If you haven’t yet listened to The Message – an award-winning sci-fi podcast created for GE in 2015 – make sure you tune in before ADFEST 2018, where you could have the chance to meet one of its creators, Levi Slavin.
Slavin is joining ADFEST 2018 as Jury President, Film and Radio, taking time away from his role as Chief Creative Officer of Colenso BBDO in New Zealand. He returned to New Zealand after a stint at Anomaly and BBDO New York in 2017.
The Message was created by GE, BBDO New York, and podcast network Panoply – and it was a huge hit with fans.
GE’s global chief creative officer Andy Goldberg told
Fast Company that the brand was eager to create a podcast not just because the medium had taken off, but because GE loves doing things that have never been done before by a brand.
“BBDO really led the charge on what the storyline could be. That’s where they engaged Panoply as experts in the space in terms of production and how to build out a podcast. At the end of the day, we could’ve done a 40-minute one episode thing. But when we sat down with BBDO, we really figured out how it could be a series and amazing storyline,” said Goldbert
We’re delighted that Slavin is bringing his knowledge of storytelling to the Film and Radio jury at ADFEST 2018.
He recently told ADFESTbuzz: “The Message was loads of fun to make. At the time,
This American Life and
Serial were beginning to reach staggering numbers, so we knew there was an opportunity to do something big. Our biggest challenge was that very few brands had succeeded with the podcast format, so we knew our competition would be unbranded shows.
“Fortunately, we had an unbelievably interesting product to build our story around – a machine that genuinely heals with sound. The pitch was
War of the Worlds meets
Serial. We thought we had something, but I don’t think anyone expected the results we got. It ended up being the number 1 podcast in the country for weeks—ironically beating
This American Life and
Serial,” said Slavin.
Download The Message podcast here:
http://themessagepodcast.com/ www.colensobbdo.co.nz
