Make it a talk show, but get the audience talking.

Our digital strategy for George’s show started with a key insight into who our host was to Canadians: the connector. As the country’s voice of late-night, he connected his audience with the world’s most fascinating people, as well as telling human stories that went beyond the standard news cycle. Everything George shared was designed to get people talking.

Other CBC show sites at the time prioritized show promotion. We decided to do something different: we created an original content hub, with multiple new stories per day written and uploaded to the site and promoted on social, alongside video of recent episodes and upcoming guests.

• Audience Growth The original content we produced led the show’s audience to grow at a rate exponentially higher than those of other CBC shows.

• Digital Exclusives We expanded the kind of storytelling the brand was doing by covering a broad mix of stories, all tied to the concept of the Connector: George was connecting Canadians to stories they needed to know about, from environmental activism to social justice to art and culture to comedy.

• Two-Way Street The digital content stream changed the website and social strategy, but our digital team also regularly pitched stories for broadcast, many of which made it to air.

• Social Both George’s personal accounts and the official show accounts saw huge growth in both followers and engagement as a result of the frequency, quality, and speed with which we identified and told stories.

• Small Team, Huge Impact Two digital producers created and posted 3-5 original stories to the web each day, as well as posting to all social channels to promote the show and our stories, uploading all video content, and contributing to pitch sessions for broadcast.