Exactly How Your Show Name & Cover Art Impact Growth (According to Data) | Podcast Packaging
People are making decisions based on the information they have available, which is often the title and maybe the cover art. Those two things are the gateway to your show.
Justin:We live in a scrolling, scanning culture. If you can get them to pause even just for a second, you've got a chance for them to interact with your show.
Jeremy: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 way people think about it.
Justin:The thing about good branding is that you are planting a flag. Some people might 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 with this logo on it. I love this.
Jeremy:So over the past year, we've recorded something like 30 podcast roasts for our other show, Roast My Podcast, which was was kind of a spin off of this show initially, became its own thing. And the kind of irony of 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 show packaging itself. It didn't have a cover art. We didn't even really have a title for most of the time. I just always referred to it as roast my podcast.
Jeremy:And eventually, I kinda talked about it to a few people. They started calling it that, but it didn't really have a name. And so this is something that we have all these 30 episodes. A lot of people were asking, where can I find the podcast? And I was eventually like, okay.
Jeremy:I I need to put these up in a podcast feed. And there's this problem that, you know, we just didn't have a cover art. And so, actually, I had an idea. I was fancying myself an artist, and I actually sketched something out. And I was like, okay.
Jeremy:I can't do this myself, but I can give the direction to a designer. And I think this is gonna be a pretty great cover art. So I don't know if I ever shared the concept of the the design with you. Did I?
Justin:No. I don't think so.
Jeremy:I had this idea for cover art that had the kind of, like, words roast my podcast on skewers because we always talk about submitting your show to the skewers. Oh, yeah. K. There's something there. And then I pulled in all these images, and I was like, okay.
Jeremy:Let's get some colors from from some of these skewers, some things like this. Mhmm. Pull it in. There's some kind of visual concept here, but it's it's maybe not the, you know, executed as well as it could be. Yeah.
Jeremy:Yeah. But I mocked up something, and I sent it to a designer. And she kinda gave me some pushback on this, and she was like, well, you know, it's kind of hard to read and, you know, whatever else, all this other stuff. And she made that concept and then she made a few other ones. I was still like super gung ho on my version.
Jeremy:I thought she did a great job executing it. And so I did two things here. So the first one is that I sent it out to my newsletter, and I had four of my my top kind of mock ups, my cover art concepts, sent those out in a poll in kit, and got people to vote. And then I also ran a Facebook ad test where I set all of the cover art up. All the variables were the same.
Jeremy:The only thing that was different was the cover art, and I ran them all to get a certain number of impressions and then, you know, see what people clicked on. Any guesses on how the story ends?
Justin: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 way you didn't expect one?
Jeremy: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 I sent out, I think mine got, like, 3% of the vote, and there was another one that got, like, 85% of the vote.
Justin:Okay.
Jeremy:And so clearly, there was some preference there. Now I I'm not even gonna show that one because I didn't like that design. It was the safest, most boring, and we might talk about this a little bit more in this episode here, but I was like, it's the most readable, it's the clearest, and it's just really generic. And so I couldn't bring myself to do that, but it was very clear to me. The Facebook ad test showed as well.
Jeremy:Nobody liked my design, and so I I had to let it go. And so then we were down to we did some, iterations with my designer. We had a few different designs and there was one other one that I thought was really interesting, which, I ended up running a different test, with here. So we I I worked it down to three concepts. Okay.
Jeremy:Basically, this one on the bottom was the one that performed the best with my newsletter initially
Justin:Okay.
Jeremy:By far. But I really like this middle one, and I thought, ah, there's something interesting about it. It's a little hard to read, and so we ended up working on that a bit more. And then there there's this other top one that was more in line with my Scrappy Podcasting branding, and I was kind of like, I I liked it, but I wasn't really sold on it, and I didn't feel like Scrappy Podcasting and Roast My Podcast actually had that much overlap, and so I didn't wanna associate them too closely. So I went back to Facebook, ran another test, and as we can see here, I I basically ran it so that each, piece of cover art got about 10,000 impressions.
Jeremy:And so we had a kind of similar number of people seeing all these. This cost maybe a hundred bucks. It might have even been like 50, so not super expensive to run this test. And what we can actually see here is that the click through rate on these different pieces of cover art is quite stark. Yeah.
Jeremy:And, you know, this middle one, which is where my kind of intuition was going after I got over my my previous self design concept, actually performed by far, like, almost twice as well as the other two. And so this kind of, served as some of the confirmation to me that, like, okay. I feel good both from a creative perspective on this cover art as well as clearly people are clicking on this. Yeah. And That's surprising actually
Justin:to me that that middle one is my least favorite, personally. I'm I'm really surprised. I mean, I guess I could understand why people might click through on it because it's just so weird. I'm a bit conflicted about this click through result here. So I'm I'm curious where this went.
Jeremy:Okay. So well, there there were still some iterations that we did some, reworking of the the artwork to make it more readable. I still wanted to add these skewers. I really like the skewer idea. And then I did some more testing within my, client group and community.
Jeremy:Everybody said, nope. This one up here in the top right corner. Everybody hated all these other ones, especially at a a small size.
Justin:Okay.
Jeremy: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 this series of experiments really gets at something that we don't often have a window into as podcasters is that we decide on our cover art and our show name.
Jeremy:We put out there, and then there's no real way to test or know, like, would a better cover art help my show grow faster? Would a different title help me more? And so in this episode, we're gonna dig into some of the specifics and some of actually the data that I was able to pull from, the podcast marketing trends report as to the impact of show title based on a series of attributes as well as the show cover art. So let's start off with the show title. And I'm curious for shows that you like or just like as you're observing shows, what are some of the attributes of like what makes a good title in your mind?
Justin:It really depends. There are shows that I like that I can never remember the title of. And to me, that's a bad title. Like a title I remember is Dignation. Okay.
Justin:Well, why? Well, probably because I listened to the show and then I ended up recommending it. But Dignation is a made up word. It has all sorts of history that doesn't even matter anymore. And it's just super easy to remember.
Justin:It's two you know, dignation, two syllables. Dignation, three syllables. The biggest thing is for it to be memorable, I think. Like, acquired is another name that sticks in my head. It's actually a bad name for the podcast, but it's one word.
Justin:It's pretty unique. And number two, if you can also make it somewhat descriptive of the show, I think that's a bonus as well.
Jeremy:Yeah. And, you know, about the title being somewhat descriptive of what the show is about, this was something that was actually quite easy to calculate. And so, basically, I went through all of the hundreds of shows that submitted their data for, the report and gave each of them a designation of is the title clear, evocative, or unclear. And so clear is basically you look at the title and you're like, I'm pretty certain, like, 80% certain I know. I have a strong idea of what the show is about.
Jeremy:Evocative is more like you need a bit more context, but there's something leading you in the direction. Even though it might not be a % clear, it could mean a few things. And then unclear is just a title that it is neither evocative or clear. It's just kind of like this show is essentially meaningless based on what the the topic is about. Mhmm.
Jeremy:And so basically what we see here, I think is pretty illuminating. 53% of shows were clear, which is actually pretty good that more than half of shows that submitted, actually were clear based on just the title. If that's the only information you had, you could probably figure out what the show's about. But we can then see that the high growth shows were 65% clear, so they're quite a bit more, you know, 12% higher. And then we can see a clear correlation where as you go down high growth to mid growth to low growth to shows that's shrunk, it keeps getting less clear at each stage.
Jeremy:And so we can see that the shows shrunk were less than for them had clear titles. The low growth shows had 58%. So they actually still outperformed the average, but it was really those shows that shrunk dragged everything down. But the more clear, the more growth that there was. The other thing that was interesting was the lack of clarity.
Jeremy:And so across the board, when it came to evocative titles, a lot of those shows shrunk. They weren't clear, but they were more evocative. But there were also a large number of shows, in the mid, low, and shrunk that were unclear compared to the high growth shows, where only 8% of high growth shows were unclear compared to the average of of 14% overall. So, like, almost half, of of the the average.
Justin:So to summarize, if you if your show title is clear, you are more likely to have higher growth.
Jeremy:Right. And so basically, the the high growth categorization here shows that doubled in size over the course of a year.
Justin:Okay. I mean, that's a pretty clear result. I think if somebody's searching for a particular thing and, you know, your show title is like, oh, that's the thing I'm looking for, that helps. Right? Maybe the the best example of a show title that is clear and evocative, although maybe so evocative it it harms the clear score, is Sleep With Me.
Justin:You know, the title is evocative because, you know, there's maybe a little sexual undertone there. Yeah. But the the show is actually a fall fall asleep podcast. And so at least it has the word sleep in there, and it would probably show up for sleep podcasts. But I in that genre, I've seen tons of shows just go with a more clear title, like fall asleep podcast, bedtime stories podcast.
Justin:So it seems like that's the trade off sometimes with clear titles is they become more generic. And Yes. Potentially it's like, sure, people might pick it if they're searching for something. But it's way easier to recommend a show called Sleep With Me. And the only result that's gonna come up is Sleep With Me.
Justin:As a if you search bedtime stories, I think you're gonna get many, many results.
Jeremy:And, you know, this actually gets at you know, we've talked about jobs to be done before. We did a full episode on that. But I actually like to apply jobs to be done theory on the internal side as well and use that to say, like, what is the job of a show title? And then when we know what a title is supposed to do, then we can start to use that as a checkbox to see, does my title satisfy this? Yeah.
Jeremy:You know, it's interesting that there are actually a bunch of things and sometimes a show title that is descriptive is boring. It checks one box and so that's good, but it doesn't check all the boxes. And so, you know, my my kind of list here that I have of like, what is the job of the title? And I'd be curious if there's anything else that you think, a great title should do. I think the first thing, like almost the most foundational is establish relevance to the person.
Jeremy:Now, like, there's lots of shows that I listen to that I might not immediately look at and be like, oh, I see why that's for me. But I think there is something that is in the subconscious brain that is like, basically, we all have a filter that we have so much information kinda coming at us all day, every day that our subconscious brain is like filtering out most of it. And it's allowing through the things that it thinks and knows are relevant to us. And so I think if a title speaks to something that a person is interested in, it's gonna pass through the filter, and now it's gonna enter this kind of consideration. They may still not listen, but they're at least going to actually see it.
Jeremy:Whereas something totally obscurely titled, like that may just bounce off their filter. They're scrolling by. They don't even stop to look at it because it takes extra brainpower. So relevance was the first thing. Yep.
Jeremy:The second was curiosity. Mhmm. And this may actually, you know, go get into one of my other points here, which is kind of this evocativeness or, like, leading your imagination to, like, wonder, like, oh, I I might not be sure what it's about, but I I think this show might do this. And I think Yeah. A truly great title paired with a great concept, you can already start to imagine what episode ideas might be or guests might be or what they might cover.
Jeremy:I think that's, like, a really great title. Mhmm. And then I think the last thing that you actually mentioned at the top too was communicate tone. And so you mentioned that the founder quest kind of evokes some of this, like, dungeons and dragons or, like, some kind of video games or something like that.
Justin:Yep.
Jeremy:Is there anything else you'd add to the list or comments on on those kind of jobs of the title?
Justin:I think shareability and recallability. If you're sharing the show with a friend, what's it called? Sleep with me. I remember the show name, so there's recall there. And if I share it, it's easily understandable audibly.
Justin:Some titles are not clear when you say them audibly. And just easy to search for that once it'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's memorable that in turn becomes more shareable.
Justin:If someone is going, oh, I can't remember the name of the show. That's a bad sign. If somebody's like, okay, I searched for it, but I got 10 results. That's not ideal. So, yeah, I think those are some other attributes that I think about.
Jeremy: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 somehow reflects well on you. That's a a plus.
Jeremy:But it can also reflect poorly on you. I had a a client or a pair of clients, were cohosts, and they had a show for therapists on, like, how therapists can better look after themselves and, like, practice their own techniques on themselves in a kinda giving career where you spend a lot of time putting your energy out to your clients and don't always look after yourself. And so they, at the time, had a show called thrvival. So it's this kind of portmanteau of Thrive, and I actually thought it was meant to be revival, but for them, it was actually survival, which there's a bit of confusion there that was already communicated. Yeah.
Jeremy:But there was actually another client on one of our group calls who piped up. He's like, so my wife is actually she manages a team of therapists, and I feel like she it would reflect poorly on her. Like, she wouldn't recommend a show called Threvival because it feels somehow nonauthoritative or it doesn't, like, paint her in a good life. It almost makes you think, like, you listen to a show called Threvival?
Justin:Yep.
Jeremy:And I didn't really think, like, the title was terrible, but it was interesting that he made this comment that, like, in a leadership position, she could recommend the show to a whole team of their ideal listeners, but wouldn't because it would feel like it reflected poorly on her. And so I think that this is something that is not really thought of at all related to both cover art and titles and really everything else that we do is, like, how does this make our listeners feel to share it? Is there some, like, status going up or status going down by them associating themselves with the show?
Justin:And there's a whole science to this that's been explored in book titles, for example, titles of movies and TV series. Probably the closest analog is book titles. But Atomic Habits is a great book title that James Clear did a lot of thinking and testing on. And if you're going to recommend that to your business friends, there's some kind of power and gravitas in that name. And so one of the jobs to be done of a title is it's the vessel that you're going to use to recommend the show to somebody else.
Justin:So how does that show make you look? This is where you can get titles that are evocative and slightly descriptive, but they just have this authority to them like the dip. That's an authoritative title. That's actually one of the tricks is that if you use the word the and then something else, it instantly becomes more authoritative.
Jeremy:There's a great book called Hello My Name is Awesome, by Alexandra Watkins is the author's name, I believe. And she has a whole methodology for naming things. And so usually, she gets hired to name companies and products and product lines and things like that. But a lot of the stuff applies very much to podcasting. It's a little bit different in a content perspective, but one of her approaches, it's a super laborious process.
Jeremy:But I think it's actually worthwhile because if you think about how much of your success rides on the name of your company or your product or your podcast, it's actually worth doing a lot of this legwork up front. And so part of her process is looking for kind of references to things. So starting with a series of anchor words. And so you know there's some feeling that you want the show to evoke or there's a core word that you know is a descriptive word that needs to be a part of the show. And then you start looking for what are phrases and songs and movies and other kind of, like, cultural touchstones that use that word in some way or something close to it that rhymes, puns, things like that.
Jeremy:And you start to, like, take something that the audience has some familiarity with, and then you, like, modify it to still be clear enough that it speaks to the thing that you're naming. And I think that sleep with me is a great example of this where it takes a phrase that we know Mhmm. But twists it and has a new meaning on it. And it actually creates this little, like, leap in your minds where you get the joke and you're like, oh, that's really clever. Yeah.
Jeremy:And, like, that's just a delightful thing. And I've been reading this book on on advertising and I had never heard anybody give permission to this. And it was something that I had, like, always felt but never 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 need to get the point across, but the actual best thing you are actually aiming for clear plus clever.
Justin:Mhmm.
Jeremy: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 default baseline. But actually, the best stuff is both clear, fully clear and fully clever
Justin:Mhmm. That it
Jeremy:requires the audience to make a little bit of a leap, and there's a bit of a delight. And my suspicion is making that leap actually embeds that in your memory further.
Justin:Mhmm.
Jeremy:When there's something clever that you feel like you've figured out a little bit and you're in on the joke, that that's actually more memorable to you. And so I don't know how to teach somebody to title their show that way other than go through that process that Alexandra lines out in her book and just, like, come up with all the references related to some keywords and find out is there some clever way to do it. But I think that that is like the holy grail of a title is something that has both those attributes.
Justin:Yeah. My guess is actually that there's just many paths to something that's memorable, and that's one path. But you can also just take, you know, the old Seth Godin, the dip. And it's like Yeah. Wow.
Justin:Okay. And I mean, he has some evocative as well. Purple Cow. Meatball sundae. Yeah.
Justin:Yeah. So you can you can use different approaches to creating a memorable title.
Jeremy:And I think that this is something that I would just encourage people to do is just like there are title archetypes out there. And so you'll see the same kind of like patterns show up again and again and again in, you know, big shows, successful shows. Think about the things that stick in your brain. And you start to realize like there are a set of categories like you mentioned the something. Mhmm.
Jeremy:And, like, that's a very common one. There's a bunch of others, like the 48 Laws of Power, I think is the Robert Green book that's been riffed on a ton and repurposed in a bunch of different ways. Mhmm. I was just listening to an episode with Nat Eliason, who has recently written a book called, Crypto Confidential that was kind of he almost didn't title the book that way because he didn't he was worried he was too close to Kitchen Confidential, from Anthony Bourdain, except his publishers were like, actually, Anthony Bourdain, he's just the most popular person to use that title mechanism, but there's actually many more examples that go back a hundred years. Mhmm.
Jeremy:And it's like, oh, like, these things repeat, and there's ways to put spins on them that, again, establish it in this kind of category. And, like, part of what Nat was talking about in his book titling process was he actually he liked the way that Bourdain approached writing about being a chef and and being in the kitchen. His book, Nat's book, had a lot of that tone. And so by associating it with the title, you actually bring some expectation to your own show. And so you can use these kind of references to communicate more than the actual words do, which is also an interesting kind of approach to titling.
Justin:Yeah. I think a good exercise for people is to just think about the last 10 books you've read and which titles you can recall and which ones you can't. And I'm already thinking of a few. I'm like, oh, I remember I got into that book. I can't remember what it's called.
Justin:I have no idea. You know, that's probably a good test. What names can you remember?
Jeremy:We're gonna look at some of our favorite show titles later on the episode, but let's move on to the second kind of core element of packaging here. We're thinking about the the two things that most people encounter when they encounter a new show, it's title and it's the cover art. I was doing a bit of research here, and, you might have heard some of this before, related to how, you know, the brain processes pictures much faster than text. And so I was curious about, you know, some of the the science here. It turns out that humans have been using written language for about five thousand years and that the first kind of widely used phonetic language is around 3,000 years old.
Jeremy:So not all that long ago in the big scheme of things. But when it comes to pictures and pictograms and cave wall paintings and all these things, we've been using those at least 40,000 years, possibly as much as a hundred thousand.
Justin:Oh, wow.
Jeremy:So images, visuals go way, way, way farther back. And so visuals, it turns out are processed in as little as 13 milliseconds. So that's pretty quick. And that images are processed, 60,000 times faster than text. Mhmm.
Jeremy:And then one other final stat here is that 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual. And so here we can see that clearly images do a lot of heavy lifting in communicating ideas. And so I think that this is one of the reasons that I think both of us are just such huge proponents of, like, spending time and often money on the cover art because it is actually doing so much work that we often kind of undervalue.
Justin:Yeah. I mean, here's a good example of this. I want everybody to think of a Nirvana album cover. Right? Right away.
Justin:You're thinking of probably Nevermind and that iconic baby in a pool image. Yep. Right? That that image has power. It sticks in our brain.
Justin:I mean, if you grew up in the nineties, you can probably think of dozens of CD covers that had that impact on you. And CD cover is actually another good analog for what we're trying to do here. It's the same size. It's a square. It has kind of the same purpose.
Justin:Like, people are looking through a shelf of CDs. What are they gonna pick off the shelf and look at it and maybe go and give it a listen? That's a great mindset to be in when you're thinking about this stuff.
Jeremy:Yeah. And I think there's so many examples of how visuals are just so much faster at transmitting information. And I think about, Notion. I don't know that they are the ones that popularized this, but they really used emojis heavily in their sidebar. And so if anybody is a a Notion user, this was like a trend in like 2020, I wanna say, that they had a ton of emojis for their page icons and things like that.
Jeremy:And then you started seeing it pop up everywhere. And at first, I thought it was kind of a stupid trend until I realized, oh, I actually started using it because 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 blog posts or whatever or something else. And now you're not just looking at the title and having to read it all, you're just scanning for images and you can quickly pull those out. Mhmm.
Jeremy:And this is actually something I noticed myself doing in my podcast feed where often I am not looking for the title of the show or the name of an episode. I'm just, like, scanning for, like, where's the colors that I'm looking for from that show? And it immediately pops out and you're like, yep. That's what I'm clicking on. And I think, like, this is important in terms of retention where, like, we're reducing the amount of friction it takes for people to find their way back to our show.
Jeremy:If they already like it, they're already looking for it. Like, let's not make them think. Let's shortcut that and go straight to, like, okay. Here's an image that they remember. It's distinctive.
Jeremy:It stands out in their feed. They have an association with it, and they're just, like, always reaching for that thing.
Justin:Yeah. I think overall, I'm kind of disappointed in podcast cover art. I think it's still mostly banal. I think it's not very good. When you compare it to album art, album art is just so much more memorable.
Justin:It's well done compared to most of the podcast art I see.
Jeremy:Maybe this episode will, play a role in in getting people taken more seriously if we're being grandiose in our ambitions here. So basically, much like the titles, I looked at the episode artwork of everybody who submitted their show, and then I rated it on a bunch of different criteria. And so the ones we're gonna look into here are the legitimacy of the cover art. And so this is a very personal judgment call from me of when I look at this cover art is my first impression that this seems like a legitimate show that I would expect it to be high quality and professional. The second criteria was, is text the primary visual element?
Jeremy:And this is something I've always been curious about because I tend to, as a non designer, really lean heavily on text. And I think it actually can often work quite well, but kind of leads to what you were talking about where you get this kind of banal cover art that isn't really particularly creative. It might communicate the show title and idea, but not really that interesting. I looked at a few other attributes here, including, like, whether the show was particularly design y, if it felt like a a designer had worked on it, if the host photo was on the cover art, then interesting one that a lot of people ask questions about. And then looking at things like, is the layout clean?
Jeremy:Is it readable? And then is it clear much like with the title that you can tell, what the show'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 more legitimate looking the cover art, the more that your impression is going to be that the inside of the show matches the outside, and this is certainly true.
Jeremy:And so the average show, 56% of shows overall, I I kinda classified as being legitimate, but 68%, almost 70% of shows, that were high growth, had that legitimacy. And, again, we see a somewhat correlation kind of trending downward. The shows that shrunk were obviously the the least legitimate. This one was kind of interesting to Text is the primary visual element. Mhmm.
Jeremy:This one was kind of surprising. And so turned out that high growth shows and this was actually a direct correlation again. The more the higher the growth the show, the more likely it was that text was the primary element. Mhmm. And so 38% of high growth shows had text as the primary element, only 19% of shows overall.
Jeremy:So still less than half of high growth shows, but, you know, it is interesting that clearly it's communicating what the show is.
Justin:Yeah. That makes me sad a little bit, but it's okay.
Jeremy:Yeah. I feel that a little bit as this one, really interesting here, the presence of the host on the cover art. Mhmm. And so the average, 37% of all shows had the host on the cover art. But, actually, it was the shows that outperformed the average growth rate.
Jeremy:So the mid and high growth shows, they were less likely to have the host on the cover art. And it was the the mid growth shows that were least likely, and so those were shows that grew above the the median, but less they didn't quite double. And then the low growth shows were the most likely. They were the only category of shows that were over 50% had the host on the cover.
Justin:How interesting.
Jeremy:A little bit interesting. And the one thing, you know, that I think is worth pointing out here is that there are certain shows that are never probably going to be super high growth. They might not have a huge potential for growth, but they might be very much about that person's personal brand, and that person might own a business or something like that. Shows that are in high trust environment, so like lawyers, doctors, professional services where you might be hiring this person and you kinda wanna know who they are. I think it behooves those people to put their face on the cover art.
Jeremy:But their shows are probably never going to be, you know, huge shows. And so it might still make strategic sense to do that even though the the data might reflect otherwise.
Justin:Yeah.
Jeremy:Last couple here, we got, the cleanliness of the kind of layout. And so like how easily readable is it? I'm looking at clean versus cluttered, and we see here 88% of high growth shows were clean, 66% of low, growth shows were clean. And so again, you see some clear kind of correlations there. The readability, again, high growth shows are the most readable.
Jeremy:The mid and lower growth shows much less readable. And then we've got the clarity. So very similar to the title, can you tell based on the cover art what this show is about? And again, the high growth shows were the most, clear by quite a bit of a margin. And so here we just see like all these kind of best practices.
Jeremy:It's almost like the data just proves it out. Like the more legitimate the cover art is, the clearer it is, the more readable, the the cleaner the layout. Like, all of these things, it feels like, yeah, general design best practices are correlated or associated with higher growth shows and often in a pretty direct manner.
Justin:Mhmm. Yeah. Now that I think about it, I think one potential reason that host photos can sometimes underperform, You know, if you're a recognizable person to the audience, then it's like, oh, yeah. I'm gonna listen to that show. It's got Tim Ferriss on the cover.
Justin:But if people don't recognize you, like, who's that person? I don't know. Like, some sort of unknown person. You're putting to the forefront something that might actually be detracting, which is you're giving people a reason to discount you. Unless you can make it really evocative, one of my best performing pieces of cover art was I had this show called Build and Launch.
Justin:I had this giant beard at the time and this photo of me with a toque on. And I just made it really, really big on the cover art. And it kind of split my face in half so that half my face was off the canvas. And I think that show got a lot of click throughs just because the art was like, woah. Like, this guy looks this guy looks weird.
Justin:This guy looks crazy. This there was something evocative about that image. But what I see people doing is they play it safe. They're using their professional headshots, and it just can feel generic and like, okay. Here's another influencer I've never heard of.
Jeremy:You know, you look at somebody, Conan O'Brien, his face should be the biggest element on the cover art. But if you don't have that recognition, then you probably want some other element that is more important to be there. Yeah. And I think maybe this gets a little bit into, like, some of the jobs of the cover art, like establishing relevance. The other thing I think about a lot is filling in any gaps that were left by the title.
Jeremy:Mhmm. And so, ideally, I think the title and cover art play off of each other because they're often gonna get both of them at the same time. And so if the title is really clear, I think the cover art can be much more evocative. The cover art can fill in, add some color to it, and add some, like, imagery that takes people maybe it communicates more of the tone or the vibe of the show or some of the other differentiators that way. Whereas if the title is more evocative than clear, then you probably wanna ground it in some tangible visuals that get somebody thinking like, okay.
Jeremy:I I have a strong sense of what this show might be about. Any other jobs that you can think about when it comes to the cover art, the jobs to be done, for that element?
Justin:Yeah. I mean, another thing that I think about when it comes to host photo is if you're thinking about your cover art in the context of everything else you're doing for promotion. So for example, if you are releasing tons of video clips with the host, and you're running ads on those, you're posting them to every social network, and maybe you're getting some viral clips with that person's face, then absolutely, as a part of that whole marketing strategy, you should have the host's photo on the cover art because you're building some recognition with all the other promotion you're doing. So thinking about your cover art and your title in the context of your overall marketing strategy is Yeah. Another job.
Justin:This is just one piece of your overall marketing strategy, and it all has to work together. So if you're doing a bus ad, you know, or a billboard or something, you would want to have some common elements so that when people actually get into their podcast player, they're like, oh, yeah. I saw that. I wanted to check that out. You're building up that recognition.
Justin:You're trying to get people to recognize these elements. And just look at how when they're promoting Stranger Things, what are the common elements they have in all of the ads and all of the clips and everything else that lead you to when you're scrolling Netflix go, oh, yeah. I heard about that show. And you can instantly recognize in their case, the typography. Right?
Justin:So that's the common element that they are introducing over and over again in all of their other promotion. And it leads to recognizing that brand, that cover art, that show once you're actually in the directory.
Jeremy:Yeah. You know, Stranger Things is such a good example because their typography got riffed on to death Mhmm. After it blew up is, again, it's like playing off something familiar that grounds people in the general vicinity of what you're trying to do and plant some ideas in their head already. And so every genre is gonna have its conventions for what a kind of two buddies chatting type show. There's gonna be, like, a lot of cover art that looks kind of similar, and it may be useful to plant yourself in that category and use some of the elements in your cover art that so people know, oh, I see two buddies on the cover.
Jeremy:Like, I already have a sense of what this show experience is gonna be like. Mhmm. But then you also wanna have probably at least one kind of distinctive element that is markedly different from other shows that get people to, like, take a second look and be like, oh, this grabs my eye in some way. And so stranger things, they have that typography that is has become, I would even say, kind of iconic. Mhmm.
Jeremy:It has just been, like, used in so many places. And I think their soundtrack as well, the way that they put their theme song together, I've heard that riffed a lot on, like, stock music sites and things like that. Yep. And so there's a few distinctive elements that really build the brand. None of us needs to, like, reinvent everything from scratch.
Jeremy:Like, we're gonna exist within genres, but then we wanna have a couple elements here and there that make people take a second look, and those are the things that's actually gonna stick out in their minds. And so whether that's typography or whether that's some kind of visual element 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 and then kinda riff on it a little bit.
Justin:Mhmm. Exactly.
Jeremy:A couple other things that come to mind when it comes to the job of the cover art. I think the first thing is, like, kind of stopping the scroll. And so that's kind of maybe a little bit what we talked about about already where you're going by it and you're like, oh, that just looks interesting to me visually. And so it gets people to pay attention. And then the second thing, this really comes to the legitimacy side of things, is earning the benefit of the doubt.
Jeremy:And so I think that people are making 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 so if they have 10 or 20 shows on their screen, all they're comparing is cover art to cover art to cover art and title to title to title. And so, basically, if we can earn the benefit of the doubt by having legitimate professional looking cover art that grabs the eye and kind of hints that you put the effort into the external packaging in the show, likely we put 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.
Jeremy:The bag is this interesting material.
Justin:Mhmm.
Jeremy:This interesting design. I know you've talked about more about craft beer and things like that in the past and how there's a similar job there.
Justin:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that is a great test. Is stop the scroll and legitimacy and walk into a beer store and just look at all the labels. You're gonna be scrolling, scanning, and all of a sudden you're gonna go, woah, look at that one.
Justin:By grabbing your attention, it's done its job. Right? It's made you stop for a minute. And we live in a scrolling, scanning culture. People are just constantly swiping and scrolling and scanning.
Justin:And if you can get them to pause even just for a second and zoom in on your thing, then you've got a chance for them to interact with your show and can take it off the shelf, so to speak, and consider it.
Jeremy:The other one, you know, you mentioned looking at albums before and then looking at beer cans. The one for me that I always do is going into bookshops, and I just think book covers are a similar canvas to podcast cover art. And they're similar kind of mediums in a way where you're kind of, like, basing a lot of your decision whether you buy the book or read the book based on those kind of elements. Like, does the book title and the cover pull me in? And then I read the back of it, and I'm like, ah, sounds interesting.
Jeremy:Maybe I read the first page, and I'm in. And you can think, okay. We've got, like, podcast title, cover art, show description, teaser episode, do almost the same things. Yeah. And so I think there's so much inspiration out there.
Jeremy:And just like going through a bookshop and looking at what does this communicate to me based on the title and cover art, what type of book do I think this is gonna be, who is this for, what is the topic, And then you can kind of just like soak in that and over time, hopefully get better at your own kind of design decisions.
Justin:The other reason I like that approach is because your response to what's out there is gonna be very much in the moment. There's all these trends that end up you know, blue covers start selling well in books. And so everybody gets a blue cover. And it's like, well, to break the pattern, you've got to go with something that's completely different. Right?
Justin:Yeah. So how can you break the pattern as you're scrolling through Spotify or Apple Podcasts or Pocket Casts? Which covers are gonna break the pattern for you? They're gonna kind of jolt you and go, woah. That's different.
Justin:Woah. I haven't seen that.
Jeremy:So I'm I'm curious. Some of the things we're talking about here related to being clear plus clever as being the ultimate thing to maybe aim for. And there's other ways to do it as well. But then also being able to, you know, break the pattern and do something that's very different from what the dominant kind of, genre conventions might be. This is maybe, like, the ideal advice that you want to aim for, but it is heavily reliant on having really exceptional taste.
Jeremy:Mhmm. I don't think anybody's born with exceptional taste. It requires you to really consume a lot of content and have clear ideas about what makes things good. And so what are your thoughts for, like let's just assume that most people don't have great taste in creating titles that's none of our job. And we don't have great taste in designing cover art because again, that's not really our job.
Jeremy:Like, how should creators be thinking about these things?
Justin:Oh, I think I think you need to get familiar with great brands. So here's another exercise people can do. Go to Google and just search Skull Skates. Skull Skates is this iconic eighty's skateboard brand. It is very distinctive.
Justin:It has its own look. It's black and white. It has this iconic logo.
Jeremy:If you
Justin:go to their website, it has its own look and feel. And you know, those skateboard graphics, to me, that's kind of what you're aiming for. It's like I've created a brand that is distinctive, that is noticeable, that is iconic, that has its own feel that's different than anything else. And in this case, this particular brand has endured for, I don't know, forty or fifty years. So these are the things I think you need to be thinking about.
Justin:To develop great taste, you need to familiarize yourself with great brands. These things that have endured for a long time. Stranger things. Like even Skull Skates, like, that's just that was just one guy. But he was just so opinionated.
Justin:But like, I'm only doing black and white. I'm only gonna have this kind of raw look. That initial logo, I think, was just scraped out of grip tape on a board. Like, it's just like Mhmm. As one person, you can define your brand, your what you want this to look like, but it has to be consistent.
Justin:It has to be stand for something. It has to be identifiable. And the only way you develop that taste is by, you know, familiarizing yourself with lots of this stuff and by, like, going, oh, I like that. I like Skullscapes. I think that's a great brand.
Justin:Other people might not like the branding, but that's another way to develop your own taste. It's like, really look at the things you like, what resonates with you personally, and then craft your brand around that.
Jeremy:Yeah. And, you know, this is something I think this is one of the most helpful exercises I've ever done is I created a Figma doc. You can do this anywhere. And I just started copying and pasting and screenshotting design ideas and brands that I like, and I just put it in a huge file. And it's it takes so long to load now because there's probably hundreds of images there.
Jeremy:But then at some point, I went through and organized them. And that was actually really helpful to then organize them into themes, and I did them by color and different style. And I realized like, oh, there's all these subthemes that I'm into. Mhmm. And so there's kind of, a lot of, like, Bauhaus kind of style.
Jeremy:I realized like, oh, this is something I'm attracted to. I really love the design of a lot of tarot cards. Mhmm. I think are, like, really cool, which actually then overlap with a lot of skateboard design. Mhmm.
Jeremy:There's this kind of, like, similar elements. And I was like, oh, all these things blend into each other, and it starts to get into, like, oh, I see what my style is and my taste. And so now basically anytime that I go to design something new, I go to my kind of personal inspiration where I just put everything that I know that I like visually. And I'm like, okay, what feels right for this project? What what might be an interesting angle?
Jeremy:And you can start kind of pulling on some of these elements and that makes design so much easier if you're doing it yourself, but also to communicate to a designer if you're working with somebody to be able to have examples on hand to be like, okay. I really like the vibe of this, but I like the typography of this and this other aspect of this. And so, you know, how can we kinda blend some of these two things together to get to something that's gonna be distinctive? And so, yeah, I think recognizing what you like, knowing your own taste, that's a huge first step Mhmm. To to coming up with something that is going to be distinctive and kind of, legitimate.
Justin:Yeah. Like, you should be doing some like, get on Pinterest. I've actually found Tumblr is really great in terms of like curating images in a particular style. And just start saving and collecting things. Create your own mood board for what you like.
Justin:Define your brand kind of with these elements that, oh, maybe I could bring this in, bring this in, and come up with something that's cohesive and unique and actually has a overall feel and theme.
Jeremy: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, called Stand the Fuck Out. Basically, he's talking in the book about how to build a distinctive brand, but, there's a big part dedicated to the visual brand assets. And a lot of it was like the visual design side of things. And so his book is is phenomenal.
Jeremy:All his work is great. His newsletter is good. So definitely check that out. And, the my big takeaway was that the distinctive brand assets do not necessarily need to mean anything. That they can be unique to you, and they can be meaningful to you, but they don't need to speak exactly to your product.
Jeremy:And so this was something that really unlocked things for me where the scrappy podcasting idea kinda came from. There was a lot of inspiration where, like, okay. I do I had the scrappy vibe, but then I was like, want something more. And then I started thinking about there's had this, like, kind of tape element and these paper cutout type things. But this tape element always reminded me of when I used to work in studios, you put the masking tape down on the board and you'd write down what tracks.
Jeremy:You know, the drums are on these two faders and the guitar and whatever. I was like, oh, there's a kinda cool thing there. And then I started bringing in these more just like background influences that have nothing to do with talking about podcasting, but like have something to do with me that made me excited about it. And they're really distinctive and nobody else is gonna come up with that because it it's not tied to the product. And I think that this is something where one of the things Louis talks about is if you're in a category and you're trying to pull out visual inspiration from this one thing.
Jeremy:And so for me, that would be, okay, I'm in the podcasting category. What kind of visual things am I gonna think of? And we're gonna have microphones, headphones, waveforms, all these like generic cliche visual elements that everybody else is gonna have. And so it's almost impossible to create something unique if you're just ripping on these basic things. And so you need to pull stuff in from outside that's kind of tangential almost to kind of spice that up.
Justin:Yeah. Yeah. I love that. I think that when we talk about branding, maybe that is the most important piece. It's like, first, develop some taste.
Justin:And I think this is a good way, like, you know, this takes time. And even people with good taste can come up with bad concepts. This is something you gotta test with people. And if you have teenagers in the house, there's no better critic to come up with stuff. And if people can go, oh, woah, that's kinda dope.
Justin:Like, that resonates with me. That's a good test. But if people are like, you want my honest opinion? Like, it's kind of boring or generic or not very well done. I I also think if you can afford it, you should hire some professional help.
Justin:Yes. It could cost you a hundred bucks for a consultation. Yep. And a hundred bucks to get like just someone that can just help walk you through some things and give you some initial like feedback and direction, I think is invaluable. And there are professional podcast branding artists Yep.
Justin:Out there that do cover art. To find one of those people and enlist their expertise might not be a bad idea either. And might not be that expensive. Maybe you could do it for a thousand bucks or something like that.
Jeremy:That's Definitely.
Justin:Not that much money to spend for something that might become a cornerstone of your business.
Jeremy:Yeah. And I would say not only will it may become a cornerstone of your business, it will influence people's perception of the show one way or the other. Yeah. There is no way that the cover art different cover art will not change the way people think about it. And so that's gonna be happening regardless of how you approach it.
Jeremy:And so it is something that I think is is highly worth investing. Mhmm. Okay. So maybe to, bring some of these, concepts, to life. So we've talked a lot about, like, what makes for great titles and great cover art.
Jeremy:I thought it'd be fun to maybe run through some of our favorite titles and cover art and give a a quick note on, like, what we like about it. So what did you come 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:Mhmm. Science versus Yep. How I Built This, Notes on Work, Brains were some of the ones I thought of right away. Okay. So and a lot of these are, like, very descriptive.
Justin:It's memorable. What's the show called? It's called How I Write. Science Versus, I actually really love. It's two words.
Justin:We know it's about science, but then we also know this versus thing is like, oh, there's some tension in there. Wanna you know, it
Jeremy:Leaves you wondering where it's gonna go.
Justin:Yeah. It really sets up kind of what the show's about, how I built this. Just that's very descriptive. And you can kind of do that one once. You know, that's an iconic show.
Justin:And then everyone else is gonna copy it. Notes on Work is my friend Caleb's show. And I just think that's such a brilliant title for a show. And it the concept is so smart. Brains, I love because it's just like a one word.
Justin:It just feels kind of ballsy. Like, I'm gonna just go with one word, brains. And it's not very descriptive, but it makes you kind of wonder what what it's gonna be about.
Jeremy:It is certainly memorable, and they pair it with equally distinctive cover art Yeah. 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 to be human?
Jeremy:It doesn't quite spell it out that clearly, so there is this bit of a leap. I think our friend Jay, Creator Science, actually, you know, from since his rebrand, it used to be Creative Elements, which I think gets at a little bit of what he was trying to go for. But the science piece is interesting. It takes you in a much more rigorous direction, which I think matches the show.
Justin:Yeah. Go and look at Jay's branding. Creator Science is a great title, and then all the branding he has works with that title.
Jeremy:Yes.
Justin:He's a great case study for good branding, good cohesive branding.
Jeremy:Yeah. And I think, I know who's the designer you worked with, her name is Holly Arnett. I think she's based in New Zealand, and she does great work and has worked with a bunch of podcasters and larger on brands as well. So she's definitely somebody to look for. Couple other had here Money for Couples.
Jeremy:Ramit Sethi rebranded his show. Used to be I Will Teach You to Be Rich, which was, his brand name, but a terrible podcast name because it wasn't really what it was about. Money for Couples is, like, very you know exactly what that show's about. And the reason I think it works is because there's no other show targeting there's lots of finance shows. His is the only one targeting couples, and so he was kind of first to claim that.
Jeremy:And so that's a great name. Mhmm. There's a little bit of a leap here, but it's called Extremely American.
Justin:Okay.
Jeremy: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 when you do, it's like, oh, that's a a good name.
Justin:Yeah.
Jeremy:Couple other ones here. We got what could go right, which kind of gets you wondering it's a flip on the what could go wrong. So, again, taking a familiar phrase, flipping it. We've got Good One, a podcast about jokes, which that one's it's almost too clever. Like, Good One could mean so many things.
Jeremy:You really need the tagline, a podcast about jokes. Mhmm. LaVar Burton reads. The draw is LaVar Burton from reading rainbow, and so you loved listening to him read it as a kid on PBS. And so here, you're gonna hear him read to adult stories, basically, not like adult in the, saucy spicy way, but in the, you know Yeah.
Jeremy:Short stories for adults.
Justin:And in in that in that vein, like, Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend is a great title. If you've built up a name for yourself, absolutely use it in the title. It it might not even be your personal name. It might be your brand name. Magic the Gathering has a podcast, and they use Magic the Gathering in the title.
Justin:And that's you wanna do that. You know? The official Dungeons and Dragons podcast is the thing. You can use your brand name. If you've already built a brand, use it.
Jeremy:Yeah. And then the last couple I had were, You're Wrong About is a great one because that immediately gets you wondering, what am I wrong about? And so you start imagining what that might mean.
Justin:Yeah.
Jeremy:If Books Could Kill, another show actually by the original cohost of You're Wrong About, Michael Hobbs. And then the last one I had here was Ologies, which is kind of clever. I think it's just perfect. It is so distinctive. Mhmm.
Jeremy:Like, you can't even riff on that that in any way. It just owns that idea, which is what I think makes it such a great Mhmm. So what about on the cover art side of things? What are some of the top cover arts for you?
Justin:You know what I did is I actually just went through my own podcasts and then some of the charts just to see what jumped out at me. This first I don't listen to this show, but this first one, insert credit, when you look at it up against other pieces of cover art in the charts, it just jumps out at you. Not very many people have a style like this. And I just found it kind of like joyfully different. You know?
Justin:Yep. Pod Save America, I think this is just a great they do a great job of adding all these kind of iconography in there. You've got this hourglass with sand going down. But in the bottom, there's an American flag that's kind of getting buried. And it just works together.
Justin:It's got this blue in the background, yellow lettering on top. It's just bold, and it instantly evokes what the show's about.
Jeremy:Yep.
Justin:And then this third one is a show called Onto Something that I've been listening to. I know these I put this one in here because this is actually generated using AI, which I don't normally recommend. But I think they've done a really great job of, in this case, making it look like an illustration. And overall, I just think that illustrated cover art is a opportunity. There's not very many people doing it.
Justin:It looks different. This kind of looks like a children's book cover or something. I just kind of loved it. It was charming to me. And, they're friends of mine, but I started listening to the show because I was all like, oh, look.
Justin:This cover art is just so, like, cute and interesting. I'm gonna check it out.
Jeremy:The title as well, Onto Something. Again, it's like boring a phrase. It makes me kind of curious to know what's the riff on it there. Yeah. It's not super clear, but it would get me to take a second look when paired with that cover art.
Justin:Yeah. So what about you? What are some of your cover
Jeremy: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's called On Brand. And my sense is it's something related to, you know, branding, but it's kind of a light kind of humorous approach on it.
Jeremy:And so they basically got at the top of the cover art, they've got all of these kind of logos and brand assets. So we got the McDonald's fries box, Diet Coke can, VW logo, r two d two, the NES controller, Campbell's tomato soup, Starbucks, Mickey Mouse, and, the Lacoste crocodile or alligator. They got all these kind of distinctive well known brand assets, and then the name on brand is kind of the main visual element in the center. All of the letters are pulled from, like, recognizable brands. So the o is the Target logo.
Jeremy:The b is the Barbie. Mhmm. B. The r in brand is Rolls Royce. A is Amazon.
Jeremy:N is Netflix. D is Disney. And then we've got the two cohosts. They're, like, half of their faces kind of, like, looking up at the bottom so you know what kind of show it's gonna be. So I think this communicates so much in this cover art that is is really interesting.
Jeremy:So the second one, also about kind of marketing and branding. Actually, Mickey Mouse makes his second appearance strangely in my three, selections of cover art is a show called This is Propaganda. Yeah. And so this show is really about the history of PR and how it is largely based in propaganda going back a hundred years or more. And so, basically, what you get here, you've got this Mickey Mouse with, like, the swirly eyes of, like, being hypnotized.
Jeremy:And then this is propaganda in a kind of punky kind of style. It's not quite the cutout letters, but it's, like, stenciled or stamped. And so you get this is gonna be this kind of antagonistic look at pop culture or brands or, you know, Disney maybe. But it gets you to pay attention. And it's a really distinctive kind of green light teal, almost green kind of background
Justin:color I think what's this is my favorite of your group. And Mhmm. This reminds me of Seth Godin's people like us do things like this. People like us are attracted to things like this. The thing about good branding is that you are planting a flag in terms of the kinds of people you're going to attract or detract.
Justin:Some people might 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 with this logo on it. I love this.
Justin:And this is what's hard is, you know, if you go one way or the other, you're going to maybe turn some people off, but you might really turn some people on.
Jeremy: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've recently gotten back into. There's a couple interesting things about this cover art is that it's basically so in the bottom, we've got a kind of general, you know, purple y background. There's some light texture to it, but then the bottom right corner is like a page flipping up from a book so you can see on the inside. But what is fascinating about this is when I look at it in my grid on my, phone, your eye is drawn to it because it's so different.
Jeremy:It feels three d, which is how it's it's been treated. Yeah. And so that cover always jumps out at me, this contrast with the page peeling up. And then the other thing that I really like about this is that it's got this whimsy to it. Yeah.
Jeremy:And so we've got these kind of, like, stars sparkly kinda happening here. It's this children's book or fable y type of font.
Justin:It actually really reminds me of the DreamWorks logo.
Jeremy:Yeah.
Justin:Because there's that person sitting on the w there. Very similar.
Jeremy:Seraph of the w. And
Justin:that's actually not a bad idea to copy elements. Like, I instantly got like a DreamWorks Disney vibe from it. If you can kinda sometimes get a feel that's similar that people recognize, that can attract folks as well. So, yeah, I agree. I think this is good cover art.
Jeremy: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's getting really deep into the craft of different writers' habits and approaches to writing. Mhmm. But David, the host, has a level of earnestness about writing that I think this cover up really captures. And so, like, he is just so keen and eager to really delve into the practices of these writers and in a way that's great for the listener.
Jeremy:And so I think that this sends a a strong kind of, signal here.
Justin:Yeah. Love it.
Jeremy:Alright. What about, maybe rounding this out together? One final category here. Are there any shows that you feel like really nail the pairing of title and cover?
Justin:Okay. So the first one I have here, I've never listened to this show, but I chose it because it just stood out to me. Fat Mascara. It's got this big pink m. Yeah.
Justin:And it just really stood out amongst all of the competitors. My guess is this show is about makeup or something. It feels like an old fashioned brand or something like that. The iconography is just really good. I just thought this did a great job.
Justin:And in this case, there's no complicated illustration or anything. Just got the name fat mascara. And then they've got this big M, stylized M in the middle. And it's very effective. Bad with Money.
Justin:I picked this one because this is a cover and a title that actually I started listening to just by looking at it in back when iTunes was iTunes and you could just look at new shows. So this jumped out at me in a new and noteworthy section years ago. It's an illustration. I love illustrations like custom illustrations. It's Gabby, the host with a a broken piggy bank.
Justin:And this could be a Nickelodeon TV show cover, and I think they've done a good job there.
Jeremy: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 a video gamey design. Like, you very much get a sense that this is for probably people in their early twenties Mhmm. Who don't feel great about money.
Jeremy:Maybe there's a bit of a, like, nerd element kind of that's going on here. Like, it communicates so much with this cover.
Justin:Yeah. The people like us thing. That's really evident here. The other thing I'll just mention is you used to mention video games. This for me, this cover evokes Robert Munch children's books.
Justin:Nostalgia for a certain style is also an effective instrument when you're creating cover art. If you're targeting a specific generation, like baby boomers, like maybe a hippie kind of sixties vibe on your cover art
Jeremy:Yeah.
Justin:Might do a good job of bringing people in. Yep. The Missing Crypto Queen, this is another one that I started listening to just by browsing Apple Podcasts.
Jeremy:Yep.
Justin: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 it looks like a circuit board coming in. And it looks like a poster that you might put up on a telephone pole. Yeah.
Justin:Yeah. Just very good. Very recognizable. I've also recommended this show a lot. And what's interesting is, like, at parties, people hear that I'm in podcasting.
Justin:They'll be like, oh, like, recommend a show? And the only one I can think of is The Missing Crypto Queen. So just that recall is so embedded in me. I think they've done a good job.
Jeremy:Alright. So I had, two that I thought were were really great pairings of title and cover 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. And so we have this pink background with some of these kind of illustrated elements, swirlies, and kind of sketches.
Jeremy:And then we've got this kind of like ransom note cutout style. I hate it here. And so to me, the title, knowing that it's a HR podcast, is just like so kind of subversive, but it's also got this pink background. I think it communicates so much this this kind of, like, visual styling and the title. So that's one that I love.
Jeremy:And then this other show, it's a Wondery show called Legacy. Everybody should just go look up the feed for Legacy, and they have done the best job I have ever seen of taking a visual style and applying it to custom episode art. And so basically, their show artwork they actually changed the overall show artwork with every new episode that they release. And so on this one that I'm looking at, which is the most recent episode right now, it's a picture of Genghis Khan, I believe, which with his kind of eyes and face blacked out by this kind of, like, splatter of it looks like blood in this case, which would make sense for Genghis Khan, and then the name legacy is over that kind of colored, element. But basically, every episode follows, like, a illustration of that famous person, and you can always tell even though their eyes and face are blurred out.
Jeremy:See, there's like Winston Churchill, and I think there's like Cleopatra, and there's Charles Dickens, and there's a bunch of other just like famous people. And I think it's like acquired the one word legacy paired with this artwork is so bold that it does a really good job of pulling you in.
Justin:This is brilliant. I'm super impressed with this branding work here. People should definitely check this out. This and I think it also shows you, like, there's nothing super complicated about it. It's just well executed.
Jeremy:Yep. Looking through some of these other ones, we got Marie Antoinette, Charles Dickens, Winston Churchill, John F. Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, and like all of these. Yeah. It is just looks like they do series, for each one.
Jeremy:So you'll see a few of them in the feed. But, yeah, this is masterful. Any kind of like final thoughts or requests as we wrap this one up regarding, titles and cover art?
Justin:Yeah. I'm really curious, listener, if you're out there. What cover art did you see with no other context that convinced you to go try a podcast? I want to know about those shows. Because I think that is that's the ultimate test.
Justin:If someone just saw your cover art with no other context and that convinced them to try out the show. Wow, you've done a really good job with your cover art and title. So if you have examples of that, send those in.
Jeremy:You can find our contact info in the show notes. And, other than that, you can find the full podcast marketing trends report at podcastmarketingtrends.com, and we'll see you next
Justin:time. Later.
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