The brief
Matt Jones built one of Australia's great brand stories when he co-founded Four Pillars Gin. His next big move was StoryWork, a ten-part podcast and consulting practice built on the central argument that story is the architecture of every great business.
Little Big Deal was engaged to manage the media launch of the podcast and build Matt's profile as a strategic thinker, speaker and founder, positioning StoryWork as must-listen content for founders, CMOs and business leaders across Australia.
Podcast launches are notoriously hard to land media coverage for. They aren’t necessarily new, there is no hard news hook, no product announcement, and no event. The format is saturated, and editors have mostly seen it all before. Our task was to generate genuine editorial interest in a podcast without relying on the podcast itself as the story.
Our approach
We built a multi-track campaign that treated each episode as a separate editorial opportunity, rather than pitching the podcast as a single event.
• Launch – Media release, exclusive mainstream pitch and tiered outreach across business, trade, lifestyle and sector verticals
• Guest-led pitching – Individual pitches built around each episode’s guest and their strongest media angle — matched to the outlets most likely to bite
• Thought leadership – Byline columns and placed opinion pieces giving Matt a sustained editorial voice beyond the launch moment
• Feature media – Long-lead pitches to high-value mastheads, timed to the moments they were most likely to convert
• Reactive commentary – Ongoing newsjacking and reactive opportunities to keep StoryWork in the news cycle between episode drops
The outcome and why it mattered
18
media placements
6.4M
audience reach
98%
positive sentiment
87%
backlink rate
7
spokesperson quotes
67%
key message inclusion
2+
average media tier
10
podcast episodes launched
Coverage spanned business, trade, technology, marketing and lifestyle media. Placements included owned bylines, spokesperson quotes, guest-led features and reactive commentary — demonstrating the breadth of the campaign's media footprint beyond a single launch moment.
Every placement carried strong sentiment scores, with 98% positive across all tracked coverage. Backlinks to StoryWork appeared in 87% of digital placements, driving direct audience acquisition alongside brand awareness.
In its first season, StoryWork peaked in the Apple Podcasts charts at number two for entrepreneurial podcasts and cracked the top 20 for all business, finance, and money podcasts.
“Whenever I get the chance to talk or write about brand strategy, I emphasise how important it is to not just focus on your craft (that is to say, the quality of your work or product) but also on getting the credit your craft deserves. When it came to launching my new podcast, StoryWork, I wanted to make sure that not only was the podcast itself the best it could be, but that we ensured the podcast reached the maximum possible breadth and depth of audiences. Given that my interviewees ranged from finance, technology and investment through to cars, politics and the media, I needed a PR partner who could think both strategically and broadly across a very wide range of media outlets. Lauren at Little Big Deal did a fantastic job of proactively securing a wide range of well-considered opportunities and placements.”
