How Port of Vancouver Reached 75% of Its Target Audience

JAR helped Port of Vancouver create a podcast for senior supply-chain and logistics leaders, then built the audience strategy around reaching those people rather than chasing the biggest possible download number. Port of Vancouver sits at the centre of one of Canada’s most important trade networks. It is also a complicated one. Ships. Railways. Trucks. Terminals. Cargo owners. Governments. Weather. Roads. One problem in one part of the system can create another problem hundreds of kilometres away. The Port wanted a better way to explore those issues with the people working inside the system. But the audience was never going to be huge. And that was fine. The job was to reach a relatively small group of senior people in logistics, transportation, shipping, supply chain and port operations, then make something useful enough that they would spend real time with it. That meant Breaking Bottlenecks couldn’t be a corporate podcast filled with Port talking points. The audience already knew the industry. The show had to give them something worth listening to. JAR and Port of Vancouver created Breaking Bottlenecks, a podcast about what can bring global trade to a stop and what people across the industry are doing about it. Hosted by historian and author Aaron Chapman, each episode started with a real problem. What happens when extreme weather shuts down a major transportation corridor? How can a suburban stoplight affect the movement of goods? Where do bottlenecks form inside a global supply chain? What can ports, railways, shipping companies and governments actually do about them? The Port didn’t need to be the hero of every episode. That was part of the strategy. Instead, the show brought together people from across the supply-chain ecosystem. Port leaders. Logistics professionals. Transportation experts. Industry partners. The result felt more like an industry conversation than a corporate communications program. JAR led the podcast strategy, editorial development, research and writing, guest production, audio production, distribution and audience growth strategy. Audience development was a big part of the job. We didn’t promote the show broadly and hope the right people stumbled across it. We built the distribution around the audience the Port actually wanted. Senior leaders in logistics. Shipping. Transportation. Supply chain. Port operations. Paid podcast media could then be targeted using occupation, industry, geography and contextual signals around logistics, shipping, marine transportation, ports and supply chain. The principle was simple. Don’t optimize for the most listeners. Optimize for the right listeners.

How Port of Vancouver Reached 75% of Its Target Audience

Breaking Bottlenecks

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