A special post by Kattie Laur, Editor of Pod the North newsletter.

For brands getting into podcasting, the big question at the beginning often lies in what responsibility the podcast is going to serve: is it an advertisement or an exercise in brand awareness? Is it part of your sales funnel? Is it a resource? Regardless of the function a branded podcast serves, from my perspective the best ones out there are clever, creative, and make a brand feel personable. 

More often than not, that means that what a good branded podcast isn’t is a conversation between two C-Suite Executives. That’s not to say that there aren’t plenty of charismatic CEOs out there, but for brands looking for their podcast to stand out and make an impact, today they only need to look to the cultural zeitgeist to find the perfect personality to represent their brand’s story, or even simply to their peers and colleagues. So between celebrities and content creators, journalists and researchers, and even hidden talent from the third floor, how do you know who is the best host for your branded podcast? Here’s what you need to think about:

Celebrities and Influencers

From A-List to F-List, hiring a celebrity to host your podcast can be a great strategy for adding an immediate sense of mainstream credibility to your show. A well-known personality alone might even be enough to get someone to hit play on your podcast right from the jump, without the need to do much marketing at all. Good thing too, because hiring a celebrity to host your show will likely eat up your entire marketing budget anyway.

Most of the celebrities we hold in high regard are trained in the media space, from actors and musicians, to reality TV stars and social media influencers. It means that while they likely won’t be topic experts, they’ll serve as great media-trained “laymen” on behalf of your listeners, and could be a great entry point for making a hard topic or challenging story easy to chew on. Imagine Drew Barrymore’s couch was actually your podcast!

But with massive notoriety comes tricky logistics. If you’re looking to hire a celebrity to host your podcast, you should prepare for long production timelines and to do most, if not all, of the work. For a celebrity host, unless the podcast is truly their own (ie, Wiser Than Me, Conan O’Brian Needs a Friend), don’t expect more than them simply sitting down behind the microphone and talking. The podcast won’t be their top priority. Scheduling recording sessions may prove difficult as they squeeze in time amongst their many projects. 

This also means you shouldn’t expect your celeb host to have more than an entry level understanding of your topics.They’ll only have the time to skim your script and question lines. From my perspective, hiring a celebrity to host your podcast is an expensive way to tell surface level stories. But, if your brand’s goal is to make a splash in the pop culture world, it might be the best way to go! 

Topic Experts

As a producer, experts have been my favourite kinds of hosts to work with and they can come in many forms: journalists, critics, professors and researchers, authors, bloggers, etc. At the end of the day they’re experts in their field, they’re passionate about it, and they’re invested in sharing a message. Katy Milkman is a wonderful example. She’s the host of Choiceology, a podcast from Charles Schwab, the financial services company. Her work as a Behavioural Scientist first-and-foremost informs the conversations she’s having on the show – a podcast that’s not about financial services, rather fascinating stories of high-stakes decision making.

With an expert, you can almost guarantee that they’re going to be deeply invested in your podcast, and may even support you on its pre-production work, like research, scripting, and even guest booking. They’re in-the-know in their industries, and will be able to make recommendations and introductions to the most fascinating people out there, and they’ll be able to go deep.

This is something journalist Simon Owens also recently pointed to in a recent issue of his Media Newsletter; this idea that for the future of the Creator Economy having an advanced degree will give content creators a competitive edge. I’m sure we’re due to see this in the podcasting landscape as media consumption habits shift away from traditional media. “Some of the biggest finance channels are run by former Wall Street bankers,” Simon says. “The biggest health channels are run by doctors. The biggest car channels are run by professional mechanics. I just think it’s really cool that we now live in an online ecosystem where virtually any career path can be a gateway into running an independent media company.”

However, with the level of invested interest and know-how from an expert host also comes the need to align their personal goals as a credible source. For a host who is an expert in their industry, the content that they appear on has to be perfectly aligned with their work and values, which can sometimes lead to clashes in editorial decision making. It means the actual “branded” piece of the podcast could fall by the wayside. But this may also be in service of high quality content that listeners will want to keep coming back to, only leading to more brand exposure.

Hiring a topic expert to host your podcast, though not nearly as expensive as a celebrity, will also be something you’ll need to account for in your production budget, but it’s likely to bring a ton of value.

The Underrated Internal Hire

If your budget is tight, it doesn’t mean you still can’t make a great branded podcast.  Many organizations forget to turn inward when scouting the right personality to host their branded podcast. This can be a massive missed opportunity. 

Many companies have passionate, knowledgeable, and charismatic employees who are already ripe for a microphone. They’re leading Employee Resource Groups and workplace culture initiatives. They’re the firecrackers on Zoom, walking enterprise customers through tech issues and new products. The best internal hire for the podcast hosting job is someone who has great working relationships with their colleagues and a passion for the day-to-day work that they do. They’re probably the person making everyone laugh during team huddles, and notably, they’re probably not found in the C-Suite. 

For many brands, C-Suite executives often seem like the best person to host their podcast at first, but more often than not hosting and preparing for a podcast simply does not fit into a CEO’s top 5, or even top 10 priorities. This can have a detrimental impact on a podcast and its production workflow. Wrangling a CEO to commit to a weekly recording can be a much more arduous task compared to doing media training with a few of your talented employees.

If you’re running a happy company, it means your workforce has already bought into the brand story, and knows it better than anyone. They are your company’s voice. One of my favourite podcasts of all time was a show called The Cut on Tuesdays from New York Magazine. Some of their best episodes were when the writing staff – names typically only seen in bylines – came together on the mic to share their unique opinions and experiences. It unveiled the humanness of the writers room at The Cut, and made me fall in love with their content not just because of the topics, but because of the people – people I’d never heard of before, until then.

You don’t need to be famous or to have a PhD to be a great podcast host – in fact, sometimes those people can be the least interesting. Instead, whether you’re on a tight budget or not, you can choose to uplift the natural talent within your company, and that can have major benefits. An employee podcast host can not only make compelling and engaging content, but also serves as a celebration of your workforce. That’s an admirable and exciting thing to share with prospective and returning clients, too. It’s a mistake to not nurture your talent in new ways, and if that mentorship is done well, it’ll only lead to more company-wide pride and contribute to a healthy workplace culture.

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About the Author: 

Kattie Laur is an Award-Winning Podcast Producer and Podcast Growth Specialist based in Brantford, Ontario, Canada, and the Editor of Pod the North, the newsletter for Canadian podcasters. She’s had a life-long love of public radio and has been clinging to the podcasting space for over 10 years.

Her experience in both professional and independent podcasting has led her down a path of advocacy for Canadian podcasting, with a keen interest in making the industry sustainable, equitable, and world-renowned. That’s why she created Pod the North, the popular biweekly newsletter for the Canadian podcasting ecosystem, which includes deep dives on industry trends from a Canadian perspective, community news and updates, and Canadian and Indigenous podcast features.

Kattie’s career as an award-winning freelance podcast producer was spent working on projects with Vocal Fry Studios, Canadaland, Shayla Oulette Stonechild, BetaKit, and many more. In April 2024, Kattie made the decision to leave freelancing behind and joined the team at Bumper, a data-driven podcast growth agency, as a Podcast Growth Specialist.

Kattie also hosts Pod the North’s flagship podcast, Canardian: the podcast gossiping about the Canadian hometowns of fellow Canadian podcasters — named one of Apple Podcasts Favourite Podcasts of 2024. She also co-hosts and produces the responsible travel podcast, Curious Tourism, with award-winning travel content creator, Erin Hynes — part of the Voyascape travel podcast network.