PPB December 2020

Gold Winner: Supplier iClick Mobile Apps/ lives, the pair made sure the podcast was published every Friday at 8 am ET. To make that happen, they recorded while on vacation, at industry events and sometimes they recorded two episodes in advance, if they were traveling. “There are a couple of things I’m proud of [with this podcast] and consistency is one,” says Hasseman. “We showed up every Friday. The other is authenticity and transparency. Those words are thrown around a lot but with us, whether you like my opinion or hate it, it’s my opinion. We try to be respectful of everybody, but we’ve created some controversy over the years because we’ve said things that were unpopular. A few times we backtracked a little but for the most part you are getting ‘in the moment,’ authentic responses and in a world where everything seems to be Instagramed, filtered and polished, the authenticity is what, I think, people enjoy.” The pair have known each other for 15 years and at one point, realized the conversations they were having about supplier/distributor relationships and ways to compensate sales reps, for example, would be interesting to others as well. They had also written a couple of pro/con articles for PromoKitchen’s website under the header Salt and Pepper, where they took opposing sides on an issue. The podcast was a natural evolution. “Originally, we wanted to do it as a live radio show, but the technology just wasn’t there,” says Petrie, “so we did it in podcast form and it is unscripted. I have topics Kirby doesn’t know about and Kirby has topics I don’t know about, so you are getting an honest reaction from the other person.” They also agreed not to edit the recording to make the podcast as authentic and transparent to the listener as possible. Through the four years that the podcast was produced, it evolved in terms of the types of topics discussed and the medium itself. “We’ve talked about some very difficult things in our podcasts, such as racial diversity,” says Petrie. In January 2020, the podcast was elevated to video. “When we first started, we didn’t have much of an audience. But early on in the broadcast we let people know we wanted to hear from them. That was one of the ways we built our audience,” says Petrie. continued on page 65 FEATURE | 2020 Pyramid Winners 58 | DECEMBER 2020 |