We have just finished a real fun project with a new client.

Wilkins Kennedy are a 125 year old firm of regional accountants that now have 12 offices in London and the South East. They are one of the Top 30 accounting firms in the UK.

They contacted us a few weeks ago to see how we could help them best use social media and Web 2.0 to get their analysis of the the 2008 budget to their clients and a wider audience. They have always produced a printed report on the budget overnight and use their web site and then held seminars and briefings. They wanted to look at other ways to get their experts feedback on the budget out publicly.

We agreed to try a podcast. They lined up their Head of Tax, Matthew Hall, and 3 senior members of his team to have a 'round table' discussion. They listened to the budget presentation yesterday and spent the rest of the day working on what it all meant for business and personal tax. At 9.30am this morning we set up a mobile recording studio of laptop, mixer, audio recorder and radio mics in a meeting room at their Egham office. We had one practice run through and then started recording. Within an hour we had our core programme. We did some editing, added the music and voice-over and reviewed the results with them. When they had approved it we uploaded the file to the host and activated the link from the Wilkins Kennedy site. We had finished by 5pm. A total of 6 hours from start of recording to live online.

    Click the icon or here to listen to the podcast.

We will now track to see how many people access the recording and how quickly. Speed in such a situation is critically important as many changes the Chancellor announced will apply from April 6th. For many a delay in seeking and acting on tax advice could cost them or their company a lot of money!

Now compare that with a traditional 'white paper' approach to such a technical subject. BBC annoucers are taught to speak at an average of 3 - 4 words per second. The podcast lasts 22 minutes and so will contain about 4,500 words. An A4 side of paper has 30 lines and with an average of 10 words per line it means a 22 minute podcast is equal to 15 pages of A4. Allowing for layout and typesetting a 'White Paper' would be about 20 pages long. Now could that be written, printed and distributed in just 6 hours compared to a podcast? Equally with it being online the distribution costs are zero to Wilkins Kennedy. What would it cost to mail a 20 page document out?