This past summer I was thrilled to be invited back to Gretel to work with them on the first marketing campaign for the New York Times’ podcast, “The Daily”. Hosted by Michael Barbaro, “The Daily” is a deep dive into the most important story of the day. It has five million monthly unique listeners, and it became the most-downloaded new show in 2017 on Apple Podcasts, airing on more than 30 radio stations across the country. Sam Dolnick, assistant managing editor, now calls it “the new front page.”

The Times commissioned Gretel to help grow the audience and highlight the uniqueness of the show to untapped listeners. Our challenge was to highlight the importance and relevance of the show in a succinct, memorable and non-partisan way. We developed a verbal and visual language, which threads the immediacy of the medium with the mission of the Times. The campaign ran nationally, with executions that spanned OOH, TV, radio, print and digital – all built around a single line: “This moment deserves to be understood.”

I worked closely with my Gretel BFFs ECD Ryan Moore, Art Director Caleb Halter, and Producer Kerry Griner. My role was primarily as Creative Director of the TV spots, as well as helping pull imagery from the Times archive and pair it with our copy lines for the extensive print and OOH portions of the campaign.

Words can hardly express how excited I was for my first meeting with Michael Barbaro in the New York Times headquarters. Not only am I a NYT Crossword junkie and a devoted listener of “The Daily”, but having grown up with the Times as the paper of record in my household for as long as I can remember, I felt like I was finally on the mothership. I was even compelled to take a pic of my security pass and send it to my parents (!).

Seeing how the podcast comes together in real time was truly fascinating. Michael and his staff were still throwing around topics at lunchtime for the show due the very next day. Once Michael had chosen a focus, he rattled off some relevant Times articles on the subject from memory, and threw out a few names of Times reporters he thought were in the building that day who could come into the booth and have an unrehearsed, candid conversation about the topic. Then the producers were off and running. They secured the featured guest and started recording later that afternoon. They began editing it late that night. The whole thing is uploaded to their London office for final audio polishing before going live at 6am EST. Amazing. If you can listen to only one podcast in your day, this is truly the one to beat.

Check out the Gretel site for more.