Caspian Studios likes to shake things up.
Take its Murder in HR podcast.
Many agencies listen to client needs and then develop a program to match. But Caspian took the opposite approach — coming up with an intriguing idea first, then pitching it to potential clients.
Another unexpected element subverted expectations for B2B content. Instead of featuring a brand’s or industry’s experts, Caspian pitched a serialized fictional audio story featuring A-list actors’ voices that capitalizes on the true-crime podcast trend.
That unexpected strategy propelled Caspian’s Murder in HR podcast to win Best Podcast/Audio Series in the Content Marketing Awards. It also earned Caspian Studios CEO Ian Faison a nomination as a 2024 Content Marketer of the Year finalist.
Here’s the story of the twists and turns involved in bringing this unconventional B2B marketing strategy to life.
Fiction for B2B podcasts? Really?
Yes. And Murder in HR, which debuted in 2023 with 12 episodes, wasn’t even Caspian’s first B2B fiction series.
The studio also created The Hacker Chronicles, a tale of a woman who turned to the dark web and hacked into a giant food conglomerate (featuring the voices of well-known actors Michael C. Hall and Chloe Taylor). Tenable, a cybersecurity firm, published 22 podcast episodes in 2022 and 2023.
“I really believe in this idea of fiction for B2B,” Ian says. “Nobody’s doing it, and the reason is because it’s really hard.”
But the effort can pay off. Murder in HR debuted its second season at the end of September. Work is already underway for seasons 3 and 4.
The true-crime-style story centers on a brilliant 30-year-old woman who’s quit every job she’s ever had yet ends up handling HR at a tech company.
When a murder happens, she tries to solve it. Along the way, she discovers that the company is a front for an assassin business and she will be killed if she leaves. That detail explains her commitment to the job and secures Caspian’s ability to tell the story through multiple seasons.
“It’s an interesting story that has this really crazy twist,” Ian says.
Voiced by A-list actors Kate Mara and Brett Gelman, the podcast’s first season was published by Gympass (now Wellhub). Season 2 was published by Wellhub and Bamboo HR.
Caspian’s third B2B serialized fiction podcast, Scam Hunters, debuted this fall. The “business thriller” features a disgraced chief information security officer (voiced by Greg Kinnear) who gets a call from a Miami journalist (voiced by Erin Moriarty) who needs help investigating scams targeting terminally ill patients. Thoropass, an information security compliance platform, publishes that podcast.
Developing a surprising B2B content idea
The Caspian Studios team starts with the idea, not the client. The idea, Ian explains, is, “Let’s make something amazing. Let’s make something consumer-grade that people could listen to.”
The Caspian team brainstorms possibilities, then whittles a list of about 50 ideas into a handful. From there, it shares the concepts with potential partners. With Murder in HR, the ask went to chief marketing officers and other marketing leaders in the HR space.
The pitch read something like, “Hey, we’re considering doing this podcast — a fictional murder mystery set in an HR department.”
Caspian received several responses that read something like, “You are crazy. Good luck with that type of stuff.”
However, Ryan Bonnici, former CMO of Wellhub, had the opposite reaction. “The team at Wellhub loved the idea for the story and the crazy twist,” Ian says.
Ryan liked the idea of this “very big thing” targeting the audience that buys Wellhub products.
Wellhub is a brand all about employees’ well-being, and Murder in HR is set in the most toxic company possible. Fortunately, the story’s hero is an HR professional who turns it into a nontoxic environment.
The story also reflects how the fictional characters use Gympass services, such as its access to the Calm app and fitness classes.
Chief people officers reviewed the scripts for accuracy. “It is the same stuff that HR deals with in real life — well, hopefully not the assassin part,” Ian explains.
Delivering big marketing results
About 20 Caspian team members worked on Murder in HR with about 10 people from the Wellhub side.
The fictional podcast series proved remarkably successful. Though Caspian and Wellhub targeted only 50,000 listeners in its marketing campaign, the first season garnered over 1.1 million downloads in the first six months.
Murder in HR ranked No. 1 for fiction in Apple Podcasts for one week, earned No. 1 in the new and noteworthy category, and No. 39 on Apple Podcasts. It increased awareness of Wellhub among the audience and highlighted the company’s versatile and flexible platform.
Wellhub can swap new ads and messaging into the episodes to keep the messages relevant. Wellhub also promoted the story in different spheres, from marketing and media to webinars and sales conversations.
What did listeners think? “We got feedback in droves from people that said, ‘We love this. This is a very cool story.’ We even had a group reach out to say they wanted to do an event for the Season 2 premiere,” Ian says.
Telling stories that executives will buy
A fictional story as a podcast may seem like a risk in the B2B space, where marketers and executives usually prefer to showcase their expertise to educate their audience.
The business case for Murder in HR is making a hit show for and about an audience that has traditionally been the butt of workplace jokes (think Toby from the TV show The Office.) And it tells stories about things these professionals can’t talk about publicly.
To Ian, that type of storytelling isn’t risky. “Brand risk is talking about politics on LinkedIn – the idea of alienating people,” he says. “Telling a whodunit story that’s meant to be funny and interesting is pretty low risk.”
Caspian plans to take the concept to the next level. The studio is working to create what Ian calls the “Murderverse,” an interconnected set of stories that could attract many brand partners. The formats could be anything from podcasts to feature films.
“We have all sorts of crazy ideas,” Ian says.
B2B audiences are people, too
Some executives think these fictionalized stories appeal to the masses and won’t work for niche audiences targeted by their brand.
However, Ian argues that a podcast with consumer appeal can work. For one thing, it speaks to the targeted demographic with insider jokes and Easter eggs. And it works for broader audiences, too.
One chief people officer told him, “I listened to it with my daughter on a road trip, and it was so fun. We were trying to figure out who the killer was together, and I talked to my daughter about work.”
And that’s the point, Ian says. Most B2B content doesn’t require the listener to pay attention to an entire episode, let alone finish the entire season. “The whole premise of Murder in HR was to try to change that.”
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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute