Harry is the founder of Lower Street — this interview has been lightly edited for style and readability
This interview is from the Podnews Weekly Review
Harry Morton: Lower Street is a branded podcast agency. We are a fully remote team, so we are spread between the UK and North America, scattered around Europe and beyond a little bit as well. And we serve clients largely in North America. All that we do is podcasts with brands. That’s entirely our focus.
James Cridland: “Podcasts with brands”, which sounds very similar to the way that Pacific Content talked about their business. We heard earlier this week that you’d bought the Pacific content brand. Lower Street has a great brand. Why Pacific Content?
HM: It’s a huge milestone and a really exciting opportunity for us. We were a huge admirer of Steve Pratt and his co-founders at Pacific Content, and the work that they did. We began Lower Street in the beginning of 2017, and Pacific Content had been around for a couple of years before that: and it’s been a mission of ours to build up to the sort of calibre of work that they’re doing. I’m really proud to say that over the last couple of years I think we’ve we’ve achieved that.
When the news broke that Pacific Content was closing, I was genuinely sad to hear that. And so we began discussions and it developed from there.
JC: What was it about the brand that attracted you?
HM: Their work is exceptional. They do incredible creative work. As a company, they’ve talked for a long time about this idea of creative bravery and really pushing brands to do interesting, inspiring work in podcasts. And that’s something that we massively believe in and agree with. It was a combination of all of those things, just a huge respect and admiration for the work that they do, but also what they stood for and what they were trying to do in the space. In purchasing the brand, we want to continue that mission onwards.
JC: You’ve bought the brand. So you’re not buying employees or clients or anything else?
HM: We have a number of the Pacific Content team gladly joining us, so we’re really excited to welcome them. In fact, it’s a funny time for them to join. We’ve got a company retreat in France next in a couple of weeks time. So they’ve got a bit of a trial by fire!
JC: So how did the sale come about? Was it something that you were offered by Rogers, who’ve been looking after that company for a while, or did you suggest the idea to them?
HM: It was a rather organic conversation. I have a really great relationship, I’m very glad to say with with Matt Mise in the former leadership team at Pacific Content. And so we’ve been in touch on a regular basis anyway. And so as things unfolded, we just kept the doors open and the conversation alive and then it organically developed from there.
JC: How is the branded podcast market? You wouldn’t have bought this brand if you didn’t believe in it. But is it going well?
HM: It is going well. I mean, there’s no getting around the fact that the last 18 months has been less, sexy shall we say. But we have, regardless, seen steady growth over the last few years. We’ve not stopped growing. We’ve seen early adopters and some really ambitious creative projects. But it’s still very, very early in the adoption curve.
And we are continuing to see a really strong appetite from a number of brands that are seeing their competitors and their colleagues in the space begin experimenting with podcasting. I have a really strong belief that the next few years is going to be a really good one for the podcasting industry and for branded podcasting specifically. There’s a lot of growth to unlock as more and more brands realise that the relationship they can build with audiences in podcasting is a hugely powerful complement to the other kind of content marketing efforts that they’ll be making in other areas.
JC: Harry, thank you so much for your time.
HM: Thank you, James. Real pleasure to chat to you.