Today we find out how to humanise a brand.
University Health Network in Toronto is home to the world’s first successful lung transplant and today conducts groundbreaking research in difficult-to-treat brain disease. It is one of the Top 10 medical research centres in the world.
So how do you put a face on such a complex and large organisation?
Our guest Christian Coté has done this, using their ‘Beyond the Breakthrough’ podcast to raise their profile, amplify their work and showcase their groundbreaking innovations.
He shares the one important key to success he used to make UHN’s work accessible to a wider audience, inspire pride among the staff and communicate with both internal and external audiences.
If you’re a marketer looking to learn how to effectively market niche brands, this is a must-listen.
THINGS WE SPOKE ABOUT
- Marketing Strategies they have used to date
- Why they felt a podcast would help spread their message
- The importance of story and where to find them
- Launching and growing their podcast
- Impact and value of the podcasts success
- The next big thing you need to plan for
LISTEN NOW
GUEST DETAILS
Christian Coté is Special Advisor for Strategy and New Media at UHN. A former producer with CBC, his role is to leverage his storytelling skills to help UHN doctors, scientists and healthcare workers disseminate their work to a mainstream audience. In 2019 Cote created ‘Behind the Breakthrough’, a new podcast about the ground breaking medical research and the people behind it at UHN. In 2022 it won the national Canadian Podcast Award for Outstanding Science Series.
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-cote-a8828b57/
Podcast: https://www.uhn.ca/corporate/News/UHN_Podcasts
QUOTES
I see it totally as a platform that is tailor-built for the kind of things that hospitals and research are about. You need that time to be able to do a deep dive into a particular subject where you don’t feel rushed to get it into a two-minute news story or 30-second soundbite.
– Christian Coté UHN New Media Special Advisor
No one sits or stands around at the water cooler the morning after an event saying have I got a great PowerPoint for you? It’s have I got a great story for you?
– Christian Coté UHN New Media Special Advisor
You know, our approach always was I wanted to make this as accessible as possible to the widest audience possible, which was a challenge in terms of the information you’re dealing with.
– Christian Coté UHN New Media Special Advisor
I think it’s as much an exercise internally for staff to feel pride in what we do every day.
– Christian Coté UHN New Media Special Advisor
MORE INFORMATION
If you would like to find out more about how a brand podcast could work for your business visit our website www.dustpod.io.
You’ll find guides on how podcasts work specifically for brands, along with lots more examples of award-winning brand podcasts to inspire you. Working with us means you do all the fun stuff, and we do everything else. Find that information on our website www.dustpod.io.
KEYWORDS
#podcast #awardwinners, #evergreen #content #scientists #universityhealthnetwork #dustpod #brands
TRANSCRIPTION
For your convenience, we include an automated AI transcription
Dusty Rhodes 0:00
Right now on Award Winners, we’re about to get the inside story on how and why a medical research group uses podcasts to share their most exciting discoveries.
Christian Coté 0:09
It’s very value added. I see it totally as a platform that is tailor built for the kind of things that hospitals and research are about. Which is you need time to be able to do a deep dive into a particular subject, where you don’t feel rushed to get it into a two-minute news story or 30 second soundbite.
Speaker 1 0:28
Worldwide, brands are engaging with customers through podcasts. These are the stories behind outstanding brand podcasts so you can listen, learn and be inspired by the best. These are the Award Winners from dustpod.io
Dusty Rhodes 0:47
Behind the Breakthrough from the University Health Network (UHN) in Toronto, Canada, is all about revolutionary research being carried out by some of the best scientists in the world. Behind the podcast is a producer with a long track record in storytelling, who is turning his talents to marketing. Over the next few minutes, he’ll share with us why podcasting has become an important tool for research and funding and how he ensures complex medical innovation is made accessible for everyone. It’s a pleasure to welcome University Health Network’s Special Advisor for strategy and new media. Christian Coté.
Christian Coté 1:21
Thanks so much for having me on the show today. Dusty
Dusty Rhodes 1:26
UHN is Canada’s number one hospital and has been rated one of the top 10 hospitals in the world. They specialize in difficult to treat diseases of the brain, so they’re not the kind of organization that you would expect to be out marketing themselves, and that’s why I started a conversation by asking a question about the message that UHN are trying to get across.
Christian Coté 1:47
Well, we’ve actually just gone through, for the first time ever, a branding exercise to raise the profile of what UHN does, because we’ve been, I would say, very modest about our achievements over the years. I mean, this is a place that performed the world’s first successful lung transplant back in 1983 previous to that, we had other world first, and many other world first since we have perfected what’s called the ex vivo lung perfusion system, which is a system where you’re able to take damaged lungs that typically would never have been able to be used for transplant, treat them outside the body, ex vivo, put them back in a person who is in need of lungs, and they go on to survive for many years afterwards, my understanding is we’ve that’s doubled the number of lungs available for transplant. So the innovation that comes from this place that actually impacts clinical practice is amazing. The issue is always translation, is getting the word out there that these things have been done by us. So that’s what we’ve been tasked with, in terms of trying to amplify the amazing things that go on here that often are not that well known. And I I’ll just tell you a story of when I first joined UHN about 13 years ago. I had come back from a background of both investigative journalism work, and subsequent to that, I my first love actually, was sports. So I was on a number of Olympic productions, and I very much equated Olympians from Canada, at least, to the people that drive innovation and treatment at UHN in that they toil in obscurity, they scramble for funding. They have, you know, all sorts of setbacks, whether it’s injuries or, you know, failure in the lab, and nobody knows what they do, except for perhaps that rare moment every four years, in terms of Olympians, where they have that moment in the sun, and then it’s back to obscurity, and it’s much the same for our researchers and scientists as you know, you’ll have perhaps a paper of note that is published, and then it’s back to obscurity. So that all goes to try to help them in terms of the funding they need to do their research, because they all scramble for their funding every year grant writing time is an incredibly busy time where everyone goes to ground to find funding to continue what they’re doing. So our job is to help amplify what they do and basically translate the amazing work they do, which is difficult to understand, and that was the purpose for the podcast, in a way that people at home, a general audience could understand the impact of what they’re doing every day. And
Dusty Rhodes 4:24
do you find that, as well as trying to chase a general audience, you’re trying to chase a specific audience within the medical sector,
Christian Coté 4:31
you know, our approach always was, I wanted to make this as accessible as possible to the widest audience possible, which was a challenge in terms of the information you’re dealing with, but that was always my goal with the podcast. I thought, of course, there’s going to be residual audiences that may be interested in this, perhaps government, perhaps philanthropists, certainly our own audience, just for the pride of having, you know our work out. On a podcast platform, on Apple, iTunes, etc, etc. But I really wanted to try and make this accessible to a general audience, which is no small feat,
Dusty Rhodes 5:09
especially when you’re talking about something that complicated. Exactly. So what kind of other kind of marketing things are you doing then to try and get that story of innovation across to the world? Yeah,
Christian Coté 5:20
good question. I mean, we’re a publicly funded, you know, healthcare group. I mean, all hospitals in Canada are publicly funded. So any non patient facing dollars, we must be very, you know, rigorous in terms of how we spend those dollars. So really, we don’t have a marketing budget, to be honest, we rely on our social channels, which are quite significant across the board, probably over 200 close to 250,000 subscribers across YouTube, LinkedIn, etc, etc. But, yeah, that’s very low level, right? I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s not like we’re able to go with any kind of advertising budget. We rely on the scientists who have, some of them have significant followings as well, and to be quite honest, that’s why we joined up with the Canadian Podcast Awards, which is how you found us, to basically submit the show for scrutiny, for awards time, simply to try and amplify the show. So we were lucky enough to get nominations. And then in 2022 we won Best Science Podcast in Canada, which is very unusual, I would think, for a hospital based podcast, but overall, not a big marketing budget. In fact, none. So it’s relying on on existing social channels, really, to get the word out there.
Dusty Rhodes 6:35
So when you look at kind of all the stuff that you’re doing on social, social is very quick. It’s kind of like little clips or little thoughts and stuff like that. What do you think a podcast brings to your mix?
Christian Coté 6:47
I think it’s definitely an opportunity to do a deep dive into a particular subject and a particular person. I always approach each podcast with I have to master the information first of all of a particular initiative of theirs, or research breakthrough, perhaps. So I spend a lot of time on the research side. I’ll gather information about, like I said, we zero in on one aspect of the research to make that a bite sized piece of information that we can get across. And they’re usually quite complex, so we i Master that or attempt to in research. Then I’ll do a pre interview with the scientist. I’ll say back to them what I think they’re saying in terms of what their research breakthrough is. I’ll go away and write a queue line, a line of questioning, send it to them for approval, and then we conduct the interview. So it’s quite scripted in some ways, because there’s no way I could off the cuff, remember all the different aspects of how they came to their research breakthrough. Some of these concepts are very complex.
Dusty Rhodes 7:49
So how long is it taking you then to put each episode together, or even just to prepare for each of those episodes? Yeah, good
Christian Coté 7:56
question. I would say probably it’s six to seven days for each episode, yeah. And we don’t put a timeline on what the episode should be. It’s the old news adage of you know, those gruff old editorial guys would say, give it as long as it deserves. So we will. We’ll have the conversation just like you do. We go into post. We’ll edit what we think, you know, is superfluous or is not necessary. Take out all the ums and ahs, of course, and yeah, we give, we give the episode, whatever you know, length it seems to deserve. And story
Dusty Rhodes 8:27
is very important to you, because you’ve worked for uh, CBC, isn’t it, in in Canada, and you’ve, you’ve been a freelance, uh, producer as well for long. So, so kind of storytelling is, is your thing? How do you describe to people the importance of story in what it is that you do.
Christian Coté 8:43
Great question, I try to proselytize people. Where I work with story is the most powerful way to get across a message. No one sits or stands around at the water cooler the morning after an event or something, saying, Have I got a great PowerPoint for you? It’s, have I got a great story for you. So that was also a very strategic and intentional part of the creation of the show was not only would we try to dive, do a deep dive into a particular scientific breakthrough of each researcher, I made a point of that part of the interview, and they’re usually it’s the back half of the interview is always the trajectory, the journey of the scientists to how they got to where they are today. So there’s always an aha moment, there’s always failure, there’s always a particular mentor in their journey that was important to them. To me, those were always they had to be critical, because it humanizes the scientists. It makes them accessible to us all the more. So I think it perhaps inspires younger people that they too could perhaps go on this journey of a site pursuing science. And it to me, it draws people in when you tell a story and you tell the career story or the back story of the scientists. So to me, it’s important to get the viewer or the listener on that person’s side, so that you’re you’re ready to go along on their journey with them, and you’re cheering for them in the end, hopefully. And the stories that have come out of our scientists anyway, are amazing. You know, people who have escaped wars, people who have escaped tyranny, people you know whose parents escaped being imprisoned, to come here for an opportunity to give their kids who go on, of course, to be great scientists at UA Gen. Do
Dusty Rhodes 10:28
you have a favorite episode or example of that?
Christian Coté 10:32
Yeah, I knew you’d ask me that I don’t like to say I have a favorite. I love all our stories. They’re like all my children. I can certainly point out some that were especially compelling. So for example, we have a brilliant scientist named Dr Geller Azad. A she’s a neurosurgeon, and this when she was training to be a neurosurgeon, back in the 80s and 90s, or in the 90s, I guess it was when there were not a lot of women in neurosurgery, you know, learning how to do brain surgery. She’s gone on to become the medical director of our what’s called the crumble Brain Institute, which is part of UHN. She’s also the first division head of Neurosurgery at the University of Toronto MediCal program. She’s the first female to head up that department, and she does this amazing research in meningiomas and glioblastomas, but also in terms of her backstory. You know, her parents started to see the writing on the wall in Iran back in the 80s after the Shah was deposed, her mother was able to somehow secure a research grant in England, and from there, they decided they’re not going back, and they decided to come to Canada. And she landed in my hometown of Winnipeg on Boxing Day, where it was about minus 30 degrees, and her dad was at the airport, thinking, we’ve got to go back. But they decided to stay. And you know, she went on to do these amazing, amazing things in science, in terms of brain surgery and brain research, that I always think it’s, it’s such an amazing story, right? That many of these people do come from immigrant backgrounds, and they are seized with the notion that they have to do better. And they they seize that opportunity. And it’s, it’s, again, I hopefully it gets the listener on the side of the scientists who were talking to that day. She’s a great story.
Dusty Rhodes 12:27
Stories are powerful, and when you hear those stories directly from the people involved, it makes for extremely compelling audio. Here’s a sample of that episode with Dr Geller zodeh talking about her school days in Iran.
Speaker 2 12:41
I remember sitting through exams in school while the war was happening and bombs were being thrown on Tehran and the teachers telling us you can’t move, you need to sit down and write the exam and windows which shatter behind me so totally a different world from where I live in now. But you know, I think you learn from every experience in life. You become perhaps more resilient, and it opens your perspectives of where life can take you.
Dusty Rhodes 13:17
The story of the people that you have on the podcast, the human stories are great, but what about the actual topics themselves? Because medical research can be a little bit dry. How do you try and find the story in that? Well,
Christian Coté 13:29
first and foremost, it is about breakthrough. So we’re hopefully that ups the ante in terms of the interest level, is that these are scientists who have developed, perhaps a new treatment or an improved treatment, or in the case of what I referred to earlier, XV ex vivo lung perfusion, they’ve been able to enhance the number of lungs, for example, that are available for transplant. To me, that’s amazing that these breakthroughs have impact on our patient care. So hopefully that’s interesting. And as I said earlier, the other challenges, of course, to make it accessible. So I we work. I work quite a bit with each scientist to help them understand that they have to move away from jargon and academies and terms that are not accessible and and help them sort of reverse engineer what they do, but talk to us in a way that would be we always say, talk to me like I’m in grade five, and explain what you do, where I have to admit some things still go over my head, but we try our best to make it, you know, as accessible as possible.
Dusty Rhodes 14:41
Still to come. On the award winners podcast, we’ll hear how Christian launched the podcast for University Health Network and how he grew the audience with a budget of zero.
Speaker 1 14:50
If you feel a brand podcast could work for you. Here are three simple things you can do today to get started. One. Five, visit our website to get more information and guides on how podcasts work, specifically for brands, along with lots more examples of award winning brand podcasts to inspire you. Two, you can call us with your questions, and we’re happy to help. Three, you could consider working with us so you do all the fun stuff, and we do everything else. Find that information on our website@dustpod.io
Dusty Rhodes 15:30
we’re chatting with Christian cote, who heads up New Media at the University Health Network in Toronto, and the secrets behind their award winning podcast, behind the breakthrough creating a podcast is one thing, but getting it out into the world is another, especially if you have little to no budget. This was the challenge facing Christian and he shares with us now what he did to launch the podcast and to grow the audience.
Christian Coté 15:56
We tried to make as big a splash as we could with the first one, again, with the caveat that we don’t have marketing dollars, because we’re a publicly funded institution. So we, we generated, like we wrote a news story, we published, I think, we put it out over the news wire that we were launching a podcast about medical research breakthroughs at UHN and the people behind it, and, of course, on social media. You know, we heard crickets back in terms of media interest, that sort of thing, but we didn’t let that deter us. We just kept plodding along. Amplify on our social media channels. We would write a news story each year that the show launched. We would ask any sister podcast at UHN if they would, you know, promote the show on their channels, that sort of thing, and
Dusty Rhodes 16:41
what did you find gave you the biggest bump for increasing your audience?
Christian Coté 16:45
I would say probably it’s the profile of the scientists you choose. That was the one wild card. There’s no question that the scientists who at UHN have more profile on social media. They seem to be in our top 10 in terms of the top most listened to episodes,
Dusty Rhodes 17:04
and that is because more people are interested in the work that they’re doing. So more people will listen to it.
Christian Coté 17:09
They have a strong audience, for sure, and they want to hear more about them.
Dusty Rhodes 17:15
How do you think overall, then looking back on the podcast and how it’s helped the marketing for the university hospital network. What way has it helped the marketing improved it?
Christian Coté 17:24
I don’t know if that’s tough to measure, right? I don’t know that I have a particular measure for that. I know our foundations, which are part of you know they’re associated with the hospital. They help raise seed money for our scientists when they’re having, perhaps difficulty getting funding from the granting agencies. They provide that seed money, and they often will use the podcast as a wedge to perhaps convince a donor so it does have that, you know, can be employed that way. I do also know, more recently, scientists are coming to us going, Hey, what are the metrics on my episode? Grant Writing agencies are now asking for any kind of social media, I guess, metrics for their profile as a part of their writing grants and getting approval for grants, so that perhaps, is perhaps useful for some, some of the scientists. You know, I’ve always been realistic about this was never going to be, you know, a smartless or Joe Rogan podcast. It was never going to be getting millions of viewers or listeners, and that’s fine. We always saw this as a passion project. I’ve always managed expectations in terms of what what we expect we would get, and it was really an exercise and just amplifying what we do on another listening platform, or, you know, social platform.
Dusty Rhodes 18:46
The funny thing is, in my experience, is that when you are dealing with no not everybody’s going to Joe Rogan, have millions and millions of downloads. And you some people kind of go, ah, five, 750 downloads. That doesn’t seem a lot, but it has improved your work and getting your message across and letting the world know about the innovation that’s going on in your organization. It’s definitely had an impact. Yeah, absolutely. And
Christian Coté 19:10
I think it’s, it’s as much an exercise internally for staff to feel pride in what we do every day. It’s, it’s another way for them to understand what we do. Because really, our staff, which, as I said at the outset, you know, is around 20,000 people, they’re your biggest champions when they go out into the community or talking with family, or talking, you know, in public, that is who you want first on board in terms of getting behind the program. Very
Dusty Rhodes 19:39
true. So do you think then that UHN is going to sit back, um, when they’re reviewing all of their activity, they look at the podcast and they go, that’s working?
Christian Coté 19:49
Well, I think they say that every year because they keep greenlighting us to do another season. And I think also it’s because we have very low overhead. I don’t think we spend more than a. Few $1,000 a year on this podcast in terms of production from beginning to end. So it’s, it’s very value added, and it’s utilizing a platform that is little certainly in our sphere, is not, maybe used as much as it could be. I see it totally as a platform that is tailor built for the kind of things that hospitals and research are about, which is you need, you need that time to be able to do a deep dive into a particular subject where you don’t feel rushed to get it into a two minute, you know, news story, or 32nd sound bite,
Dusty Rhodes 20:34
so the organization are happy with it. What about the judges? Because you mentioned you’ve won an award, and you’re doing quite well on that side of things. Why do you think the judges made you an award winner?
Christian Coté 20:47
I don’t know. Like those are I find, you know, over the years entering, you know awards is, is almost a tyranny, because you get your hopes up and then, yeah, it’s heartbreaking that time and time again, so I become very philosophical about those things. And it’s, it’s nice to be nominated. It’s even nicer to win. What they saw in it is, hopefully, the value of the things that you know attracted you to give us a call, which is trying to somehow take difficult concepts about important things, you know, in terms of science and research and advancing healthcare and impacting patient care and holding it up for, you know, a wider audience to listen to, because these people are doing amazing work, and more people should know about what they do, and that’s probably just as true as any hospital or research that’s going on in Ireland right now.
Dusty Rhodes 21:42
To wrap up our chat, I asked Christian about the one thing that everybody seems to want in an audio podcast, video.
Christian Coté 21:51
Yeah. I mean, we have certainly plans to expand our footprint and to take it to video as well, certainly, and creating new podcasts for UHN, that are again designed, actually to be a tool, to be able to communicate with our staff, as much as the outside world. We definitely see it as a it’s a growth opportunity. It’s a way to get your message out. You have to be smart about thinking about strategy like, what is the strategic value. A lot of people come to me asking about the startup of the show, and, you know, they sort of talk about that. They have this idea, and they just want to go and start doing a show. And I’d say, Well, you can, you can take that approach. I don’t know how you know if that has legs or not. You really do have to be strategic about the concept, like when I applied TV principles, when we first thought of the show, and I wrote a show Bible. You know, it’s about 10 pages. It had to have principles and governing strategy that at least gave you guide rails of this is what the show is, and this is what the show isn’t. I think that’s important when you’re trying to conceive of how to utilize this platform. And of course, things are organic, and they change over time, but you need that sort of heavy lifting at the beginning, I think, to guide you. I definitely see it as a strong platform to be able to communicate, not only with an external audience, but also to communicate with your own staff, from
Dusty Rhodes 23:13
a marketing perspective and from a perspective of somebody who’s used to making television rather than just an audio podcast. What has this taught you? What’s the one thing you’ve learned?
Christian Coté 23:24
I think people just they love to hear and see themselves still, and certainly I think, as I said earlier, staff love to see their people up listening to them on right now, we’re still audio only, but, you know, on podbean and, like I say, Apple, iTunes and Spotify, they love to hear that. It is somehow a point of pride, and I think that’s really important, and it’s an untapped method of being able to bring, certainly, a profile to your own people that the rest of staff go, wow. Like, this is really cool. What we do, you know, I feel pride in being with you. Hn, like I’ve had people, believe it or not, like in the hallways at work, they’ll, you know, they’ll recognize me for some reason, and they’ll pull me aside, and they’ll talk about the podcasts and how they they love listening to it. So as an internal exercise, I think it has incredible value. And again, if you get an outside audience, all the better.
Dusty Rhodes 24:22
Christian Coté, thank you so much for telling us about your award winning podcast Behind the Breakthrough.
Christian Coté 24:26
My pleasure. Dusty, thank you for having us.
Dusty Rhodes 24:29
You can check out the podcast for yourself by searching for Behind the Breakthrough on your podcast app. There’s also a direct link in the description area of this episode on your player. And remember, if you’re considering our podcast for your company or brand, you will find some great resources on our website at www.dustpod.io. You’ll also be able to schedule a call to chat about how podcasts could work for your brand specifically, or you could consider working with us so you do the fun stuff and we do everything else!
Until our next Award Winners podcast, from myself Dusty Rhodes thank you for listening.
Speaker 1 25:01
The Award Winners is a Dustpod Production from dustpod.io.