The Cry Power Podcast is inspired by ‘Nina Cried Power’, the first single from Hozier’s second album, Wasteland, Baby!. As Hozier told the Song Exploder podcast, ‘Nina Cried Power’ is a song that credits “the spirit of protest, and the spirit of direct action”, celebrating activism in music from greats such as Nina Simone, Mavis Staples, Curtis Mayfield, Patti Smith and more.
We had been speaking to advocacy organisation Global Citizen about the possibility of partnering with Hozier and conceived the idea of a podcast in which Andrew (Hozier) sits down with activists to discuss their history in activism, centred around the UN’s 17 Global Goals to end extreme poverty and reduce inequality by 2030.
The aim of the podcast is to encourage activism amongst the listeners and drive people to take action related to the issues discussed via the GlobalCitizen.org/ CryPower hub.
Over the course of nine months, we recorded six episodes. Annie Lennox joined to talk about her history fighting for global feminism via her organisation The Circle. Bono spoke about his work with the ONE campaign and (RED). Nick Grono, an Australian activist and CEO of the Freedom Fund spoke about modern slavery. Marcus Mumford spoke about his history with War Child and Grenfell United. Nina Cried Power collaborator Mavis Staples spoke about her history campaigning for civil rights with her sisters and Martin Luther King, and Colm O’Gorman, the CEO of Amnesty International Ireland, spoke about his life, including when he famously sued the Pope.
Each episode rolls out across all major podcasting platforms and YouTube, with accompanying video trailers, Global Citizen editorial, specific campaigns for listeners to take action on and bespoke artwork.
Given the podcast’s subject matter, we were mindful of placing advertising in sensitive environments. We chose to partner with ethical ad-server Good-Loop, which allows users to watch an advert to unlock a free charity donation by diverting half the cost that would normally be consumed by the publisher. This meant that we could reinforce the podcast’s subject matter through serving the trailer, giving users the opportunity to donate to the very causes highlighted in some of the episodes including the Grenfell Foundation, The Circle and War Child.
The podcast shot to the top of the iTunes Music podcast chart and appeared in the top 200 of all podcasts in 20 countries.
At the time of writing, over 200k listens across all episodes and platforms have been recorded.
Most importantly, the podcast has had a tangible impact on people taking action via the Global Citizen platform, driving over 27k visitors to the hub so far with almost 1k new registrations. Impressively, 54% of those who signed up have been converted into action takers, suggesting that listeners are inspired enough by the content to commit to making a real difference. For example, the Annie Lennox episode drove listeners to get the UK government to grant funding to UNFPA Supplies – the world’s largest provider of family planning services like contraception. It worked: a month later, Britain committed £425m of UK aid money to the programme. It’s not a one-time deal either — each new action-taker goes on to take an average of 4.47 actions on the platform.
The podcast has also highlighted key campaigning moments, with strategic timing of episodes drawing attention to historic global development progress. For example, in the same week that the conversation with Bono aired, $14bn was committed to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, a key focus of Global Citizen’s advocacy.
Social media sentiment is 99% positive in reaction to all content relating to the podcast.
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