Take on Tomorrow is back for Series 2.
This is a brand-new season of PwC’s strategy+business podcast—where we take on the biggest problems facing society—and the role business can—and should—play in solving them.
Our two hosts have returned and are breaking new ground. Ayesha Hazarika, a broadcaster and writer in London, and Lizzie O’Leary, a journalist in New York. This season, the series is taking on big and timely topics like generative AI, nature positive business, and the skills-first approach to hiring.
Plus, for the first time, we've taken the podcast out of the studio and closer to our audience, recording our new, short-form episodes—which include audio and video—at key global events such as Climate Week NYC, the APEC CEO Summit in San Francisco and COP28 in Dubai, as a way to drive forward the conversation - and strengthen PwC’s reputation as a convenor of some of the biggest voices around these issues, and the role we have in bringing them together.
In summary, our goals were to:
- Take on timely topics that have a business and societal lens, and work to highlight the role business has in helping to solve some of the world’s greatest challenges.
- Stay true to our original format featuring two external hosts + one external guest + one PwC guest while expanding into a new space that includes short form episodes recorded live at major, global events.
- Grow our audience over series 1 while strengthening PwC’s reputation on these topics.
Take on Tomorrow is editorially ambitious—we explore how business can help solve society’s greatest challenges, and dive into topics and questions not every corporate podcast is bold enough to cover.
This season we’ve asked — Why should business be nature positive? with internationally acclaimed climate scientist Johan Rockström, Is privacy possible in the age of AI? with Google’s Chief Privacy Officer Keith Enright, and Is talent hiding in plain sight? which explores a focus on a skills-first approach to hiring with LinkedIn. Each episode centers around a core question important to the C-suite and their stakeholders - and brings together a wide range of global voices from both inside and outside of PwC, including business leaders, academics, and policy makers, to talk about challenges and solutions. While our goal is to create a show business leaders want to listen to, this podcast extends way beyond that, engaging more and more audiences interested in the cross section of business and society.
There are plenty of choices of podcasts out there, so we wanted to make sure our execution was top notch, and of the highest production quality. Our editorial process includes two separate in-depth interviews conducted by our hosts and then carefully edited down to preserve the highlights of those conversations—enabling us to pack a great deal of insight into less than a half hour and offering the listener something more valuable than an overly-long listen.
The content is elevated with a music bed that moves the conversation along, and gives room to the listener when appropriate, along with eye-catching custom art for each episode. Production can be especially challenging when you’re recording with two guests and two hosts from around the world, in different time zones and different days, but the effort is worth it as we get a truly global conversation and perspective, adding depth and insight that is hard to find elsewhere.
Our event based live recordings also provided a unique challenge for our team, as we wanted to take the podcast to our audience, in person. The episodes are recorded with audio and video, so there was plenty of pre-production work to be done in terms of permissions to film and record on the ground, guest bookings and organization, and a full three camera set up on the ground. The biggest challenge was turning the episodes quickly, as we aimed to get the full audio version out just a few days after it was recorded, so it remained a timely piece of content that could be released as the event was just wrapping up. The work has paid off. In 2023, our three event-based episodes averaged nearly 14,000 downloads per episode and gave us a chance to attract additional listeners as people were able to experience the podcast in an intimate way—at global events around the world.
We’ve found there is a strong appetite for this content, as we’ve seen a big influx in downloads in series 2 compared to series 1. This season, for the first seven episodes launched in 2023, we achieved more than 5 times the amount of downloads compared to the first seven episodes of season 1 (3,326 average downloads per episode in season 1 vs. 17,002 average downloads per episode in season 2). Our most downloaded single episode of season 2, Is privacy possible in the age of AI? featuring the Chief Privacy Officer of Google, resulted in more than 25,000 downloads. Consumption rates have also remained steady at 71% on average for season 2.
We truly have a global presence as well—our top five countries for downloads include the United Kingdom, United States, India, Canada and Germany. We’ve also crafted videogram assets to use on our social media channels and—new for season 2—to share via a YouTube playlist. Our most-watched videogram in 2023 came in at 125,000 views on that platform.
Take on Tomorrow strives to provide our audience with insights, inspiration, and a roadmap for navigating the ever-evolving landscape of tomorrow and we’re proud of the work our team has done to advance the conversation in a second season.
