By Jon O'Donnell
I’ve never really understood farming, or farmers. Despite growing up in rural Leicestershire surrounding by farming communities it just never occurred to me to consider what was going on around me. My early interactions with farmers were either being chased out of fields by angry (older) farmers or later, being chased out of pubs by angry (young) farmers.
That’s all changed now with farming getting something of a resurgence largely due to the powerhouse that is Clarkson’s Farm, but also many others such as This Farming Life and Fletchers Family Farm. These shows are a mixture of hilarity and ‘country porn’ served up to offer an insight as to what life on the open fields looks like. Whilst it’s not quite got me signing up for the Hereford College of Agriculture it has given me an appreciation for the challenges that farmers face, and the delicate ecosystem upon which farming relies.
For a farm to function well, it needs to be as self-sufficient as possible. The produce is a mix of livestock and crops. Livestock bring higher yield but cost more to feed. Crops provide decent return, but the weather determines quality. So, what happens to the poorer-quality plants not fit for sale? They feed the livestock.
Nothing goes to waste. The farm becomes an interconnected, self-sustaining system where every output feeds another.
Jeremy Clarkson (of all people) showed this beautifully that the modern farmer must exploit every asset they have, driving as much value as possible from the core product: the farm itself. His concept of ‘farming the unfarmed’ was a brilliant example of how to ensure every inch of real estate was exploited for profit.
Now, I apologise in advance to any real farmers for the gross simplification, but the point stands; producing content should work exactly the same way.
Hope over harvest
Not that long ago, the core product was the audio podcast. You’d record and edit in a studio (or at home), distribute across the usual platforms, and hope for the best.
Then came social, and we started adding clunky audiograms with moving soundwaves (remember those?) to promote episodes. Next came video podcasts, and the clips got flashier.
And so, the “modern podcast ecosystem” was born.
Except it’s not really an ecosystem at all. It’s an audio podcast that happens to be filmed, with a few clips randomly plucked out and posted to every platform in the vague hope something lands.
That’s not a strategy. That’s hope.
And hope, dear readers… is not a strategy.
A New Hope
Over the past few months, I’ve been gathering the thoughts of founders, CEOs, CMOs, publishers and creators to understand how (and if) they’re really using podcasts, where they sit in the wider content ecosystem, and what’s driving the most frustration.
This is what I found:
- Podcasts are no longer niche, they’re now a core part of brand media plans across consumer, tech and DTC sectors.
- They’re not just audio anymore, brands see them as the long-form base for video, clips, and social content.
- There’s huge appetite to leverage podcasts as part of a broader content system to build authority and feed the feed.
- But production remains the biggest blocker, 58% of brands say the time and effort are too high (source: Insights from “The Impact of Branded Podcasts” report September 2024)
- Workflow inefficiency continues to drain output — too many ad-hoc tasks, unclear hand-offs and delays.
- Cross-platform consistency is difficult — keeping quality aligned across audio, video and social is complex.
And increasingly, teams are asking: “Is the juice worth the squeeze?”— measuring ROI and proving impact is still unclear for most.
So we decided to do something about it…
Instead of following the usual model, where the podcast sits at the centre and social is treated as a promotional afterthought, we created a system where every piece of content holds equal importance and a clear, consistent identity.
Using long-form base the source content whether that’s a podcast, video, or radio show we built a production model that turns one shoot day into a month of content: long-form episodes, subs content, reels, BTS clips, stills, vox pops, and more.
Then we built an AI social engine to surface the moments most likely to go viral.
It analyses tone, expression, cadence and trending, category-specific topics to inform channel strategy and time each drop for maximum impact.
We now deploy this model with a wide range of exceptional clients, and also on our own original content, and have seen results improve by an enormous margin with impressions rising by +289% and engagement by +1,157% in like-for-like tests (based on the launches of two comparable shows adopting old vs new approach)
By making the process more efficient, we’ve also tackled one of the biggest blockers to high-quality content: cost.
We’ve created simple access points from edit-only or distribution support through to fully-produced multi-show setups — all delivered via a monthly subscription, with optional growth accelerators for those who want to scale faster.
Because it’s called “the feed” for a reason. It’s a bloody hungry beast.
Our model keeps the beast well-fed, and your audiences served with unskippable shows and scroll-stopping social content every single day.
So if you want to get the most out of your digital content in future, it will pay to be more like Jeremy Clarkson. And that, is not a sentence that I ever expected to write.
Details of the new production model can be found at www.viraltribe.co.uk. Clarksons Farm can be found on Amazon. I will be found nowhere near a farmers field again if I can help it.