Behind the byline: Adrian Bell

Behind the byline is a BGAJ series that looks beyond the finished article, image or broadcast to the craft behind it. It gives members the chance to reflect on a piece of work they’re especially proud of — whether it was challenging to report, tricky to research or creatively demanding — and to share how it came about, how it was made, and what made it memorable. In this first instalment, we hear from a member who takes us behind one such piece of work and the decisions, experiences and relationships that shaped it.

Adrian Bell
Adrian is an agricultural communications strategist, agtech specialist and adviser, and is active internationally in agricultural journalism.

Introducing the Podcast: blazing a trail

Tony Blair has won a third term. England has beaten Australia to win the Ashes. The iPod is ubiquitous and your mobile phone isn’t smart. Word’s getting around about a ‘video sharing’ site called YouTube, but just a few are aware of a student-only network titled TheFacebook and twitter is just another word in the dictionary. The CAP Single Payment Scheme makes its debut.

Yes, we’re in August 2005. I’ve recently won a new client account. The opening media relations campaign has been a hit; I want to build on it. I propose Bayer CropScience makes its first ‘Podcast’ – proper noun, note, because this is the buzzword of an emerging trend – and launches the UK’s first agricultural podcast series.

Looking back, it’s remarkable that my proposal needed four paragraphs explaining the concept of ‘podcasting’, its attractions, and its alignment with our marketing objectives. Yet I wasn’t being wordy; as a shiny new concept, the podcast was an unfamiliar format. Only later that year would it make it into the dictionary.

The explanation was clunky: ‘the Podcast is a method of transferring audio files through the internet…anything from music to speech…’pod’ stands for ‘personal on demand’.’ My proposal highlighted how the BBC was trialling 20 radio shows as podcasts, that Virgin Radio was doing the same with music, that podcasts weren’t limited to iPod-only playback. I might have pushed it claiming that podcasts already enjoyed ‘widespread consumer acceptance’, while my statement that an audio recording ‘injects the human element back into the marketing mix’ carried only slightly less hyperbole.

Nevertheless, those four paragraphs and a topic schedule secured an initial run of five podcasts. Four Seasons LIVE! would be a brand extension of Bayer’s printed newsletter, then distributed as an insert in Crops magazine. Bayer – quite traditional and risk-averse – was persuaded that becoming an early adopter of the new format would increase audiences’ perception of an innovative company: we had just launched a clutch of new grassweed actives and it seemed every UK arable farmer wanted them.

With the project greenlit, our challenge was recording. No handy iPhone of course, but I had some knowledge of audio recording having previously dabbled in ‘slide-tape’ production. We cobbled together a laptop, an early version of Audacity and a microphone scavenged from a bits box.

Our first guest was Clare Bend, technical manager at Masstock (now Agrii), talking autumn weed control strategies. Twenty-one years later, the poor quality of that pilot is noticeable! Equipment upgrades followed (a Marantz PMD660, allowing us to record on location) and we were soon producing fortnightly episodes. Each was around 10 minutes – not only did we aim for brevity, but also small file size at a time when a 2Mb internet connection was considered fast and many people, especially in rural areas, still used dial-up.

In 2006 we recorded probably the first podcast from Cereals and, in later episodes, covered everything from the revival of oilseed rape (so what’s new), the refreshed sugar beet regime, and changes to on-farm waste regulations.

A second series was soon commissioned and – sharing hosting duties with my colleague on the account, Helen Brothwell – the first year saw thousands of downloads across our 25 episodes.

We also rewarded the Bayer team for their faith in us. Four Seasons LIVE! won a gold medal in Bayer’s Global Awards for Excellence, beating entries from Healthcare and Material Science as 2005’s best and most innovative initiative throughout the company.

Listen to Four Seasons LIVE!

Fast forward to today, where podcasts are often de rigueur for a brand wanting to reach the far more fragmented audiences than those of the early 2000s: in agriculture alone, there are now hundreds to choose from.

Its legacy? Four Seasons LIVE! became a seminal moment in my relationship with Bayer’s marcomms team. It established a reputation for creativity and a different approach, allowing me to later whet their appetite with other novelties and innovation, including videos, online product training, text shortcodes, QR codes, and their early forays into social media.

It also demonstrated how a receptive client responds favourably to a well-rounded agency proposal, accurately researched and made with conviction: “If you think it will work, let’s go with it.” That’s held me in good stead ever since.

If you’d like to share a piece of work for a future Behind the byline feature, we’d love to hear from you. Full details on how to submit, along with guidance on what to include, can be found on the Behind the byline post.