Built in 90 days. When the playbook breaks, you build a new one.

How we launched Square's first branded podcast during COVID — creating a reactive content system that met customers in real time, not in evergreen.

In March 2020, the content strategy we had built — grounded in evergreen education, planned months in advance — became irrelevant almost overnight. Small business owners didn't need a guide to growing their email list. They needed to know if they were going to survive the week.

We responded by building Square's first branded podcast from scratch in 90 days. Talking Squarely was designed not just to serve customers in a moment of crisis, but to demonstrate that content strategy means building systems that can move at the speed of the world — not just the speed of a content calendar.

THE CHALLENGE: Evergreen content is efficient. It's also useless in a crisis. The challenge was to build a production model that could respond to what was actually happening — topics shifting week to week, business conditions changing daily — without sacrificing quality or brand coherence.

We also needed the podcast to do more than one thing. It had to serve customers, align with Square's brand narrative, support product awareness, and function across owned, earned, and paid channels.

THE APPROACH: We built a lean, reactive production model that let us move quickly. Each episode addressed a specific, timely topic — safe marketing practices, financial survival, supply and demand, doing good in a crisis. When the Black Lives Matter movement demanded a response that summer, we produced a special episode with Killer Mike focused on economic inclusion and Black entrepreneurship within days.

The podcast was distributed across owned social, organic search, email, and lead generation — and was featured in Square's inaugural brand campaign. Because it was built to be modular and channel-agnostic, the sales team could use it too.

THE RESULTS

• 62% episode completion rate across Season 1 — well above industry benchmarks

• 3,000+ active listening hours across 11 episodes

• Digiday Content Marketing Awards finalist

• Signal Awards Bronze — Best Branded Podcast Host

PROJECT DETAILS

Brand: Square

Format: Branded podcast, 11 episodes

Year: 2020

Awards: Digiday Content Marketing Awards finalist; Signal Awards Bronze, Best Branded Podcast Host

Link: Talking Squarely