Mission-Driven Development with Wonder Media Network’s Emily Rudder

Jeff Umbro: This is Podcast Perspectives, a show about the podcast industry and the people behind it. I'm your host, Jeff Umbro, founder and CEO of The Podglomerate. Today on the show, I'm speaking with Emily Rudder, Head of Development at Wonder Media Network. 

Wonder is a podcast agency founded in 2018 that works on original and branded productions for small and large clients. They're unique because they're a mission driven organization using stories to introduce empathy into politics, business, and culture. Emily has been at Wonder since 2019, working in marketing, production, and now development. 

Today, we dive deep into the development process at Wonder Media Network, both original and branded shows, and Emily walks me through their content and monetization strategy, and how they fit all of that into the company's mission. So let's get to the interview.

Thanks Emily, so much for joining us. How are you?

Emily Rudder: Good. How are you? It's great to see you again.

Jeff Umbro: You are the Head of Development at Wonder Media Network. Can you give us a quick overview of what Wonder is.

Emily Rudder: So we are a podcast studio based in New York City, dedicated to amplifying underrepresented voices. And we fulfill that mission through producing a variety of shows, everything across history and politics to more interview style chat shows.

As the Head of Development, I primarily work on our original side of the business, but I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that we also have a thriving brand studio where we work with everyone from Fortune 500 companies to nonprofits, individuals, distributors, media publishers, to just simply produce content for them as well.

Jeff Umbro: Why does a brand or an individual or whomever pitch you all as opposed to pitching like a SiriusXM or something?

Emily Rudder: I mean, it's a great question. They could go elsewhere if they wanted, if the show feels ready to go. But typically they'd come to us if they want us to be the production partner as well, especially when shows are in an earlier stage of development.

Maybe there's like a kernel of an idea or someone knows they want to tell a story. Maybe they've never done it in audio before. And maybe they are also just like, aren't getting through to the distributors they want to publish with. And so we are just like a slightly larger studio than if you're working on your own.

And we have those relationships with the distributors and we can kind of beef up the pitch, work together, sign on to be the production partner, and then look to find a home for the show together.

Jeff Umbro: We're going to talk a lot more about this later on in the interview, but just briefly, if you can give me a sense of like, what is Wonder’s mission? And like, how does that fold into the productions that you all choose to pursue?

Emily Rudder: So our full stated mission is to amplify underrepresented voices, inspire action, and introduce empathy into business, politics, and culture. So when we started out, business, politics, and culture really are three verticals, but I would say we've kind of expanded beyond and around those three verticals.

And so our mission is pretty broad, right? Like, amplify underrepresented voices, you can kind of do that through any type of content. And I think it's kind of intentionally broad and nice because it is a way into a story, but it doesn't feel like constricting in any way. So whenever we're reviewing pitches, we're always looking through that lens. And then as we've been producing shows for five years, you do get a sense of what feels like a Wonder Media Network original and what might not.

So there have absolutely been times where we're pitched a really great show and we're like, this show is great. And it doesn't really feel like it fits with our brand, our mission, and the slate that we've built out. It's partly that mission of amplifying underrepresented voices, but then it's also kind of fitting into our existing slate and the slate we have upcoming.

Jeff Umbro: And what inspired the company to adopt that mission?

Emily Rudder: So the company was founded in 2018 by Jenny Kaplan. And at the time, if you remember, 2018 was this record number of women were running for office and Jenny's mom was one of these women. At the time, Jenny was a reporter at Bloomberg. And so she was close to all of the coverage about her mom and all these other stories that were coming out. 

And she felt like a lot of the coverage was focused on the number of it, being this record year for women, but just focusing on the numbers of it all, and not really on the stories of who these individuals were. And even though 2018, it still was early in the podcast days, at least what we know as, as the podcast industry today, she felt like the audio medium was a really good place to tell these stories in a more meaningful and in depth way and go beyond just the statistic that was kind of being repeated over and over again in coverage.

So she started looking into it, of starting her own business, partnered with Shira Atkins, who's the other co-founder. And they found there's room not only for a show about this moment, but for many shows that fit under this wider umbrella of amplifying underrepresented voices. So, they launched the company with our first show, which was called Women Belong in the House, with a capital H. And we've since expanded beyond that.

Jeff Umbro: So you are the Head of Development at Wonder Media Network. What does that mean?

Emily Rudder: It's a great question. And one that people ask me all the time. So as the Head of Development, my role is really to think about shows in their earlier stages of development. One might say of like what something's going to become.

So I work with producers internally. I meet with producers externally, meet with talent to think through like, what could this show be? Often we start with just an idea. Sometimes people come to us with something more fully fleshed out and then usually I'll partner with the producer or talent or whoever we're working with to really build out this idea.

What are the voices going to be? What's the format? Is this a weekly show? Is this a limited series? What's the tone? Is this dark? Is this sultry or is this light and fun and comedic? And then once we kind of have a good sense of what the show is going to sound like, typically we will build out pitch materials.

And then it's kind of my responsibility to find a distributor. So I don't sit on the sales and sponsorships team. There are other folks on my team who do that, who absolutely will take pitch materials and look to find sponsors on board. But I'm speaking more to the distributors and looking to find financing that way.

Jeff Umbro: You touched on this a little, but are you all developing like tens of pitches that you then kind of sift out and put them at different points in the company for like, looking for sponsors or distributors or brand partners, or do you come on board after somebody has come to you with an idea helping to flesh that out? Is this different for like originals versus branded versus partner shows?

Emily Rudder: In terms of originals versus branded, I'm more focused on the original side of the business, but absolutely sometimes work on our branded projects. But really the answer is that it's all of the above, like sometimes a show comes to us, there's a full pilot episode, and really our production team just needs to come on and kind of execute episodes two through ten or continue on with the weekly series.

And sometimes it might be a conversation that I'm just having here at WMN with another producer and they say, hey, I've been kicking around this idea. And I'm like, awesome, let's chat about it. Let's build this out more. What could this sound like? Who's the host? Are you the host? Should we attach an external host? 

It's honestly a really fun role because no single day is the same and you get the magic of being able to create something from the ground up and being able to like help something get over the finish line.

Jeff Umbro: That is one of my favorite parts at the Podglomerate is kind of sitting down spitballing ideas and just seeing what's feasible in a perfect world and then like trying to fit that into a budget. That's the part that's not as much fun.

Emily Rudder: Well, yeah, I think that's one of the things I actually really like about my role is it very much does sit in this in between of editorial and business, right? So I get to to sit on the dreamy side of things and be like, okay, if this could be any show, what should this sound like? And then I can also put on my reality hat and say, okay, well no one's gonna buy this, or this is gonna be way too expensive, or it's gonna be really hard to build an audience. 

So I'm always thinking about all three of those things. Is this a good show? Would I listen to it? Would the intended audience listen to it? Is this sellable? Can we make money on this product? And can we build an audience? And if the answer is a resounding yes to all three questions, then it's a go. 

I think in the earlier days of audio, you didn't necessarily need to answer yes to the second two. Like everyone was taking more risks like, oh, this sounds good. Let's just do it. And sometimes that, I think that led to some of the biggest successes we heard. And now just that funding is a little more constricted, it kind of needs to be a resounding yes in every category.

Jeff Umbro: And that's actually a great transition to my next question. How has the development process from Wonder Media changed since, you know, your origins about five years ago. What are you doing today that you were doing differently five years ago?

Emily Rudder: Launching fewer shows and looking to find financing before we're really diving into production.

Typically when you're a newer company, you need to be putting out audio to prove that you are an audio company, and often you need to build an audience before you can find sponsors and find financing for the content you're producing. So in the earlier days, I think we were definitely producing more content before we had any sponsors on board.

And today we're just much choosier. We're launching fewer feeds, especially as it becomes harder and harder to build an audience. We're thinking about like, if we're doing limited series, they kind of all need to sit on a couple of feeds and we can't just be launching new feeds and looking to build new audiences over and over again.

So I think it's in some ways working smarter and building on what we've learned.

Jeff Umbro: And I think you work next to Shira, who is your CRO and co-founder. And I think she is, and I say this in the best way, a realist in the industry, and is not afraid to say what she thinks. And I love that about her. And like, honestly, I'm very jealous that you get to sit next to her and watch that happen. 

And that is a really valuable asset when it comes to all of the things that you're talking about right now, you do need to look at everything through the lens of reality.

Emily Rudder: You know, my friends, I think would also… I like to call myself a realist. Is it pessimism or is it realism? You know, we could debate the question, but it's refreshing. And also like when you're a startup and you're moving really quickly, we don't really have time to just be in dreamland. Like we do need to have a dose of reality and what is actually possible, what is feasible within the budget we have, especially when we're not like a VC backed company, [where we can sit] pretty and can kind of do whatever. We are trying to make money on the content we produce.

Jeff Umbro: When it comes to your original productions, how many of those pitches are inbound to you all versus things that you've developed internally?

Emily Rudder: It's a mix. I don't have the exact percentage off the top of my head. It feels like a balanced 50-50 at this point. And especially with the pitches that I'm balancing right now and looking to find financing for, it definitely feels like a lot. And a nice robust balance of both things we've generated internally with our amazing production team, as well as external pitches that have come, come through our doors.

Jeff Umbro: And then what kind of pitches do you typically see inbound? Do you have examples of what people are sending your way? Do you see a lot of patterns in that?

Emily Rudder: Yeah, well, I think because we are a women-led and women-founded company, and that's pretty clear from our branding on our website, most of the content that is inbound is hosted by a woman or created by a woman for the most part.

Of course, that's not entirely true across the board, but normally I think people are kind of like self filtering before something comes our way, and I think that's also true of when agents are pitching us shows. They have a sense of what might fit with our brand. So normally there's that initial filter that someone else is doing on their own time.

And then it's a mix of things, especially in terms of format. So sometimes it's weekly pitches of a weekly interview style show that's gonna be a beast to produce, in that it's every single week. And then sometimes it's limited series, which I think just tend to be my personal favorite, which are much more expensive to produce, difficult to sell, but I love them and I'm going to keep trying to work on those.

Jeff Umbro: That is the big tension point in podcasting right now, is that the shows that people like to listen to are not the podcasts that make money. 

And then when it comes to the branded stuff that you all are working on, how much of that is inbound versus outbound?

Emily Rudder: A mix. I mean, I think we have a great team who's constantly seeking out new partners to work with, attending conferences and just building relationships. And then also I think increasingly as we've built a name for ourselves and built a name for our branded studios, we're also getting a good amount of inbound pitches too.

Jeff Umbro: I personally think that the best businesses are built on word of mouth. And I feel that the better you do there, the more inbound you're going to get.

Emily Rudder: Well, that's also how you build a podcast audience too, right? Like people still say that one of the best ways to find a podcast is because your friend told you to listen to a podcast, right? And that's part of why it's so challenging to build an audience, because I work in this industry, I read all the newsletters. I listen to the ads, etc. And yet I'm way more likely to actually put something in my queue if like a close friend of mine says, hey, I listened to this thing, you should listen to it. You would love it, right? It's just a much more personal recommendation. And then you can talk about it with your friend afterwards.

So yeah, I think audio is one of the ideal mediums by which we build and grow just through word of mouth.

Jeff Umbro: Yeah. It's very funny, I left book publishing actually, because I was finding that I hated reading because I was reading all this stuff for work that I couldn't get away from. And [now I do] podcasting professionally, and I've been waiting for the moment that I feel that way about audio, and it has not come.

Knock on wood.

Emily Rudder: I will say I do think that – it's not that I don't like listening to audio anymore, but in addition to doing development, I also sit as an editor on some of our projects, and so I will say I'm not like the most fun podcast listener anymore. I can't turn my brain off, thinking like, oh, they should have cut that there, why did they open with that? You know? Like a million miles an hour. 

I was listening to a podcast with some friends in a car recently, and they were like, you're not fun to listen to audio with. I'm like, you're right. I will try to turn this off and just listen for fun. But I think when you work in a medium, it becomes really hard to enjoy it the same way you used to.

Jeff Umbro: I listened to a trailer for a podcast, which I will not name right now, that I have been excited for for months, when I heard that it was coming. And the trailer had a post-roll with four cross promos in it. And I'm just like, okay, I can't do this. I'm not going to listen to this show anymore because of that, because I know what to expect now.

Emily Rudder: Four is a lot. Yeah.

Jeff Umbro: Four is four too many for a podcast trailer. 

In terms of macro strategy, where is Wonder Media's development headed in this coming year?

Emily Rudder: I mean, we're trying to sell more shows, what can I say? You know, we're trying to sell more originals. We're lucky to work with so many amazing partners who have commissioned a lot of originals. A lot of those will be coming out this year and even next year at this point, like a lot of the stuff we sold last year. 

In addition to just focusing on audio, I'm also actively thinking about and working on our pipeline from audio to TV and film. And that obviously can be much slower. So that's also a goal too. So hopefully, a year or two years from now, you'll be watching some amazing docuseries or scripted series that was based off of one of our original podcasts.

Jeff Umbro: How are you guys thinking about your monetization strategy in 2024? For you guys, you have your branded and consulting services, obviously. Beyond that, are you looking at subscriptions at all?

Emily Rudder: Subscriptions have not worked for us. I think subscriptions work for the players that already have a really large audience.

And if you don't have an audience of that certain size, It's just a ton of work because you have to be producing something that is premium and extra for your subscribers. So we've tried it, but you know, you're running that calculus of like, okay, we're asking our production team to produce this extra episode every week, and we only have X number of subscribers, it's only bringing in this amount of money. It hasn't worked for us yet. 

We don't do as many weekly talent driven shows as some other networks. So I think subscriptions can work better there if the creator or talent already has such an engaged audience, that maybe they're already paying for the newsletter or they're already paying for all these other things that they're doing. And so then the audio can just kind of fold into that existing strategy. 

But if you don't have that, I think it's harder, especially because people got used to having audio for free and it's like, you want to pay for this. I don't think so. 

In terms of our larger monetization strategy, it very much does have to do with both sides of the business.  So continuing to build out our brand studio. And then the original side of things, selling them to distributors, selling them to sponsors. We even often get foundation or nonprofit support for some of our work. So it's building up both sides of the business at the same time.

Jeff Umbro: How are you guys operating in the advertising space today? I know historically you have shied away from programmatic. Is that still the case?

Emily Rudder: Yes and no. We distribute our daily show Womanica with iHeart. And so many of those ads run dynamically. And at the same time, we still sell full month long takeovers, full month long sponsorships. So it's a mix of things.

But I mean, traditionally we find that the CPM model doesn't work. It just doesn't bring in enough money. So if you're able to find a sponsor, especially [one] who's mission-aligned to the content, who's able to underwrite this season, we find that that is much better. 

And then I'll also say when we are selling some of our shows to distributors now, they're going to run programmatic advertising.

Jeff Umbro: That is the dream is to find an aligned brand to sponsor everything and ignore the CPMs. But [it’s] so much harder in practice than in theory. You guys historically have actually been very good at that. What do you attribute that to?

Emily Rudder: Hard work, Shira Atkins, tenacity, being able to properly represent ourselves and just convince brands why this is value add.

And I think it's a dose of that realism too, saying, actually we can tell the story of your brand very well in audio, and we can do it in a way that doesn't feel like just another one of those millions of ads that we're all used to hearing. But we'll make something more premium that your brand is going to like so much, maybe you're going to want to post it on your social media. So I think it's like storytelling for brands.

Jeff Umbro: As we briefly discussed at the top of the episode, you guys are a mission-driven company. You've done a lot in the space over the years, put out dozens of productions that support that mission. Since 2018, how have you adapted that mission?

Emily Rudder: Well, when we first started the company, and when Jenny and Shira first started the company, we were explicitly nonpartisan. And we kept saying that we were nonpartisan. And I think it remains true that the values of this company feel very nonpartisan. It shouldn't be partisan to want to amplify underrepresented voices or introduce empathy into politics, you know? And as we kind of went on and started producing more and more content and went through multiple election years, it started to come to fruition that we really weren't exactly non-partisan, we couldn't say we were nonpartisan, it just didn't make sense. 

So we no longer state so clearly, we are nonpartisan because just in the current political climate we're in. That's not how we're read, or perceived, or really how we are. 

But then I think also we started out doing mostly political content and we've definitely expanded beyond that genre.

Jeff Umbro: How has that changed the kinds of shows that you all are putting your time into? Both in terms of what you're pitching, or working with brands. What happens if you guys get this killer RFP or something, but it's not aligned with your mission? Like, how do you deal with that?

Emily Rudder: Honestly, I don't think it happens that much. I mean, occasionally we of course do receive shows that feel like it doesn't fit with our mission, but again, our mission is quite broad and we can do that, through many different subjects, and different talent, and styles of shows and formats.

So occasionally there's a moment where we need to pass on something because it just squarely doesn't fit with what we do. Honestly, those conversations are few and far between.

Jeff Umbro: When it comes to maintaining quality in the work that you do in the development of the show, how do you think about that? Especially with somebody who may be coming to you with a little bit less experience or ambitions, that maybe don't align with reality?

Emily Rudder: I mean, again, I think it comes down to our really amazing production team. I think both as individuals and as a team, we hold ourselves to really high standards. Like I'm very type A when it comes to work and very detail-oriented. And I think a lot of my colleagues are the same. And so it's really just holding ourselves to a high standard with everything we do, whether it's a small prep doc for an interview style show, or a deep narrative style episode on some really difficult or complex topic that we're trying to make interesting. 

And for people who are newer to audio, we'll absolutely hold your hand and then we'll throw you in the deep end when you're ready.

Jeff Umbro: How do you break through in a crowded marketplace today in podcasting?

Emily Rudder: I think that's the million dollar question. I think we're all trying to figure that out. It is producing good content, but that's only a small piece of the puzzle, right? I think there's probably hundreds, thousands, maybe of amazing things that just sit there and don't get consumed, whether it's audio or other mediums too.

So I think it really has to come from a really comprehensive strategy, including marketing as well, which maybe is boring to talk about, but marketing is unfortunately so important. We spend all this time producing such beautiful, high quality work, and then we want people to listen to it. And so you need to have a really fully fleshed out marketing strategy, and [in] today's day and age, marketing spend too, to be able to make sure that your show is successful.

So maybe that's not the most satisfying answer, but I don't think there's a silver bullet. I think it's just having the full package.

Jeff Umbro: There are a lot of things you  can do that are just table stakes in 2024 to get the show out to the world. And then everything beyond that is just a matter of really focusing on your target audience and how you can reach that particular audience.

But you said it, first thing you said was, you need to just have a high quality production and you have to do everything else in addition to that. But none of it matters if you don't have something good that people want. 

In any case, Emily, thank you so much for joining us today. This was awesome. Really appreciate it. And we'll definitely have you back in the future.

Emily Rudder: Thank you so much for having me. This was so fun to sit on the opposite side of the mic, you know,

Jeff Umbro:Thank you again to Emily Rudder for joining us on the show this week. You can find more from wonder media network at wonder media network. com. You can find more from Emily on LinkedIn or Twitter @EmRuddz.

For more podcast related news info and takes, you can follow me on Twitter @JeffUmbro. Podcast Perspectives is a production of The Podglomerate. If you are looking for help producing, distributing, or monetizing your podcast, you can find us at the podglomerate.com. Shoot us an email at listen@thepodglomerate.com or follow us on all social platforms @podglomerate. 

This episode was produced by Chris Boniello and Henry Lavoie. And thank you to our marketing team, Joni Deutsch, Madison Richards, Morgan Swift, Annabella Pena, and Vanessa Ullman. And a special thanks to Dan Christo and Katelyn Bogucki. Thanks for listening and I will catch you next week.