How Project Brazen builds huge audiences for its narrative podcasts

The startup operates almost like a movie studio in how it produces shows.

You may have noticed recently that most of the podcasts generating multi-million dollar paydays are chat shows centered around star hosts. Meanwhile, many of the major platforms and media outlets have pulled back their investments in narrative podcasts, mostly because they’re expensive to produce and more difficult to monetize.

But at least one company remains committed to narrative shows: Project Brazen. Founded by two former Wall Street Journal reporters, the startup operates almost like a movie studio in how it produces shows, and it’s launched several narrative series that went on to top the podcast download charts.

In an interview, co-founder Bradley Hope walked through every aspect of its marketing strategy, including Project Brazen’s pre-launch checklist, its approach to public relations, and how it leverages its own growing network to boost a new show:

When we first started, we really didn't have much experience in podcasts. And we just learned everything from scratch. Unlike most people who produce podcasts, we distribute it on our own network, which is called Brazen. We distribute on Apple and Spotify and everything like that.

But under the brand of Brazen, we only ever sold one podcast. Every other one is our own podcast. And in taking on that risk and taking on that challenge, you learn a lot more about podcasts because there's nobody else taking it from here. It's all up to you.

And so we've learned a lot and we created something that we call the big machine. And we have a big machine for every project. And it's essentially a very detailed checklist that's created at the beginning. It goes hand in hand with a calendar of everything you have to do from the beginning to the end. And it's dozens and dozens of steps. And as you kind of get towards the end of the series, that would include creating a trailer. We always create a visual trailer, an audio trailer, sometimes multiple versions of ads depending on the audience.

Watch the interview in the video embedded below: