How to survive a podcast rebrand.
Vol. 29 - Erin Hynes on rebranding, plus a Hot Docs Pod Fest discount and plenty of announcements.
Hihi!! Happy Pod the North Tuesday!
In this issue:
Erin Hynes says podcasts should only ever rebrand if they absolutely need to.
Canadian Indie: Sharing My Truth
True North Podcast Feature: Toasted Sister - Nico Albert Williams
Canadian podcasting news out that wazoo!
There are currently 28 long-term drinking water advisories in effect in 26 First Nations communities across Canada.
LAST CALL FOR TICKETS TO POD THE NORTH LIVE!
The Pod the North LIVE show is this Thursday, October 5th in Toronto, and if you haven’t got your ticket yet, now is the time!
A very special thanks goes out to CBC Podcasts, who has come through as the Headline Advertiser! Special thanks also goes out to the folks at Canadaland, Acast, and Spotify Canada monetarily supporting the show!
Thank you to everyone who’s shown their support and shared kind words on encouragement, I can’t wait to celebrate Canadian podcasting with you!
If you have any trouble getting your ticket, be sure to check out this post!
Thoughts from the ecosystem:
Erin Hynes says podcasts should only ever rebrand if they absolutely need to.
I’ve brought up the indie podcast that I make with my pal Erin Hynes, Curious Tourism, (formerly Alpaca My Bags), on this newsletter a bunch of times before. Erin and I have been making Curious Tourism since late 2018, and have learned A TON about indie podcasting (and the travel industry) along the way.
Most of the things we’ve been tuned into as indie podcasters has been pretty standard: audience growth stuff, work-life balance stuff, and money-making stuff. All of these topics I’ve had a conversations about with folks across the podcasting space before, and when it comes to those things, there isn’t much new, groundbreaking information out there.
One thing Erin and I never expected to learn though, was what it’s like to suddenly rebrand your podcast — something we found ourselves in the midst of this summer.
When it comes to details about why this happened, this is all our lawyer will allow us to say about it (we aren’t answering any questions about it either, so please don’t DM us about it!):
We were contacted by a company in the US that felt our podcast name and logo infringed on their registered trademarks. Despite how we feel about this claim, we made the decision to move away from our previous name and logo, and rebrand. We have a new name and new logo, but this doesn't change anything about the content we make.
The rebrand to Curious Tourism was intense.
When we dove into the rebranding process, Erin, a digital marketing maven in her day job and successful travel blogger on the side, had already spent years honing in on our previous brand and perfecting how our podcast existed across the internet; from search engine optimization to social media marketing. On that note, we soon learned that rebranding was going to mean a lot more than a title and artwork swap, especially in order for us to keep the momentum that we built with the show already going.
Now that it’s all over and Curious Tourism is thriving in the world, I asked Erin to share her insights on everything it takes to survive a podcast rebrand so that instead of it being a daunting idea, it can actually be something exciting.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Kattie Laur: Okay Erin, how would you describe rebranding the podcast in three words?
Erin Hynes: Scary. Stressful. Growth.
I don't think these three words apply to everyone because the conditions of our rebrand were so specific. I think a rebrand can be very fun.
KL: So we won't get into the details about why this happened, but point being, it did happen and we have now changed the name of our podcast and we have a new logo. So looking back, what’s on the “rebranding checklist”?
EH: I think that there's the very obvious things that any podcaster will think about like, my logo needs to change. I need to update my name on my RSS. I need to update my website.
But there were a lot of little details that you forget about when you rebrand because your show always has a bigger imprint on the internet than you think, especially if you're a show like us that's been around for four years.
We've collaborated with a lot of people. There's a lot of mentions of us online, news articles, other shows we've collabed with and you forget about all of this. This is the tough part of a rebrand; all those mentions online are really valuable. So when you rebrand, it's really important to go and fix all of them, which is a lot of work.
People should only ever rebrand if you absolutely need to, because it does have the potential to disservice you because of that history of presence that you have online and you can't always go back and fix all of it.
The other thing you have to think about is messaging – how to prepare your audience for the change. Listeners will fall through the cracks, and I'm sure there are listeners out there still who don't know that we've changed our name.
I think that's a big part that it didn't really sink in until we were really honestly about to launch it – about how important it was going to be to slowly roll out the messaging so that people had time to get used to it.
KL: Yes! Talk me through the roll-out strategy. We basically rolled out the new name over the course of a month.
EH: Ya! So basically, the conclusion I came to was: you need to give people a heads up far in advance.
This started with communication through our social media channels. We didn't change our logo, we didn't change our name, nothing changed. We just started messaging about it. We shared an [Instagram story] explaining, this is why we're changing our brand. This is what you can expect. This is when you'll see it switch over. And we shared this message repeatedly over the course of a week.
KL: So social media first, but also eventually in an episode.
EH: Yeah. So the next episode we released we shared it right at the top of the episode so that people would hear it right away. We left the branding on that episode as our original branding, so basically we put out an episode saying this was going to happen, but without switching over branding.
Then, in the following episode after that we did switch over but we talked about the rebrand again, so that it made sense to people.
Basically, our strategy was to play the long game and stretch out the messaging so that people had time to get used to the idea of our brand changing and it wasn't a surprise. I also think we were able to hype people up a little bit about it.
But this is the thing. I went into the rebrand in an extremely negative headspace, but now that it's done, I'm very stoked about it.
KL: I'm feeling really good now too!
EH: I think part of that is because once we let our community know, it started to feel a lot better because people were really excited about it.
Using that messaging moment to build a hype around it is important as well. I actually think it's an opportunity to encourage people to share your show and get word of mouth going a bit more. You can really leverage it to bring fresh eyes to your show.
I feel really good about it and I feel excited to talk to people about it. It's actually given me a new enthusiasm about the show, which is kind of wild to say because I really did love our old name. I was literally bawling my eyes out, not wanting to let it go.
I think part of it too is that podcasts evolve. Our show has evolved a lot and our identity was definitely wrapped up in our old name, but it wasn't the best descriptor for our show at the end of the day. It was a fun name but I actually feel that because the show has evolved so much and we've come into a really firm identity, being able to rename it gave us a chance to give it a name that really described it better, which I feel good about.
KL: On the topic of names, one of the really fun things that you and I got to go through was trying to find a new heckin’ name for our show. Talk to me about the process of trying to find a new name.
EH: Well, the first thing I'll say is ChatGPT is your best friend.
I did a lot of ChatGPT-ing as we brainstormed names. I literally told it, come up with a witty name for a travel podcast about responsible tourism. It gave very bad suggestions, but then you just take those bad suggestions and you workshop them.
Otherwise, the main steps you need to check for are, do other podcasts exist? You need to check more than one platform because you and I frequently ran into an issue where a podcast with a name [we wanted] would show up on Apple, but it wouldn't show up on Spotify. And punch it into Google as well.
If you find any podcasts, it's a good idea to look at how active those shows are. Generally, from what I read, the rule of thumb is that if a show's been inactive for two [or more] years, you're pretty safe to take the name. But you also want to base it on how many reviews there are, which will give you a sense of how popular the show is. If it has zero reviews, it's probably not really gone anywhere. And look at how consistently they've published. If there's only three episodes and they've been inactive for two years, you're probably safe to use the name. We literally had a spreadsheet going where we would check in columns that we had checked all these things.
After that, you'll check the trademark databases. For Canadians, I recommend checking the database for the US and Canada, because most people publishing in North America will have an audience in both countries, it's important to check both.
You'll need to look at what kind of trademarks are held for that name. If any trademarks come up, if it's a completely different industry from what your show will be about, you're probably safe. But we were so scarred by our experience that we were like, we're only going with a name that has no trademarks, which is hard to do.
Other things you need to consider, you want to check what social media handles are available for the name.
You'll want to check for Google domains. A website for your podcast is pretty important, so you want to snag that domain and make sure it's available.
KL: Obviously we are scarred, but do you think it is an important step for podcasters to trademark their podcast name at this point?
EH: I think if you have the money to do it, and it's a project that you are investing time and money into, that you intend to grow, particularly if you intend to make money off of it and grow it into a brand, I definitely think it's worth getting the trademark.
We've always been an indie show, it literally was never top of mind for us to do that. But the risk if you don't trademark is that someone else will swoop in with the same name as your show, and in that case, unless you hold the trademark, it'd be really hard to force them to not use it.
It's a bit of a personal decision. To be honest, this is a fun project. I'm not particularly gutted if someone has a similar name to us. But if that did happen, I would probably shoot them a DM and be like, um, excuse me.
KL: I wanted this conversation to give people a lay of the land of what to expect and what that process even looks like if they are considering rebranding. Any last words that you want to share?
EH: Okay, this is the thing that made me panic after we rebranded.
So when your show's been around for a while, people reference you online and they create backlinks that link back to your RSS, or link back to your website. All of these backlinks send authority to your web page or to your feed and that authority helps get you seen, because Google SERP will display your show when people search terms related to it.
That authority is super super important and when we did our rebrand that was the thing that panicked me the most because there are so many high value backlinks out there that we've spent years developing, not even intentionally.
So I did a lot of backlink outreach, just messaging high value backlinks that I knew existed and asking them to update the URL. Cause even if you set up a redirect, which I also did, you do lose some of the authority.
It's really worth it to go back and email all the people who've mentioned you and linked to you and give them the fresh link because it'll help maintain the authority of your show online, particularly on Google.
Some people did not respond, but lots of people did.
What Erin is loving:
Check out this Canadian Indie: Sharing My Truth
Unlikely best friends: two women from different generations.
Mel and Suzie share uncensored truths about life, love, relationships, sex and what they’ve learnt and want to learn. We’re all searching for answers, solutions and to make life better, but how do we get there? How do we learn to speak to each other so we can have better relationships with each other and with ourselves? By sharing their truth with you, Mel and Suzie hope it helps you get a little closer to yours.
True North Podcast Feature: Toasted Sister - Nico Albert Williams
Cherokee chef Nico Albert Williams is just trying to make some corn soup.
Nico is the executive director of the Burning Cedar Sovereign Wellness in Tulsa and the vocalist for a badass doom/sludge metal band, Medicine Horse. In this music-filled episode, Nico and Andi Murphy, Diné journalist, talk about storytelling in music, religious horror and how she pivoted from the restaurant chef life to community leader.
What’s going on in Canada’s podcast ecosystem:
Want a discount on your pass to Hot Docs Podcast Festival’s Creators Forum? Hot Docs is offering a discount to Pod the North readers! Use the code: CFPOD8425 to get member pricing on your pass at $139 (vs. $149 regular price).
Congratulations goes out to Quill, who was recently ranked #37 on the 2023 Report on Business Ranking of Canada’s Top Growing Companies. Okay Canadian podcasting companies, we see you! Read more about Quill here.
Le Devoir recently featured articles on some of the issues facing the Québec podcasting industry. One of the articles touches on the lack of sustainable public funding and the other unpacks the public funders difficulty defining podcasting in the first place. I’m always looking for news from the francophone side of Canadian podcasting, and this is well worth a read! [HT: Clara Lagacé, Transistor Média]
North Bay, Ontario, has a new podcast network called The Echo Community Podcast Network, which launched with it’s first podcast To North Bay with Love. Other podcasts on the network include The Frontline (the official podcast of the Powassan Voodoos & North Bay Battalion OHL teams), and The Backroads Bill Podcast (all about the history of the North Bay area). [HT: Broadcast Dialogue]
BRAAAINS presents a special Mental Illness Awareness mini-series, You’re Not Alone: Navigating Life With Mental Illness. On October 3rd-5th you can catch their three episodes exploring mental illness, the barriers that can block your journey to good mental health, and how stigmas, diagnoses, and disclosure are represented on film and television. Don’t miss it.
A new season of Don't Call Me Resilient, from The Conversation Canada, came out last week! The podcast joins Vinita Srivastava as she dives into conversations with experts and real people to make sense of the news, from an anti-racist perspective.
EDIT: Correction here, the previous version of this newsletter included The Globe and Mail as one of the parties involved in this podcast. The Globe and Mail is not involved with Don’t Call Me Resilient.What the deal with AI voice generators and podcasts? Transistor’s Justin Jackson has been totally fascinated by this new era of podcasts since a local college student synthesized his voice almost perfectly using only 30 seconds of source audio he found on YouTube. Justin recently shared his thoughts on YouTube!
What has Canada’s podcast listenership been like so far this year? Well, Triton Digital has released the Canada Mid-Year Podcast Trends Report to answer all of your questions. Apparently, the average Canadian is listening to 4.4 episodes weekly, with peak listening time being Wednesday mornings. Read the report here. [HT: Broadcast Dialogue]
Want The Canadian Podcast Listener study from Signal Hill Insights, Ulster Media and The Podcast Exchange (TPX) instead? You can stay tuned for the results of the 7th study to be released to sponsors and subscribers in late November.
For now, TPX is looking ahead to the holiday season, and has info for advertisers thinking about marketing on podcasts this year. Read it.
Fall lineups are here from Canada’s podcast networks!
Curiouscast is premiering a new show called Uncharted: Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry from Canadian radio icon, Alan Cross. The podcast is set to debut on October 24th, and explores the true crime stories that exist in the music industry.
Bad Parents, from Q107 hosts Shawna Whalen, Ryan Parker and Johnny Garbutt, launched last week where they chat parenting and compare notes with celebrity parents.
Homestand Sports with Albert Vartanian has also been picked up. It’s a podcast that brings you the stories from the NHL that will fuel debates at home, the pub, or the bleachers. [HT: Broadcast Dialogue]
CBC Podcasts has launched a new season of Someone Knows Something about Angel Carlick, which is out now.
Let’s Make A Horror is due for launch next week on October 11th, where Maddy, Mark and Ryan are back to create a glorious new, spooky piece of fiction.
Three other new podcasts including Crime Story (to launch October 16th), Bloodlines (to launch Octber 23rd) and Gay Girl Gone (to launch in November) are coming this season!
Plus, select titles are now available on CBC podcasts’ newly launched YouTube page.
For your pod:
I’m a firm believer in the power of listener communities in finding any type of success in podcasting. That’s why you should definitely read the new Lifehacker piece from
to get some insights from 12 Podcasts With the Best Listener Communities.The 28th Annual Webby Awards are open! The early entry deadline is Friday October 27th, 2023.
Just Joe (ready for spa night)…
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Kattie | @Podkatt
(Find me on Twitter, Threads, Spotify, and Goodpods)
CORRECTION: The previous version of this newsletter included The Globe and Mail as one of the parties involved in the podcast Don’t Call Me Resilient. The Globe and Mail is not involved with Don’t Call Me Resilient.
The timing for this article couldn't have been better. Today I'm launching a rebrand of one of the podcasts I do for work. I'm happy to see that I already did a lot of what was discussed, but there is some very useful information here. Thank you!