Revenue & Collaborations: Champions of Curiosity Awards 2022
The Champions of Curiosity Awards is Hearken’s celebration of community listening, community building, and needs-based service approaches that make the world a better place. We know that over the past year Hearken’s partners pulled through and delivered innovative projects that best served their communities, and we want to honor that impressive work in a variety of categories.
Champions of curiosity improve their communities by asking better questions, doing better listening, and creating better services and offerings for their audience, members, and constituents. In return, their communities have rewarded them with their trust, their loyalty, and often their dollars — proving that when we listen to our communities, subscriptions go up, memberships grow, and retention increases.
How we picked winners: Our team at Hearken evaluated submissions based on the use of a Hearken service or platform, the creativity of the approach, solution, or offering, and the potential for others to replicate or model it. The winners are Hearken partners who’ve exemplified a commitment to engagement as good business through community-building and listening.
Here are our two standout entries tied to revenue and collaboration.
The “Cheers!” Revenue & Collaboration Award
Winner: Vermont Public’s Brave Little State Beer
What They Did:
The beloved long-form podcast Brave Little State from Vermont Public now has a Vermont craft beer! In December of 2021, Brave Little State Pale Ale, brewed by the award-winning Lawson’s Finest Liquids, hit the shelves (and taps) in Vermont, and is now available year-round throughout the state.
Here’s how Lawson’s Finest describes it: “Brave Little State Pale Ale is a Vermont-grown beer brewed in collaboration with Vermont Public to celebrate Brave Little State. It’s a 5% ABV hazy, juicy Pale Ale with a soft mouthfeel, exploding with bountiful aromas of melon and berries. The Vermont-grown ingredients inside each can embody the incredible spirit of the Green Mountain State and Vermont Public. As a Good Brews for a Cause through our Social Impact Program, a portion of Brave Little State sales will be donated to support VPR’s mission and fuel independent journalism.”
In addition to generating revenue for the station, this collaboration also builds awareness of this people-powered show: Each can of Brave Little State features the show’s logo, and a QR code that brings the imbiber straight to their landing page.
As Angela Evancie, the Director of Engagement Journalism / Executive Producer, Brave Little State, wrote in their entry, “Given the broad, loyal following of Lawson’s Finest Liquids, we are excited to reach new listeners through their delicious product. We are also thrilled to collaborate with a brewery that, like our show, emphasizes community, engagement and of course a deep love for Vermont. It feels like a natural synergy; we regularly see posts on social media from folks who are listening to our show while enjoying the beer. Cheers!”
Why We Picked Them:
I mean … what a collaboration! At Hearken we’ve noticed a lot of public-powered series are sponsored by local breweries (WBEZ’s Curious City has been sponsored by Lagunitas Brewing and Goose Island, KQED’s Bay Curious is sponsored by Sierra Nevada), but this is the first time that beer + public-powered journalism has inspired a new brew! We absolutely love the creativity, spirit and tangible outcomes from this collaboration. It shows what a strong and important brand that Vermont Public has grown with Brave Little State, and provides plenty of opportunities for the collaboration to lead to real-life engagement. Just check out Vermont Public’s other Champion of Curiosity Award for Creative Community. Lawson’s was part of the event!
Key lessons:
- Build an undeniable brand. Yes this is much easier said than done! Brave Little State has been going since 2017 and has not only a delightful name, but also a logo and consistently excellent long-form journalism. Their BLS logo t-shirts routinely sell out during membership drives, and this beer is another example of how they extended their powerful brand.
- Consider what’s special about where you live. There are iconic brands and offerings in every part of the country. Seattle is synonymous with coffee, Nashville with hot sauce. What’s something your region is known for, or a brand that embodies the spirit of what you’re trying to do with your journalism? In that brainstorming, you may come up with some surprising and exciting ways to bring in revenue (or save money) and collaborate. Your fans will love it.
- Explore more than a sponsorship. If your public-powered work already has a sponsor, or is looking for one, think about: might there be something unique we can do together? It may not be to generate a new product that lives on shelves, but it could be an in-kind partnership or more creative ways to build community collectively.
And one more lesson: doing something cool and original like this leads to interest from more than just your newsroom! Check out these stories inspired by this collaboration:
- Lawson’s Finest Website Announcement
- Wine Enthusiast’s Article
- Better News Case Study
- Coverage from Current
The Local Landmark Revenue & Collaboration Award
Winner: KQED’s Bay Curious Golden Gate Park Walking Tour + Bandana
What They Did:
Golden Gate Park has been a central location for many questions sent in to KQED’s public-powered Bay Curious over the years. In the summer of 2022, they decided to create a 6-part podcast series that could function as a walking tour for people on foot in the park. The team also got crafty with collateral, and created a bandana that had the walking tour mapped out on it, a playlist where people could easily find the episodes and even hosted a special event at one of the locations on the tour, the Japanese Tea Garden.
To pull it off, Bay Curious had to work with several internal groups — KQED’s design department helped create the bandanas and their Live Events team did the heavy lifting on the Japanese Tea Garden Event — which featured a local actress guiding folks around the garden in character.
Bay Curious sold out tickets for their accompanied walking tour and had to add a second date to meet demand!
Why We Picked Them:
This is a terrific example of taking curiosity to the streets. While listening to stories on a commute or home doing dishes is no doubt lovely, we are thrilled that Bay Curious decided to bring the stories they reported to life and location by rooting it in the park. Not only is this walking tour an exciting activity for locals, but offers a great introduction to Bay area history for folks new to town or visiting. The bandana makes it extra special and provides a functional keepsake, too!
And the levels of collaboration on this project are numerous: there’s the internal collaboration between departments, the collaboration with the staff at Golden Gate Park on editorial and pulling off the tour, and then there’s the collaboration they invite with the listener and the Park itself. We adore this opportunity they made to commune with one of the most storied and important spaces in the city, and how they invested in an evergreen asset that will yield for years to come. Bonus: it brought in revenue to the station for their ticket sales.
Key lessons:
- Get your colleagues in on big ideas. Bay Curious knew their team couldn’t execute on an idea this ambitious without help and buy-in from other departments. If you’ve got a big idea, bring your colleagues in early. No doubt they’ll bring their own brilliant ideas to add to your own and make it all the better.
- Functional swag! There are two kinds of swag: the cheap crap that ends up in a drawer, thrown away or in a pet or child’s mouth (drop it!), and the thoughtful, useful swag that ends up being saved and savored. While Bay Curious could have just printed a map or pamphlet, they went functional and made a lovely bandana.
- Put your reporting out there … in place. If you’re working in a local newsroom on a story about an actual place, consider what deeper and additional stories you might be able to tell by creating an experience. It may not be a walking tour people can do when they choose, but you can consider doing what other Hearken partners have done — an event! Like a cruise, bus, bike or walking tour of a significant place.
- Read about other 2022 winners: Creative Community, Editorial, Impact, Internal Culture Change. We’ll be announcing one category per day.
- Check out the Champions of Curiosity from previous years dating back to 2016!
Want to become a Champion of Curiosity? We want that, too! Check out more about what we do and who we work with at wearehearken.com, follow us on Twitter @wearehearken, or sign up for our newsletter, The Hearkening.
