For two years, the Man Enough Podcast has been exploring what it means to be a man today and how rigid gender roles have affected all people. The goal is to create a safe, open environment for various perspectives to meet and stay at the table, moving from systems and language that polarize and demonize men and masculinity into those that invite all humans to participate and thrive in our world.
The audio and video podcast is hosted by actor, director, and Wayfarer Studios’ Co-Founder Justin Baldoni, author and journalist Liz Plank, and award-winning music producer and Wayfarer Studios’ President Jamey Heath, welcoming celebrities, experts, and thought leaders. Our goal for this year was to create a movement for positive masculinity, led by our podcast and, through that lens, add our unique perspective to timely discussions around success and failure, fatherhood and parenting, body image, privilege and race, relationships and sex, mental and physical health, LGBTQ+, and gender identity.
This year, our strategic focus revolved around broadening the scope of our podcast-related content across multiple platforms, aiming to entice people to join our movement and solidify our position as leaders in the positive masculinity space. Our main challenges were keeping our audience engaged and entertained within a digital environment characterized by constant and rapid change while differentiating ourselves in a highly competitive podcast market.
To achieve our goal, we included diverse new guests who talked about timely, critical topical subjects, such as Jalen Noble on suicide, Caylee Cresta on household dynamics, and Dr. Gabor Maté on men and their experiences with trauma. We also extended our format by featuring more intimate episodes with our hosts, Liz and Jamey. They candidly discussed personal experiences around consent, dating, and mental health. The episode featuring Natasha Heath, our host Jamey's wife, discussing postpartum challenges and the intricacies of motherhood was an instant success. Finally, guest hosts Christopher Rivas and Andy Grammer brought unique voices and experiences to our series.
We invested significant time in truly understanding our audience, what brought them closer to our goal, and curating tailored podcast experiences across platforms. Leveraging one of the world's leading search engines, we implemented a strategy of weekly episode uploads on YouTube, accompanied by thoughtfully titled, shorter topical segments designed to enhance discoverability for new audiences. On TikTok and Instagram, we crafted bite-sized, topical, engaging social clips sourced from each of our episodes, primed for viral reach based on timely topics and themes while enticing first-time viewers to explore full episodes. Furthermore, we established strategic partnerships, notably with creator Charity Croff, who generated ancillary content and helped us optimize our distribution across various platforms, most notably on TikTok.
