board and accommodated.
This is where I bring my 10 years of hard-built reporting skills. My job is to track down and interview multiple stakeholders, refine in words what their gut already knows through exhaustive interviews. List and prioritise their distinct and overlapping whys —their incentives, needs, priorities. Synthesise. This is the work of a reporter.
For example, the legal team may want to appease regulators. And the business team may be looking to minimise CAQ for a specific target group. And the brand team may be looking to increase considerations for another target group. We collect and synthesise them all. We list them in order of priorities.
Second, we create a What.
We create a product bible and a pilot. Here’s how:
We rearticulate the many overlapping whys gleaned above as constraints, like an algebra problem. Once those are in place, the direction of the editorial product begins to make itself apparent.
Then we begin to articulate the What — a specific editorial product that meets all the Whys. Its 1. frequency, 2. form (short/long/video/audio/text) 3.platform, 4.tone of discourse 5. the kind of guests/participants the editorial product wants to include 6. episode structure 7. commuinity participation.
We are careful to choose an angle that is distinctive and novel. We are also careful to choose an angle that is wide enough such that there is steady supply of interesting content for perpetuity.
Then we bring in my expertise in writing for the internet to give the product a name, and a logline that ticks of all boxes.
Here’s the product bible for , The Ken’s podcast that I built. “Hear whats happening at your workplace before you hear it on Slack.”
Then we build the episode pilot, which will have a distinctive voice. Then we share the pilot with stakeholders for feedback.
Finally, we begin working on the how.
Once the pilot and product bible has been created and approved, we now have to operationalise.
We hire and train talent. We are careful to ensure that they are able to embody the voice of the pilot, but also bring their own personhood to it.
We set cadence for editorial meetings that work with the availabilities of all business stakeholders.
We build daily + weekly + monthly processes that allow us to supervise with ease.
We build a small bank of episodes to solidify voice, the kind of topics we want to cover, as well as a roster of willing and available guests.
We launch. We measure progress against the original whys as established in the product bible.
We adapt to the data that tells us what works. Ad infinitum.
Why What and How