We decided to create a podcast in interview format wherein guests with varying degrees of notoriety and success would talk about what they don't know, their bad money habits, and what they've learned the hard way – with the goal of breaking a barrier in our cultural dialogue around money. In order to create a space of unprecedented honesty, humor and compassion about personal finance, we sought out our host, SuChin Pak, to build a podcast series called Open Account. As the daughter of Korean Immigrants and a long-time pop culture journalist, she seized the opportunity with us and, in collaboration with our partners at Slate, developed a series that spoke to our brief's strategy and objectives while breaking cultural taboos.

We created 6 episodes (around 30 minutes each) for the first season of Open Account. Each episode focuses on a different guest and their respective relationship with money. Our guests range from the worlds of social justice, professional basketball, comedy, journalism and small business. We spoke with the newly married, the casually dating and the not quite sure about how money affects their relationships not only with their romantic partners but also their friendships and sense of identity. They told us things they’d never admitted out loud before and helped us crack the safe on our cultural silence around personal finance.

From the recording of our first episode to launch was only about two-week turnaround. We rolled out a new episode every other week there after.

Open Account is available for download on iTunes (with an average of about 25,000 downloads per episode) and for streaming on SoundCloud.

With triple the KPI for branded content downloads in this space, our reach was far beyond what we had anticipated, and organic, engaged social interaction around the podcast – both with the brand as well as guests and our host promotions through their own channels – was abundant and consistent from the start. We ended up on top ten podcast lists in the financial category and (to our delight) cultural and humor categories as well. The client was beyond pleased with this success and greenlit a second season, doubling the budget.

When Umpqua Bank came to us with the desire to "have a conversation about money in culture" we grappled with how to get any self-respecting adult inspired to talk with a bank about finances. But when we saw the dearth of honest, vulnerable conversation about money we knew we had found our whitespace. With very minimal branding, and a truly heart-felt sense of activism around ending shame and silence about money, Umpqua created a successful podcast series with a host and guests from every walk of life breaking shit down with humor, transparency and compassion.

Our demographic of culturally engaged, entrepreneurial, and information-hungry 25-45 year olds already had a penchant for podcast consumption, so we knew it was the right medium. As we surveyed the podcast landscape, we found an enormous amount naggy, boring information and very little vulnerability. We knew we had found our whitespace, and set out creating work that spoke to our target audience and truly answered a dearth of honesty and self-roasting humor around money. To secure our place at the table, we collaborated with Slate Magazine, our host SuChin Pak, and our guests from comedy, social justice, small business, sports and publishing to generate a fresh conversation.

Umpqua asked us repeatedly to help them "have a conversation about money" before we finally realized we could do quite literally that: facilitate a new dialogue around money in culture to increase awareness of their brand values surrounding human potential and connection. The brief sought culturally relevant content that grounded their increasing size and scale as a company in their roots as a community bank. Objectives were increased perception of the brand as savvy and culturally relevant, as well as recognition in and beyond their category as thought leaders.