Exactly How Your Show Name & Cover Art Impact Growth (According to Data) | Podcast Packaging - Podcast Marketing Trends Explained: Data-Driven Podcast Growth Strategies

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jeremy (00:01):
People are making decisions based on the
information they have available,which is often the title and
maybe the cover art. Those twothings are the gateway to your
show.

Justin (00:10):
We live in a scrolling, scanning culture. If you can get
them to pause even just for asecond, you've got a chance for
them to interact with your show.

Jeremy (00:21):
It will influence people's perception of the show
one way or the other. Yeah.There is no way that different
cover up will not change the waypeople think about it.

Justin (00:28):
The thing about good branding is that you are
planting a flag. Some peoplemight look at this and go, this
is not for me. I look at this,I'm like, I wanna listen to this
show. I would buy a t shirt withthis logo on it. I love this.

Jeremy (00:44):
So over the past year, we've recorded something like 30
podcast roasts for our othershow, Roast My Podcast, which
was was kind of a spin off ofthis show initially, became its
own thing. And the kind of ironyof that show is that it's a show
tearing down podcast packaging,and it was only on YouTube, so
it didn't actually have any showpackaging itself. It didn't have
a cover art. We didn't evenreally have a title for most of

(01:05):
the time. I just always referredto it as roast my podcast.
And eventually, I kinda talkedabout it to a few people. They
started calling it that, but itdidn't really have a name. And
so this is something that wehave all these 30 episodes. A
lot of people were asking, wherecan I find the podcast? And I
was eventually like, okay.
I I need to put these up in apodcast feed. And there's this
problem that, you know, we justdidn't have a cover art. And so,
actually, I had an idea. I wasfancying myself an artist, and I

(01:28):
actually sketched something out.And I was like, okay.
I can't do this myself, but Ican give the direction to a
designer. And I think this isgonna be a pretty great cover
art. So I don't know if I evershared the concept of the the
design with you. Did I?

Justin (01:40):
No. I don't think so.

Jeremy (01:41):
I had this idea for cover art that had the kind of,
like, words roast my podcast onskewers because we always talk
about submitting your show tothe skewers. Oh, yeah. K.
There's something there. Andthen I pulled in all these
images, and I was like, okay.
Let's get some colors from fromsome of these skewers, some
things like this. Mhmm. Pull itin. There's some kind of visual
concept here, but it's it'smaybe not the, you know,
executed as well as it could be.Yeah.

(02:03):
Yeah. But I mocked up something,and I sent it to a designer. And
she kinda gave me some pushbackon this, and she was like, well,
you know, it's kind of hard toread and, you know, whatever
else, all this other stuff. Andshe made that concept and then
she made a few other ones. I wasstill like super gung ho on my
version.
I thought she did a great jobexecuting it. And so I did two
things here. So the first one isthat I sent it out to my

(02:24):
newsletter, and I had four of mymy top kind of mock ups, my
cover art concepts, sent thoseout in a poll in kit, and got
people to vote. And then I alsoran a Facebook ad test where I
set all of the cover art up. Allthe variables were the same.
The only thing that wasdifferent was the cover art, and
I ran them all to get a certainnumber of impressions and then,
you know, see what peopleclicked on. Any guesses on how

(02:45):
the story ends?

Justin (02:46):
My guess is either they're like, all of them
performed in a similar way.Maybe, like, a weird design that
you didn't expect, like, the wayyou didn't expect one?

Jeremy (02:58):
Well, I will tell you that the one that I wanted to
win, my design concept,performed terribly in in both
cases. Of the four images that Isent out, I think mine got,
like, 3% of the vote, and therewas another one that got, like,
85% of the vote.

Justin (03:13):
Okay.

Jeremy (03:13):
And so clearly, there was some preference there. Now I
I'm not even gonna show that onebecause I didn't like that
design. It was the safest, mostboring, and we might talk about
this a little bit more in thisepisode here, but I was like,
it's the most readable, it's theclearest, and it's just really
generic. And so I couldn't bringmyself to do that, but it was
very clear to me. The Facebookad test showed as well.
Nobody liked my design, and so II had to let it go. And so then

(03:38):
we were down to we did some,iterations with my designer. We
had a few different designs andthere was one other one that I
thought was really interesting,which, I ended up running a
different test, with here. So weI I worked it down to three
concepts. Okay.
Basically, this one on thebottom was the one that
performed the best with mynewsletter initially

Justin (03:55):
Okay.

Jeremy (03:56):
By far. But I really like this middle one, and I
thought, ah, there's somethinginteresting about it. It's a
little hard to read, and so weended up working on that a bit
more. And then there there'sthis other top one that was more
in line with my ScrappyPodcasting branding, and I was
kind of like, I I liked it, butI wasn't really sold on it, and
I didn't feel like ScrappyPodcasting and Roast My Podcast
actually had that much overlap,and so I didn't wanna associate

(04:17):
them too closely. So I went backto Facebook, ran another test,
and as we can see here, I Ibasically ran it so that each,
piece of cover art got about10,000 impressions.
And so we had a kind of similarnumber of people seeing all
these. This cost maybe a hundredbucks. It might have even been
like 50, so not super expensiveto run this test. And what we
can actually see here is thatthe click through rate on these

(04:40):
different pieces of cover art isquite stark. Yeah.
And, you know, this middle one,which is where my kind of
intuition was going after I gotover my my previous self design
concept, actually performed byfar, like, almost twice as well
as the other two. And so thiskind of, served as some of the
confirmation to me that, like,okay. I feel good both from a
creative perspective on thiscover art as well as clearly

(05:02):
people are clicking on this.Yeah. And That's surprising
actually

Justin (05:05):
to me that that middle one is my least favorite,
personally. I'm I'm reallysurprised. I mean, I guess I
could understand why peoplemight click through on it
because it's just so weird. I'ma bit conflicted about this
click through result here. SoI'm I'm curious where this went.

Jeremy (05:25):
Okay. So well, there there were still some iterations
that we did some, reworking ofthe the artwork to make it more
readable. I still wanted to addthese skewers. I really like the
skewer idea. And then I did somemore testing within my, client
group and community.
Everybody said, nope. This oneup here in the top right corner.
Everybody hated all these otherones, especially at a a small
size.

Justin (05:44):
Okay.

Jeremy (05:44):
And so this is the one that I've ended up going with.
And so it's clear, interesting,distinctive, not something that
you've really seen before. Yeah.And and so this is where we're
at now. But I think that thisseries of experiments really
gets at something that we don'toften have a window into as
podcasters is that we decide onour cover art and our show name.

(06:05):
We put out there, and thenthere's no real way to test or
know, like, would a better coverart help my show grow faster?
Would a different title help memore? And so in this episode,
we're gonna dig into some of thespecifics and some of actually
the data that I was able to pullfrom, the podcast marketing
trends report as to the impactof show title based on a series
of attributes as well as theshow cover art. So let's start

(06:27):
off with the show title. And I'mcurious for shows that you like
or just like as you're observingshows, what are some of the
attributes of like what makes agood title in your mind?

Justin (06:37):
It really depends. There are shows that I like that I can
never remember the title of. Andto me, that's a bad title. Like
a title I remember is Dignation.Okay.
Well, why? Well, probablybecause I listened to the show
and then I ended up recommendingit. But Dignation is a made up
word. It has all sorts ofhistory that doesn't even matter

(06:59):
anymore. And it's just supereasy to remember.
It's two you know, dignation,two syllables. Dignation, three
syllables. The biggest thing isfor it to be memorable, I think.
Like, acquired is another namethat sticks in my head. It's
actually a bad name for thepodcast, but it's one word.

(07:22):
It's pretty unique. And numbertwo, if you can also make it
somewhat descriptive of theshow, I think that's a bonus as
well.

Jeremy (07:30):
Yeah. And, you know, about the title being somewhat
descriptive of what the show isabout, this was something that
was actually quite easy tocalculate. And so, basically, I
went through all of the hundredsof shows that submitted their
data for, the report and gaveeach of them a designation of is
the title clear, evocative, orunclear. And so clear is
basically you look at the titleand you're like, I'm pretty

(07:52):
certain, like, 80% certain Iknow. I have a strong idea of
what the show is about.
Evocative is more like you needa bit more context, but there's
something leading you in thedirection. Even though it might
not be a % clear, it could meana few things. And then unclear
is just a title that it isneither evocative or clear. It's
just kind of like this show isessentially meaningless based on
what the the topic is about.Mhmm.
And so basically what we seehere, I think is pretty

(08:15):
illuminating. 53% of shows wereclear, which is actually pretty
good that more than half ofshows that submitted, actually
were clear based on just thetitle. If that's the only
information you had, you couldprobably figure out what the
show's about. But we can thensee that the high growth shows
were 65% clear, so they're quitea bit more, you know, 12%
higher. And then we can see aclear correlation where as you

(08:37):
go down high growth to midgrowth to low growth to shows
that's shrunk, it keeps gettingless clear at each stage.
And so we can see that the showsshrunk were less than for them
had clear titles. The low growthshows had 58%. So they actually
still outperformed the average,but it was really those shows
that shrunk dragged everythingdown. But the more clear, the
more growth that there was. Theother thing that was interesting

(08:59):
was the lack of clarity.
And so across the board, when itcame to evocative titles, a lot
of those shows shrunk. Theyweren't clear, but they were
more evocative. But there werealso a large number of shows, in
the mid, low, and shrunk thatwere unclear compared to the
high growth shows, where only 8%of high growth shows were
unclear compared to the averageof of 14% overall. So, like,

(09:20):
almost half, of of the theaverage.

Justin (09:23):
So to summarize, if you if your show title is clear, you
are more likely to have highergrowth.

Jeremy (09:32):
Right. And so basically, the the high growth
categorization here shows thatdoubled in size over the course
of a year.

Justin (09:37):
Okay. I mean, that's a pretty clear result. I think if
somebody's searching for aparticular thing and, you know,
your show title is like, oh,that's the thing I'm looking
for, that helps. Right? Maybethe the best example of a show
title that is clear andevocative, although maybe so

(09:57):
evocative it it harms the clearscore, is Sleep With Me.
You know, the title is evocativebecause, you know, there's maybe
a little sexual undertone there.Yeah. But the the show is
actually a fall fall asleeppodcast. And so at least it has
the word sleep in there, and itwould probably show up for sleep
podcasts. But I in that genre,I've seen tons of shows just go

(10:21):
with a more clear title, likefall asleep podcast, bedtime
stories podcast.
So it seems like that's thetrade off sometimes with clear
titles is they become moregeneric. And Yes. Potentially
it's like, sure, people mightpick it if they're searching for
something. But it's way easierto recommend a show called Sleep

(10:42):
With Me. And the only resultthat's gonna come up is Sleep
With Me.
As a if you search bedtimestories, I think you're gonna
get many, many results.

Jeremy (10:50):
And, you know, this actually gets at you know, we've
talked about jobs to be donebefore. We did a full episode on
that. But I actually like toapply jobs to be done theory on
the internal side as well anduse that to say, like, what is
the job of a show title? Andthen when we know what a title
is supposed to do, then we canstart to use that as a checkbox
to see, does my title satisfythis? Yeah.
You know, it's interesting thatthere are actually a bunch of

(11:12):
things and sometimes a showtitle that is descriptive is
boring. It checks one box and sothat's good, but it doesn't
check all the boxes. And so, youknow, my my kind of list here
that I have of like, what is thejob of the title? And I'd be
curious if there's anything elsethat you think, a great title
should do. I think the firstthing, like almost the most
foundational is establishrelevance to the person.

(11:33):
Now, like, there's lots of showsthat I listen to that I might
not immediately look at and belike, oh, I see why that's for
me. But I think there issomething that is in the
subconscious brain that is like,basically, we all have a filter
that we have so much informationkinda coming at us all day,
every day that our subconsciousbrain is like filtering out most
of it. And it's allowing throughthe things that it thinks and

(11:54):
knows are relevant to us. And soI think if a title speaks to
something that a person isinterested in, it's gonna pass
through the filter, and now it'sgonna enter this kind of
consideration. They may stillnot listen, but they're at least
going to actually see it.
Whereas something totallyobscurely titled, like that may
just bounce off their filter.They're scrolling by. They don't
even stop to look at it becauseit takes extra brainpower. So

(12:15):
relevance was the first thing.Yep.
The second was curiosity. Mhmm.And this may actually, you know,
go get into one of my otherpoints here, which is kind of
this evocativeness or, like,leading your imagination to,
like, wonder, like, oh, I Imight not be sure what it's
about, but I I think this showmight do this. And I think Yeah.
A truly great title paired witha great concept, you can already

(12:36):
start to imagine what episodeideas might be or guests might
be or what they might cover.
I think that's, like, a reallygreat title. Mhmm. And then I
think the last thing that youactually mentioned at the top
too was communicate tone. And soyou mentioned that the founder
quest kind of evokes some ofthis, like, dungeons and dragons
or, like, some kind of videogames or something like that.

Justin (12:54):
Yep.

Jeremy (12:54):
Is there anything else you'd add to the list or
comments on on those kind ofjobs of the title?

Justin (12:59):
I think shareability and recallability. If you're sharing
the show with a friend, what'sit called? Sleep with me. I
remember the show name, sothere's recall there. And if I
share it, it's easilyunderstandable audibly.
Some titles are not clear whenyou say them audibly. And just

(13:21):
easy to search for that onceit's recommended and for it to
come up. How searchable is it?It's just like Yeah. Much easier
to find a unique title that'smemorable that in turn becomes
more shareable.
If someone is going, oh, I can'tremember the name of the show.

(13:41):
That's a bad sign. If somebody'slike, okay, I searched for it,
but I got 10 results. That's notideal. So, yeah, I think those
are some other attributes that Ithink about.

Jeremy (13:53):
Yeah. And you know, on the shareability side, there's
a, like, positive shareability.Like, it makes you look smart to
share it. Like, it somehowreflects well on you. That's a a
plus.
But it can also reflect poorlyon you. I had a a client or a
pair of clients, were cohosts,and they had a show for
therapists on, like, howtherapists can better look after
themselves and, like, practicetheir own techniques on

(14:14):
themselves in a kinda givingcareer where you spend a lot of
time putting your energy out toyour clients and don't always
look after yourself. And sothey, at the time, had a show
called thrvival. So it's thiskind of portmanteau of Thrive,
and I actually thought it wasmeant to be revival, but for
them, it was actually survival,which there's a bit of confusion
there that was alreadycommunicated. Yeah.
But there was actually anotherclient on one of our group calls

(14:37):
who piped up. He's like, so mywife is actually she manages a
team of therapists, and I feellike she it would reflect poorly
on her. Like, she wouldn'trecommend a show called
Threvival because it feelssomehow nonauthoritative or it
doesn't, like, paint her in agood life. It almost makes you
think, like, you listen to ashow called Threvival?

Justin (14:54):
Yep.

Jeremy (14:55):
And I didn't really think, like, the title was
terrible, but it was interestingthat he made this comment that,
like, in a leadership position,she could recommend the show to
a whole team of their ideallisteners, but wouldn't because
it would feel like it reflectedpoorly on her. And so I think
that this is something that isnot really thought of at all
related to both cover art andtitles and really everything

(15:15):
else that we do is, like, howdoes this make our listeners
feel to share it? Is there some,like, status going up or status
going down by them associatingthemselves with the show?

Justin (15:24):
And there's a whole science to this that's been
explored in book titles, forexample, titles of movies and TV
series. Probably the closestanalog is book titles. But
Atomic Habits is a great booktitle that James Clear did a lot

(15:45):
of thinking and testing on. Andif you're going to recommend
that to your business friends,there's some kind of power and
gravitas in that name. And soone of the jobs to be done of a
title is it's the vessel thatyou're going to use to recommend
the show to somebody else.
So how does that show make youlook? This is where you can get
titles that are evocative andslightly descriptive, but they

(16:08):
just have this authority to themlike the dip. That's an
authoritative title. That'sactually one of the tricks is
that if you use the word the andthen something else, it
instantly becomes moreauthoritative.

Jeremy (16:20):
There's a great book called Hello My Name is Awesome,
by Alexandra Watkins is theauthor's name, I believe. And
she has a whole methodology fornaming things. And so usually,
she gets hired to name companiesand products and product lines
and things like that. But a lotof the stuff applies very much
to podcasting. It's a little bitdifferent in a content
perspective, but one of herapproaches, it's a super

(16:42):
laborious process.
But I think it's actuallyworthwhile because if you think
about how much of your successrides on the name of your
company or your product or yourpodcast, it's actually worth
doing a lot of this legwork upfront. And so part of her
process is looking for kind ofreferences to things. So
starting with a series of anchorwords. And so you know there's
some feeling that you want theshow to evoke or there's a core

(17:03):
word that you know is adescriptive word that needs to
be a part of the show. And thenyou start looking for what are
phrases and songs and movies andother kind of, like, cultural
touchstones that use that wordin some way or something close
to it that rhymes, puns, thingslike that.
And you start to, like, takesomething that the audience has
some familiarity with, and thenyou, like, modify it to still be

(17:25):
clear enough that it speaks tothe thing that you're naming.
And I think that sleep with meis a great example of this where
it takes a phrase that we knowMhmm. But twists it and has a
new meaning on it. And itactually creates this little,
like, leap in your minds whereyou get the joke and you're
like, oh, that's really clever.Yeah.
And, like, that's just adelightful thing. And I've been
reading this book on onadvertising and I had never
heard anybody give permission tothis. And it was something that

(17:47):
I had, like, always felt butnever felt comfortable teaching.
Basically, like, in your ad,your ad copy, your headline, and
and basically everything.They're talking a lot about
print ads, but, like, you needto get the point across, but the
actual best thing you areactually aiming for clear plus
clever.

Justin (18:01):
Mhmm.

Jeremy (18:01):
And a lot of times, the writing advice and titling
advice is clear, not clever.Mhmm. And I was always like,
yeah, that is a good defaultbaseline. But actually, the best
stuff is both clear, fully clearand fully clever

Justin (18:13):
Mhmm. That it

Jeremy (18:13):
requires the audience to make a little bit of a leap, and
there's a bit of a delight. Andmy suspicion is making that leap
actually embeds that in yourmemory further.

Justin (18:21):
Mhmm.

Jeremy (18:21):
When there's something clever that you feel like you've
figured out a little bit andyou're in on the joke, that
that's actually more memorableto you. And so I don't know how
to teach somebody to title theirshow that way other than go
through that process thatAlexandra lines out in her book
and just, like, come up with allthe references related to some
keywords and find out is theresome clever way to do it. But I
think that that is like the holygrail of a title is something

(18:41):
that has both those attributes.

Justin (18:42):
Yeah. My guess is actually that there's just many
paths to something that'smemorable, and that's one path.
But you can also just take, youknow, the old Seth Godin, the
dip. And it's like Yeah. Wow.
Okay. And I mean, he has someevocative as well. Purple Cow.
Meatball sundae. Yeah.

(19:03):
Yeah. So you can you can usedifferent approaches to creating
a memorable title.

Jeremy (19:10):
And I think that this is something that I would just
encourage people to do is justlike there are title archetypes
out there. And so you'll see thesame kind of like patterns show
up again and again and again in,you know, big shows, successful
shows. Think about the thingsthat stick in your brain. And
you start to realize like thereare a set of categories like you
mentioned the something. Mhmm.
And, like, that's a very commonone. There's a bunch of others,

(19:33):
like the 48 Laws of Power, Ithink is the Robert Green book
that's been riffed on a ton andrepurposed in a bunch of
different ways. Mhmm. I was justlistening to an episode with Nat
Eliason, who has recentlywritten a book called, Crypto
Confidential that was kind of healmost didn't title the book
that way because he didn't hewas worried he was too close to
Kitchen Confidential, fromAnthony Bourdain, except his
publishers were like, actually,Anthony Bourdain, he's just the

(19:55):
most popular person to use thattitle mechanism, but there's
actually many more examples thatgo back a hundred years. Mhmm.
And it's like, oh, like, thesethings repeat, and there's ways
to put spins on them that,again, establish it in this kind
of category. And, like, part ofwhat Nat was talking about in
his book titling process was heactually he liked the way that
Bourdain approached writingabout being a chef and and being

(20:15):
in the kitchen. His book, Nat'sbook, had a lot of that tone.
And so by associating it withthe title, you actually bring
some expectation to your ownshow. And so you can use these
kind of references tocommunicate more than the actual
words do, which is also aninteresting kind of approach to
titling.

Justin (20:30):
Yeah. I think a good exercise for people is to just
think about the last 10 booksyou've read and which titles you
can recall and which ones youcan't. And I'm already thinking
of a few. I'm like, oh, Iremember I got into that book. I
can't remember what it's called.
I have no idea. You know, that'sprobably a good test. What names

(20:51):
can you remember?

Jeremy (20:52):
We're gonna look at some of our favorite show titles
later on the episode, but let'smove on to the second kind of
core element of packaging here.We're thinking about the the two
things that most peopleencounter when they encounter a
new show, it's title and it'sthe cover art. I was doing a bit
of research here, and, you mighthave heard some of this before,
related to how, you know, thebrain processes pictures much

(21:13):
faster than text. And so I wascurious about, you know, some of
the the science here. It turnsout that humans have been using
written language for about fivethousand years and that the
first kind of widely usedphonetic language is around
3,000 years old.
So not all that long ago in thebig scheme of things. But when
it comes to pictures andpictograms and cave wall
paintings and all these things,we've been using those at least

(21:35):
40,000 years, possibly as muchas a hundred thousand.

Justin (21:38):
Oh, wow.

Jeremy (21:38):
So images, visuals go way, way, way farther back. And
so visuals, it turns out areprocessed in as little as 13
milliseconds. So that's prettyquick. And that images are
processed, 60,000 times fasterthan text. Mhmm.
And then one other final stathere is that 90% of information
transmitted to the brain isvisual. And so here we can see

(22:01):
that clearly images do a lot ofheavy lifting in communicating
ideas. And so I think that thisis one of the reasons that I
think both of us are just suchhuge proponents of, like,
spending time and often money onthe cover art because it is
actually doing so much work thatwe often kind of undervalue.

Justin (22:16):
Yeah. I mean, here's a good example of this. I want
everybody to think of a Nirvanaalbum cover. Right? Right away.
You're thinking of probablyNevermind and that iconic baby
in a pool image. Yep. Right?That that image has power. It
sticks in our brain.

(22:37):
I mean, if you grew up in thenineties, you can probably think
of dozens of CD covers that hadthat impact on you. And CD cover
is actually another good analogfor what we're trying to do
here. It's the same size. It's asquare. It has kind of the same
purpose.
Like, people are looking througha shelf of CDs. What are they
gonna pick off the shelf andlook at it and maybe go and give

(22:59):
it a listen? That's a greatmindset to be in when you're
thinking about this stuff.

Jeremy (23:04):
Yeah. And I think there's so many examples of how
visuals are just so much fasterat transmitting information. And
I think about, Notion. I don'tknow that they are the ones that
popularized this, but theyreally used emojis heavily in
their sidebar. And so if anybodyis a a Notion user, this was
like a trend in like 2020, Iwanna say, that they had a ton
of emojis for their page iconsand things like that.

(23:27):
And then you started seeing itpop up everywhere. And at first,
I thought it was kind of astupid trend until I realized,
oh, I actually started using itbecause it was so much easier to
scan a body of text and, like,see a visual shorthand for some
bigger idea. And you can see,oh, I always put this emoji on
these types of pages, my blogposts or whatever or something
else. And now you're not justlooking at the title and having

(23:48):
to read it all, you're justscanning for images and you can
quickly pull those out. Mhmm.
And this is actually something Inoticed myself doing in my
podcast feed where often I amnot looking for the title of the
show or the name of an episode.I'm just, like, scanning for,
like, where's the colors thatI'm looking for from that show?
And it immediately pops out andyou're like, yep. That's what
I'm clicking on. And I think,like, this is important in terms
of retention where, like, we'rereducing the amount of friction

(24:10):
it takes for people to findtheir way back to our show.
If they already like it, they'realready looking for it. Like,
let's not make them think. Let'sshortcut that and go straight
to, like, okay. Here's an imagethat they remember. It's
distinctive.
It stands out in their feed.They have an association with
it, and they're just, like,always reaching for that thing.

Justin (24:24):
Yeah. I think overall, I'm kind of disappointed in
podcast cover art. I think it'sstill mostly banal. I think it's
not very good. When you compareit to album art, album art is
just so much more memorable.
It's well done compared to mostof the podcast art I see.

Jeremy (24:44):
Maybe this episode will, play a role in in getting people
taken more seriously if we'rebeing grandiose in our ambitions
here. So basically, much likethe titles, I looked at the
episode artwork of everybody whosubmitted their show, and then I
rated it on a bunch of differentcriteria. And so the ones we're
gonna look into here are thelegitimacy of the cover art. And
so this is a very personaljudgment call from me of when I

(25:06):
look at this cover art is myfirst impression that this seems
like a legitimate show that Iwould expect it to be high
quality and professional. Thesecond criteria was, is text the
primary visual element?
And this is something I'vealways been curious about
because I tend to, as a nondesigner, really lean heavily on
text. And I think it actuallycan often work quite well, but
kind of leads to what you weretalking about where you get this

(25:27):
kind of banal cover art thatisn't really particularly
creative. It might communicatethe show title and idea, but not
really that interesting. Ilooked at a few other attributes
here, including, like, whetherthe show was particularly design
y, if it felt like a a designerhad worked on it, if the host
photo was on the cover art, theninteresting one that a lot of
people ask questions about. Andthen looking at things like, is

(25:47):
the layout clean?
Is it readable? And then is itclear much like with the title
that you can tell, what theshow's about. So let's, look at
what the data actually showed.And so the first one here,
artwork legitimacy. This one,you know, feels pretty obvious
to me that, like, the morelegitimate looking the cover
art, the more that yourimpression is going to be that
the inside of the show matchesthe outside, and this is

(26:10):
certainly true.
And so the average show, 56% ofshows overall, I I kinda
classified as being legitimate,but 68%, almost 70% of shows,
that were high growth, had thatlegitimacy. And, again, we see a
somewhat correlation kind oftrending downward. The shows
that shrunk were obviously thethe least legitimate. This one
was kind of interesting to Textis the primary visual element.

(26:32):
Mhmm.
This one was kind of surprising.And so turned out that high
growth shows and this wasactually a direct correlation
again. The more the higher thegrowth the show, the more likely
it was that text was the primaryelement. Mhmm. And so 38% of
high growth shows had text asthe primary element, only 19% of
shows overall.
So still less than half of highgrowth shows, but, you know, it
is interesting that clearly it'scommunicating what the show is.

Justin (26:55):
Yeah. That makes me sad a little bit, but it's okay.

Jeremy (27:00):
Yeah. I feel that a little bit as this one, really
interesting here, the presenceof the host on the cover art.
Mhmm. And so the average, 37% ofall shows had the host on the
cover art. But, actually, it wasthe shows that outperformed the
average growth rate.
So the mid and high growthshows, they were less likely to
have the host on the cover art.And it was the the mid growth

(27:21):
shows that were least likely,and so those were shows that
grew above the the median, butless they didn't quite double.
And then the low growth showswere the most likely. They were
the only category of shows thatwere over 50% had the host on
the cover.

Justin (27:34):
How interesting.

Jeremy (27:35):
A little bit interesting. And the one thing,
you know, that I think is worthpointing out here is that there
are certain shows that are neverprobably going to be super high
growth. They might not have ahuge potential for growth, but
they might be very much aboutthat person's personal brand,
and that person might own abusiness or something like that.
Shows that are in high trustenvironment, so like lawyers,
doctors, professional serviceswhere you might be hiring this

(27:56):
person and you kinda wanna knowwho they are. I think it
behooves those people to puttheir face on the cover art.
But their shows are probablynever going to be, you know,
huge shows. And so it mightstill make strategic sense to do
that even though the the datamight reflect otherwise.

Justin (28:11):
Yeah.

Jeremy (28:12):
Last couple here, we got, the cleanliness of the kind
of layout. And so like howeasily readable is it? I'm
looking at clean versuscluttered, and we see here 88%
of high growth shows were clean,66% of low, growth shows were
clean. And so again, you seesome clear kind of correlations
there. The readability, again,high growth shows are the most
readable.
The mid and lower growth showsmuch less readable. And then

(28:35):
we've got the clarity. So verysimilar to the title, can you
tell based on the cover art whatthis show is about? And again,
the high growth shows were themost, clear by quite a bit of a
margin. And so here we just seelike all these kind of best
practices.
It's almost like the data justproves it out. Like the more
legitimate the cover art is, theclearer it is, the more
readable, the the cleaner thelayout. Like, all of these

(28:55):
things, it feels like, yeah,general design best practices
are correlated or associatedwith higher growth shows and
often in a pretty direct manner.

Justin (29:02):
Mhmm. Yeah. Now that I think about it, I think one
potential reason that hostphotos can sometimes
underperform, You know, ifyou're a recognizable person to
the audience, then it's like,oh, yeah. I'm gonna listen to
that show. It's got Tim Ferrisson the cover.
But if people don't recognizeyou, like, who's that person? I
don't know. Like, some sort ofunknown person. You're putting

(29:24):
to the forefront something thatmight actually be detracting,
which is you're giving people areason to discount you. Unless
you can make it reallyevocative, one of my best
performing pieces of cover artwas I had this show called Build
and Launch.
I had this giant beard at thetime and this photo of me with a

(29:46):
toque on. And I just made itreally, really big on the cover
art. And it kind of split myface in half so that half my
face was off the canvas. And Ithink that show got a lot of
click throughs just because theart was like, woah. Like, this
guy looks this guy looks weird.
This guy looks crazy. This therewas something evocative about

(30:07):
that image. But what I seepeople doing is they play it
safe. They're using theirprofessional headshots, and it
just can feel generic and like,okay. Here's another influencer
I've never heard of.

Jeremy (30:19):
You know, you look at somebody, Conan O'Brien, his
face should be the biggestelement on the cover art. But if
you don't have that recognition,then you probably want some
other element that is moreimportant to be there. Yeah. And
I think maybe this gets a littlebit into, like, some of the jobs
of the cover art, likeestablishing relevance. The
other thing I think about a lotis filling in any gaps that were
left by the title.

(30:39):
Mhmm. And so, ideally, I thinkthe title and cover art play off
of each other because they'reoften gonna get both of them at
the same time. And so if thetitle is really clear, I think
the cover art can be much moreevocative. The cover art can
fill in, add some color to it,and add some, like, imagery that
takes people maybe itcommunicates more of the tone or
the vibe of the show or some ofthe other differentiators that
way. Whereas if the title ismore evocative than clear, then

(31:02):
you probably wanna ground it insome tangible visuals that get
somebody thinking like, okay.
I I have a strong sense of whatthis show might be about. Any
other jobs that you can thinkabout when it comes to the cover
art, the jobs to be done, forthat element?

Justin (31:14):
Yeah. I mean, another thing that I think about when it
comes to host photo is if you'rethinking about your cover art in
the context of everything elseyou're doing for promotion. So
for example, if you arereleasing tons of video clips
with the host, and you'rerunning ads on those, you're
posting them to every socialnetwork, and maybe you're

(31:36):
getting some viral clips withthat person's face, then
absolutely, as a part of thatwhole marketing strategy, you
should have the host's photo onthe cover art because you're
building some recognition withall the other promotion you're
doing. So thinking about yourcover art and your title in the
context of your overallmarketing strategy is Yeah.

(31:59):
Another job.
This is just one piece of youroverall marketing strategy, and
it all has to work together. Soif you're doing a bus ad, you
know, or a billboard orsomething, you would want to
have some common elements sothat when people actually get
into their podcast player,they're like, oh, yeah. I saw
that. I wanted to check thatout. You're building up that

(32:22):
recognition.
You're trying to get people torecognize these elements. And
just look at how when they'repromoting Stranger Things, what
are the common elements theyhave in all of the ads and all
of the clips and everything elsethat lead you to when you're
scrolling Netflix go, oh, yeah.I heard about that show. And you
can instantly recognize in theircase, the typography. Right?

(32:45):
So that's the common elementthat they are introducing over
and over again in all of theirother promotion. And it leads to
recognizing that brand, thatcover art, that show once you're
actually in the directory.

Jeremy (32:59):
Yeah. You know, Stranger Things is such a good example
because their typography gotriffed on to death Mhmm. After
it blew up is, again, it's likeplaying off something familiar
that grounds people in thegeneral vicinity of what you're
trying to do and plant someideas in their head already. And
so every genre is gonna have itsconventions for what a kind of
two buddies chatting type show.There's gonna be, like, a lot of

(33:22):
cover art that looks kind ofsimilar, and it may be useful to
plant yourself in that categoryand use some of the elements in
your cover art that so peopleknow, oh, I see two buddies on
the cover.
Like, I already have a sense ofwhat this show experience is
gonna be like. Mhmm. But thenyou also wanna have probably at
least one kind of distinctiveelement that is markedly
different from other shows thatget people to, like, take a
second look and be like, oh,this grabs my eye in some way.

(33:44):
And so stranger things, theyhave that typography that is has
become, I would even say, kindof iconic. Mhmm.
It has just been, like, used inso many places. And I think
their soundtrack as well, theway that they put their theme
song together, I've heard thatriffed a lot on, like, stock
music sites and things likethat. Yep. And so there's a few
distinctive elements that reallybuild the brand. None of us
needs to, like, reinventeverything from scratch.

(34:04):
Like, we're gonna exist withingenres, but then we wanna have a
couple elements here and therethat make people take a second
look, and those are the thingsthat's actually gonna stick out
in their minds. And so whetherthat's typography or whether
that's some kind of visualelement at play in your brand at
large or whatever that might be,distinctive color palettes,
looking to how can we, like,take this thing that that plants
people in the right area andthen kinda riff on it a little
bit.

Justin (34:24):
Mhmm. Exactly.

Jeremy (34:26):
A couple other things that come to mind when it comes
to the job of the cover art. Ithink the first thing is, like,
kind of stopping the scroll. Andso that's kind of maybe a little
bit what we talked about aboutalready where you're going by it
and you're like, oh, that justlooks interesting to me
visually. And so it gets peopleto pay attention. And then the
second thing, this really comesto the legitimacy side of
things, is earning the benefitof the doubt.

(34:46):
And so I think that people aremaking decisions based on the
information they have available,which is often the title and
maybe the cover art. And so,basically, those two things are
the gateway to your show. And soif they have 10 or 20 shows on
their screen, all they'recomparing is cover art to cover
art to cover art and title totitle to title. And so,

(35:06):
basically, if we can earn thebenefit of the doubt by having
legitimate professional lookingcover art that grabs the eye and
kind of hints that you put theeffort into the external
packaging in the show, likely weput that same time and attention
onto the inside. And, you know,I always think about this with,
like, coffee packaging that is,like, really nicely packaged.
The bag is this interestingmaterial.

Justin (35:25):
Mhmm.

Jeremy (35:25):
This interesting design. I know you've talked about more
about craft beer and things likethat in the past and how there's
a similar job there.

Justin (35:30):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that is a great test. Is
stop the scroll and legitimacyand walk into a beer store and
just look at all the labels.You're gonna be scrolling,
scanning, and all of a suddenyou're gonna go, woah, look at
that one.
By grabbing your attention, it'sdone its job. Right? It's made
you stop for a minute. And welive in a scrolling, scanning

(35:55):
culture. People are justconstantly swiping and scrolling
and scanning.
And if you can get them to pauseeven just for a second and zoom
in on your thing, then you'vegot a chance for them to
interact with your show and cantake it off the shelf, so to
speak, and consider it.

Jeremy (36:14):
The other one, you know, you mentioned looking at albums
before and then looking at beercans. The one for me that I
always do is going intobookshops, and I just think book
covers are a similar canvas topodcast cover art. And they're
similar kind of mediums in a waywhere you're kind of, like,
basing a lot of your decisionwhether you buy the book or read
the book based on those kind ofelements. Like, does the book

(36:35):
title and the cover pull me in?And then I read the back of it,
and I'm like, ah, soundsinteresting.
Maybe I read the first page, andI'm in. And you can think, okay.
We've got, like, podcast title,cover art, show description,
teaser episode, do almost thesame things. Yeah. And so I
think there's so muchinspiration out there.
And just like going through abookshop and looking at what
does this communicate to mebased on the title and cover
art, what type of book do Ithink this is gonna be, who is

(36:56):
this for, what is the topic, Andthen you can kind of just like
soak in that and over time,hopefully get better at your own
kind of design decisions.

Justin (37:02):
The other reason I like that approach is because your
response to what's out there isgonna be very much in the
moment. There's all these trendsthat end up you know, blue
covers start selling well inbooks. And so everybody gets a
blue cover. And it's like, well,to break the pattern, you've got

(37:22):
to go with something that'scompletely different. Right?
Yeah. So how can you break thepattern as you're scrolling
through Spotify or ApplePodcasts or Pocket Casts? Which
covers are gonna break thepattern for you? They're gonna
kind of jolt you and go, woah.That's different.
Woah. I haven't seen that.

Jeremy (37:42):
So I'm I'm curious. Some of the things we're talking
about here related to beingclear plus clever as being the
ultimate thing to maybe aim for.And there's other ways to do it
as well. But then also beingable to, you know, break the
pattern and do something that'svery different from what the
dominant kind of, genreconventions might be. This is
maybe, like, the ideal advicethat you want to aim for, but it

(38:03):
is heavily reliant on havingreally exceptional taste.
Mhmm. I don't think anybody'sborn with exceptional taste. It
requires you to really consume alot of content and have clear
ideas about what makes thingsgood. And so what are your
thoughts for, like let's justassume that most people don't
have great taste in creatingtitles that's none of our job.
And we don't have great taste indesigning cover art because

(38:25):
again, that's not really ourjob.
Like, how should creators bethinking about these things?

Justin (38:30):
Oh, I think I think you need to get familiar with great
brands. So here's anotherexercise people can do. Go to
Google and just search SkullSkates. Skull Skates is this
iconic eighty's skateboardbrand. It is very distinctive.

(38:50):
It has its own look. It's blackand white. It has this iconic
logo.

Jeremy (38:56):
If you

Justin (38:57):
go to their website, it has its own look and feel. And
you know, those skateboardgraphics, to me, that's kind of
what you're aiming for. It'slike I've created a brand that
is distinctive, that isnoticeable, that is iconic, that
has its own feel that'sdifferent than anything else.

(39:20):
And in this case, thisparticular brand has endured
for, I don't know, forty orfifty years. So these are the
things I think you need to bethinking about.
To develop great taste, you needto familiarize yourself with
great brands. These things thathave endured for a long time.
Stranger things. Like even SkullSkates, like, that's just that

(39:40):
was just one guy. But he wasjust so opinionated.
But like, I'm only doing blackand white. I'm only gonna have
this kind of raw look. Thatinitial logo, I think, was just
scraped out of grip tape on aboard. Like, it's just like
Mhmm. As one person, you candefine your brand, your what you
want this to look like, but ithas to be consistent.

(40:04):
It has to be stand forsomething. It has to be
identifiable. And the only wayyou develop that taste is by,
you know, familiarizing yourselfwith lots of this stuff and by,
like, going, oh, I like that. Ilike Skullscapes. I think that's
a great brand.
Other people might not like thebranding, but that's another way

(40:25):
to develop your own taste. It'slike, really look at the things
you like, what resonates withyou personally, and then craft
your brand around that.

Jeremy (40:34):
Yeah. And, you know, this is something I think this
is one of the most helpfulexercises I've ever done is I
created a Figma doc. You can dothis anywhere. And I just
started copying and pasting andscreenshotting design ideas and
brands that I like, and I justput it in a huge file. And it's
it takes so long to load nowbecause there's probably
hundreds of images there.
But then at some point, I wentthrough and organized them. And

(40:54):
that was actually really helpfulto then organize them into
themes, and I did them by colorand different style. And I
realized like, oh, there's allthese subthemes that I'm into.
Mhmm. And so there's kind of, alot of, like, Bauhaus kind of
style.
I realized like, oh, this issomething I'm attracted to. I
really love the design of a lotof tarot cards. Mhmm. I think
are, like, really cool, whichactually then overlap with a lot
of skateboard design. Mhmm.
There's this kind of, like,similar elements. And I was

(41:15):
like, oh, all these things blendinto each other, and it starts
to get into, like, oh, I seewhat my style is and my taste.
And so now basically anytimethat I go to design something
new, I go to my kind of personalinspiration where I just put
everything that I know that Ilike visually. And I'm like,
okay, what feels right for thisproject? What what might be an
interesting angle?
And you can start kind ofpulling on some of these
elements and that makes designso much easier if you're doing

(41:37):
it yourself, but also tocommunicate to a designer if
you're working with somebody tobe able to have examples on hand
to be like, okay. I really likethe vibe of this, but I like the
typography of this and thisother aspect of this. And so,
you know, how can we kinda blendsome of these two things
together to get to somethingthat's gonna be distinctive? And
so, yeah, I think recognizingwhat you like, knowing your own
taste, that's a huge first stepMhmm. To to coming up with

(41:57):
something that is going to bedistinctive and kind of,
legitimate.

Justin (42:01):
Yeah. Like, you should be doing some like, get on
Pinterest. I've actually foundTumblr is really great in terms
of like curating images in aparticular style. And just start
saving and collecting things.Create your own mood board for
what you like.
Define your brand kind of withthese elements that, oh, maybe I

(42:23):
could bring this in, bring thisin, and come up with something
that's cohesive and unique andactually has a overall feel and
theme.

Jeremy (42:33):
And the one other resource that I'll, shout out
here, I don't have it, with me.It's on my nightstand, is Louis
Gragnier's new book, calledStand the Fuck Out. Basically,
he's talking in the book abouthow to build a distinctive
brand, but, there's a big partdedicated to the visual brand
assets. And a lot of it was likethe visual design side of
things. And so his book is isphenomenal.

(42:53):
All his work is great. Hisnewsletter is good. So
definitely check that out. And,the my big takeaway was that the
distinctive brand assets do notnecessarily need to mean
anything. That they can beunique to you, and they can be
meaningful to you, but theydon't need to speak exactly to
your product.
And so this was something thatreally unlocked things for me
where the scrappy podcastingidea kinda came from. There was

(43:15):
a lot of inspiration where,like, okay. I do I had the
scrappy vibe, but then I waslike, want something more. And
then I started thinking aboutthere's had this, like, kind of
tape element and these papercutout type things. But this
tape element always reminded meof when I used to work in
studios, you put the maskingtape down on the board and you'd
write down what tracks.
You know, the drums are on thesetwo faders and the guitar and
whatever. I was like, oh,there's a kinda cool thing
there. And then I startedbringing in these more just like

(43:36):
background influences that havenothing to do with talking about
podcasting, but like havesomething to do with me that
made me excited about it. Andthey're really distinctive and
nobody else is gonna come upwith that because it it's not
tied to the product. And I thinkthat this is something where one
of the things Louis talks aboutis if you're in a category and
you're trying to pull out visualinspiration from this one thing.
And so for me, that would be,okay, I'm in the podcasting

(43:58):
category. What kind of visualthings am I gonna think of? And
we're gonna have microphones,headphones, waveforms, all these
like generic cliche visualelements that everybody else is
gonna have. And so it's almostimpossible to create something
unique if you're just ripping onthese basic things. And so you
need to pull stuff in fromoutside that's kind of
tangential almost to kind ofspice that up.

Justin (44:18):
Yeah. Yeah. I love that. I think that when we talk about
branding, maybe that is the mostimportant piece. It's like,
first, develop some taste.
And I think this is a good way,like, you know, this takes time.
And even people with good tastecan come up with bad concepts.
This is something you gotta testwith people. And if you have
teenagers in the house, there'sno better critic to come up with

(44:42):
stuff. And if people can go, oh,woah, that's kinda dope.
Like, that resonates with me.That's a good test. But if
people are like, you want myhonest opinion? Like, it's kind
of boring or generic or not verywell done. I I also think if you
can afford it, you should hiresome professional help.
Yes. It could cost you a hundredbucks for a consultation. Yep.

(45:04):
And a hundred bucks to get likejust someone that can just help
walk you through some things andgive you some initial like
feedback and direction, I thinkis invaluable. And there are
professional podcast brandingartists Yep.
Out there that do cover art. Tofind one of those people and

(45:24):
enlist their expertise might notbe a bad idea either. And might
not be that expensive. Maybe youcould do it for a thousand bucks
or something like that.

Jeremy (45:32):
That's Definitely.

Justin (45:33):
Not that much money to spend for something that might
become a cornerstone of yourbusiness.

Jeremy (45:39):
Yeah. And I would say not only will it may become a
cornerstone of your business, itwill influence people's
perception of the show one wayor the other. Yeah. There is no
way that the cover art differentcover art will not change the
way people think about it. Andso that's gonna be happening
regardless of how you approachit.
And so it is something that Ithink is is highly worth
investing. Mhmm. Okay. So maybeto, bring some of these,

(46:02):
concepts, to life. So we'vetalked a lot about, like, what
makes for great titles and greatcover art.
I thought it'd be fun to mayberun through some of our favorite
titles and cover art and give aa quick note on, like, what we
like about it. So what did youcome up with on your list of
let's start with titles. Like,what are some of the titles of
shows that stand out to you?

Justin (46:19):
Mhmm. Science versus Yep. How I Built This, Notes on
Work, Brains were some of theones I thought of right away.
Okay. So and a lot of these are,like, very descriptive.
It's memorable. What's the showcalled? It's called How I Write.
Science Versus, I actuallyreally love. It's two words.

(46:40):
We know it's about science, butthen we also know this versus
thing is like, oh, there's sometension in there. Wanna you
know, it

Jeremy (46:47):
Leaves you wondering where it's gonna go.

Justin (46:48):
Yeah. It really sets up kind of what the show's about,
how I built this. Just that'svery descriptive. And you can
kind of do that one once. Youknow, that's an iconic show.
And then everyone else is gonnacopy it. Notes on Work is my
friend Caleb's show. And I justthink that's such a brilliant
title for a show. And it theconcept is so smart. Brains, I

(47:11):
love because it's just like aone word.
It just feels kind of ballsy.Like, I'm gonna just go with one
word, brains. And it's not verydescriptive, but it makes you
kind of wonder what what it'sgonna be about.

Jeremy (47:24):
It is certainly memorable, and they pair it with
equally distinctive cover artYeah. Which was not on my list.
Maybe it'll be on yours. So,yeah, on my side, I had On Being
as one of my favorite shows.Kinda speaks to this big
question, what does it mean tobe human?
It doesn't quite spell it outthat clearly, so there is this
bit of a leap. I think ourfriend Jay, Creator Science,
actually, you know, from sincehis rebrand, it used to be

(47:44):
Creative Elements, which I thinkgets at a little bit of what he
was trying to go for. But thescience piece is interesting. It
takes you in a much morerigorous direction, which I
think matches the show.

Justin (47:52):
Yeah. Go and look at Jay's branding. Creator Science
is a great title, and then allthe branding he has works with
that title.

Jeremy (48:02):
Yes.

Justin (48:02):
He's a great case study for good branding, good cohesive
branding.

Jeremy (48:07):
Yeah. And I think, I know who's the designer you
worked with, her name is HollyArnett. I think she's based in
New Zealand, and she does greatwork and has worked with a bunch
of podcasters and larger onbrands as well. So she's
definitely somebody to look for.Couple other had here Money for
Couples.
Ramit Sethi rebranded his show.Used to be I Will Teach You to
Be Rich, which was, his brandname, but a terrible podcast
name because it wasn't reallywhat it was about. Money for

(48:28):
Couples is, like, very you knowexactly what that show's about.
And the reason I think it worksis because there's no other show
targeting there's lots offinance shows. His is the only
one targeting couples, and so hewas kind of first to claim that.
And so that's a great name.Mhmm. There's a little bit of a
leap here, but it's calledExtremely American.

Justin (48:44):
Okay.

Jeremy (48:44):
It's a show by NPR, and it's about the rise of extremism
in America. And I was like, oh,that's a you you gotta know a
little bit more, but then whenyou do, it's like, oh, that's a
a good name.

Justin (48:55):
Yeah.

Jeremy (48:55):
Couple other ones here. We got what could go right,
which kind of gets you wonderingit's a flip on the what could go
wrong. So, again, taking afamiliar phrase, flipping it.
We've got Good One, a podcastabout jokes, which that one's
it's almost too clever. Like,Good One could mean so many
things.
You really need the tagline, apodcast about jokes. Mhmm. LaVar
Burton reads. The draw is LaVarBurton from reading rainbow, and
so you loved listening to himread it as a kid on PBS. And so

(49:18):
here, you're gonna hear him readto adult stories, basically, not
like adult in the, saucy spicyway, but in the, you know Yeah.
Short stories for adults.

Justin (49:26):
And in in that in that vein, like, Conan O'Brien Needs
a Friend is a great title. Ifyou've built up a name for
yourself, absolutely use it inthe title. It it might not even
be your personal name. It mightbe your brand name. Magic the
Gathering has a podcast, andthey use Magic the Gathering in
the title.

(49:47):
And that's you wanna do that.You know? The official Dungeons
and Dragons podcast is thething. You can use your brand
name. If you've already built abrand, use it.

Jeremy (49:57):
Yeah. And then the last couple I had were, You're Wrong
About is a great one becausethat immediately gets you
wondering, what am I wrongabout? And so you start
imagining what that might mean.

Justin (50:06):
Yeah.

Jeremy (50:07):
If Books Could Kill, another show actually by the
original cohost of You're WrongAbout, Michael Hobbs. And then
the last one I had here wasOlogies, which is kind of
clever. I think it's justperfect. It is so distinctive.
Mhmm.
Like, you can't even riff onthat that in any way. It just
owns that idea, which is what Ithink makes it such a great
Mhmm. So what about on the coverart side of things? What are

(50:27):
some of the top cover arts foryou?

Justin (50:30):
You know what I did is I actually just went through my
own podcasts and then some ofthe charts just to see what
jumped out at me. This first Idon't listen to this show, but
this first one, insert credit,when you look at it up against
other pieces of cover art in thecharts, it just jumps out at
you. Not very many people have astyle like this. And I just

(50:54):
found it kind of like joyfullydifferent. You know?
Yep. Pod Save America, I thinkthis is just a great they do a
great job of adding all thesekind of iconography in there.
You've got this hourglass withsand going down. But in the
bottom, there's an American flagthat's kind of getting buried.

(51:14):
And it just works together.
It's got this blue in thebackground, yellow lettering on
top. It's just bold, and itinstantly evokes what the show's
about.

Jeremy (51:26):
Yep.

Justin (51:26):
And then this third one is a show called Onto Something
that I've been listening to. Iknow these I put this one in
here because this is actuallygenerated using AI, which I
don't normally recommend. But Ithink they've done a really
great job of, in this case,making it look like an
illustration. And overall, Ijust think that illustrated

(51:50):
cover art is a opportunity.There's not very many people
doing it.
It looks different. This kind oflooks like a children's book
cover or something. I just kindof loved it. It was charming to
me. And, they're friends ofmine, but I started listening to
the show because I was all like,oh, look.
This cover art is just so, like,cute and interesting. I'm gonna

(52:10):
check it out.

Jeremy (52:11):
The title as well, Onto Something. Again, it's like
boring a phrase. It makes mekind of curious to know what's
the riff on it there. Yeah. It'snot super clear, but it would
get me to take a second lookwhen paired with that cover art.

Justin (52:20):
Yeah. So what about you? What are some of your cover

Jeremy (52:22):
art? I've not actually listened to this show yet. It's
one of those that I've, like,added to my queue to one day
listen when space opens up. It'scalled On Brand. And my sense is
it's something related to, youknow, branding, but it's kind of
a light kind of humorousapproach on it.
And so they basically got at thetop of the cover art, they've
got all of these kind of logosand brand assets. So we got the
McDonald's fries box, Diet Cokecan, VW logo, r two d two, the

(52:45):
NES controller, Campbell'stomato soup, Starbucks, Mickey
Mouse, and, the Lacostecrocodile or alligator. They got
all these kind of distinctivewell known brand assets, and
then the name on brand is kindof the main visual element in
the center. All of the lettersare pulled from, like,
recognizable brands. So the o isthe Target logo.
The b is the Barbie. Mhmm. B.The r in brand is Rolls Royce. A

(53:07):
is Amazon.
N is Netflix. D is Disney. Andthen we've got the two cohosts.
They're, like, half of theirfaces kind of, like, looking up
at the bottom so you know whatkind of show it's gonna be. So I
think this communicates so muchin this cover art that is is
really interesting.
So the second one, also aboutkind of marketing and branding.
Actually, Mickey Mouse makes hissecond appearance strangely in
my three, selections of coverart is a show called This is

(53:28):
Propaganda. Yeah. And so thisshow is really about the history
of PR and how it is largelybased in propaganda going back a
hundred years or more. And so,basically, what you get here,
you've got this Mickey Mousewith, like, the swirly eyes of,
like, being hypnotized.
And then this is propaganda in akind of punky kind of style.
It's not quite the cutoutletters, but it's, like,

(53:50):
stenciled or stamped. And so youget this is gonna be this kind
of antagonistic look at popculture or brands or, you know,
Disney maybe. But it gets you topay attention. And it's a really
distinctive kind of green lightteal, almost green kind of
background

Justin (54:03):
color I think what's this is my favorite of your
group. And Mhmm. This reminds meof Seth Godin's people like us
do things like this. People likeus are attracted to things like
this. The thing about goodbranding is that you are
planting a flag in terms of thekinds of people you're going to
attract or detract.

(54:24):
Some people might look at thisand go, this is not for me. I
look at this. I'm like, I wannalisten to this show. I would buy
a t shirt with this logo on it.I love this.
And this is what's hard is, youknow, if you go one way or the
other, you're going to maybeturn some people off, but you
might really turn some peopleon.

Jeremy (54:44):
Yeah. And then my last one was actually a show that you
listed in the title category,How I Write, which is, one of my
favorite shows that I'verecently gotten back into.
There's a couple interestingthings about this cover art is
that it's basically so in thebottom, we've got a kind of
general, you know, purple ybackground. There's some light
texture to it, but then thebottom right corner is like a
page flipping up from a book soyou can see on the inside. But

(55:05):
what is fascinating about thisis when I look at it in my grid
on my, phone, your eye is drawnto it because it's so different.
It feels three d, which is howit's it's been treated. Yeah.
And so that cover always jumpsout at me, this contrast with
the page peeling up. And thenthe other thing that I really
like about this is that it's gotthis whimsy to it. Yeah.
And so we've got these kind of,like, stars sparkly kinda
happening here. It's thischildren's book or fable y type

(55:27):
of font.

Justin (55:27):
It actually really reminds me of the DreamWorks
logo.

Jeremy (55:30):
Yeah.

Justin (55:31):
Because there's that person sitting on the w there.
Very similar.

Jeremy (55:34):
Seraph of the w. And

Justin (55:35):
that's actually not a bad idea to copy elements. Like,
I instantly got like aDreamWorks Disney vibe from it.
If you can kinda sometimes get afeel that's similar that people
recognize, that can attractfolks as well. So, yeah, I
agree. I think this is goodcover art.

Jeremy (55:54):
And I think the thing that what I really like about
this is that it captures like,How I Write is a pretty serious
show about writing. Like, it'sgetting really deep into the
craft of different writers'habits and approaches to
writing. Mhmm. But David, thehost, has a level of earnestness
about writing that I think thiscover up really captures. And
so, like, he is just so keen andeager to really delve into the

(56:16):
practices of these writers andin a way that's great for the
listener.
And so I think that this sends aa strong kind of, signal here.

Justin (56:22):
Yeah. Love it.

Jeremy (56:24):
Alright. What about, maybe rounding this out
together? One final categoryhere. Are there any shows that
you feel like really nail thepairing of title and cover?

Justin (56:31):
Okay. So the first one I have here, I've never listened
to this show, but I chose itbecause it just stood out to me.
Fat Mascara. It's got this bigpink m. Yeah.
And it just really stood outamongst all of the competitors.

(56:52):
My guess is this show is aboutmakeup or something. It feels
like an old fashioned brand orsomething like that. The
iconography is just really good.I just thought this did a great
job.
And in this case, there's nocomplicated illustration or
anything. Just got the name fatmascara. And then they've got
this big M, stylized M in themiddle. And it's very effective.

(57:17):
Bad with Money.
I picked this one because thisis a cover and a title that
actually I started listening tojust by looking at it in back
when iTunes was iTunes and youcould just look at new shows. So
this jumped out at me in a newand noteworthy section years
ago. It's an illustration. Ilove illustrations like custom

(57:39):
illustrations. It's Gabby, thehost with a a broken piggy bank.
And this could be a NickelodeonTV show cover, and I think
they've done a good job there.

Jeremy (57:51):
The illustration of her, the host, is so evocative of a
certain type of person. Yeah.And then the fact that the the
coloring on it's almost like avideo gamey design. Like, you
very much get a sense that thisis for probably people in their
early twenties Mhmm. Who don'tfeel great about money.
Maybe there's a bit of a, like,nerd element kind of that's
going on here. Like, itcommunicates so much with this

(58:13):
cover.

Justin (58:13):
Yeah. The people like us thing. That's really evident
here. The other thing I'll justmention is you used to mention
video games. This for me, thiscover evokes Robert Munch
children's books.
Nostalgia for a certain style isalso an effective instrument
when you're creating cover art.If you're targeting a specific

(58:34):
generation, like baby boomers,like maybe a hippie kind of
sixties vibe on your cover art

Jeremy (58:41):
Yeah.

Justin (58:41):
Might do a good job of bringing people in. Yep. The
Missing Crypto Queen, this isanother one that I started
listening to just by browsingApple Podcasts.

Jeremy (58:50):
Yep.

Justin (58:51):
It's got this, like, rubber stamp look of this maybe
a wanted poster of this woman.Very mysterious. But then it's
got, like, these kind of tech itlooks like a circuit board
coming in. And it looks like aposter that you might put up on
a telephone pole. Yeah.
Yeah. Just very good. Veryrecognizable. I've also
recommended this show a lot. Andwhat's interesting is, like, at

(59:14):
parties, people hear that I'm inpodcasting.
They'll be like, oh, like,recommend a show? And the only
one I can think of is TheMissing Crypto Queen. So just
that recall is so embedded inme. I think they've done a good
job.

Jeremy (59:28):
Alright. So I had, two that I thought were were really
great pairings of title andcover art. And so the first one
is a show called I Hate It Here.And this is actually an HR
podcast and a work podcast. Andso we have this pink background
with some of these kind ofillustrated elements, swirlies,
and kind of sketches.
And then we've got this kind oflike ransom note cutout style. I

(59:49):
hate it here. And so to me, thetitle, knowing that it's a HR
podcast, is just like so kind ofsubversive, but it's also got
this pink background. I think itcommunicates so much this this
kind of, like, visual stylingand the title. So that's one
that I love.
And then this other show, it's aWondery show called Legacy.
Everybody should just go look upthe feed for Legacy, and they

(01:00:12):
have done the best job I haveever seen of taking a visual
style and applying it to customepisode art. And so basically,
their show artwork they actuallychanged the overall show artwork
with every new episode that theyrelease. And so on this one that
I'm looking at, which is themost recent episode right now,
it's a picture of Genghis Khan,I believe, which with his kind

(01:00:32):
of eyes and face blacked out bythis kind of, like, splatter of
it looks like blood in thiscase, which would make sense for
Genghis Khan, and then the namelegacy is over that kind of
colored, element. But basically,every episode follows, like, a
illustration of that famousperson, and you can always tell
even though their eyes and faceare blurred out.
See, there's like WinstonChurchill, and I think there's
like Cleopatra, and there'sCharles Dickens, and there's a

(01:00:54):
bunch of other just like famouspeople. And I think it's like
acquired the one word legacypaired with this artwork is so
bold that it does a really goodjob of pulling you in.

Justin (01:01:03):
This is brilliant. I'm super impressed with this
branding work here. Peopleshould definitely check this
out. This and I think it alsoshows you, like, there's nothing
super complicated about it. It'sjust well executed.

Jeremy (01:01:16):
Yep. Looking through some of these other ones, we got
Marie Antoinette, CharlesDickens, Winston Churchill, John
F. Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, andlike all of these. Yeah. It is
just looks like they do series,for each one.
So you'll see a few of them inthe feed. But, yeah, this is
masterful. Any kind of likefinal thoughts or requests as we

(01:01:37):
wrap this one up regarding,titles and cover art?

Justin (01:01:39):
Yeah. I'm really curious, listener, if you're out
there. What cover art did yousee with no other context that
convinced you to go try apodcast? I want to know about
those shows. Because I thinkthat is that's the ultimate
test.
If someone just saw your coverart with no other context and

(01:02:04):
that convinced them to try outthe show. Wow, you've done a
really good job with your coverart and title. So if you have
examples of that, send those in.

Jeremy (01:02:15):
You can find our contact info in the show notes. And,
other than that, you can findthe full podcast marketing
trends report atpodcastmarketingtrends.com, and
we'll see you next

Justin (01:02:26):
time. Later.

All Episodes

Exactly How Your Show Name & Cover Art Impact Growth (According to Data) | Podcast Packaging

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

24/7 News: The Latest

Therapy Gecko

The Joe Rogan Experience

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Exactly How Your Show Name & Cover Art Impact Growth (According to Data) | Podcast Packaging