Case study: Your Money and Your Life
IMLT
Podcasts, webinars and events
The See Media team have been a pleasure to work with. They have helped develop, produce and grow our first-ever podcast series about loan sharks. They seamlessly handled the production, despite coronavirus lockdown restrictions, and our guests were able to record their side of the conversation safely from the comfort of their own homes. We look forward to sharing the podcast with our audience and encouraging them to apply for POCA grants.
IMLT Liaise Manager and podcast hostThe England Illegal Money Lending Team (IMLT), also known as Stop Loan Sharks, is a government-funded criminal enforcement agency, working to identify, investigate and prosecute illegal money lenders, commonly known as loan sharks.
Each year IMLT launches its Proceeds of Crime Act (POCA) grants, which are funds made available from money seized from illegal money lenders under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, enabling organisations to access grants to raise awareness of loan sharks within communities.
To promote the launch of IMLT’s 2020 POCA grants, IMLT wanted to launch its own podcast series. Your Money and Your Life was to comprise five episodes, with the aim of breaking down the many commonly held misconceptions around loan sharks and, also, the grant funding available to tackle the problem.
Whilst the work conducted by IMLT is important for creating safer communities and protecting people from getting caught in the trap of loan sharks, much of the work they do is highly sensitive and confidential. This meant See Media needed to find a way to demonstrate the seriousness of illegal money lending and the implications it can have on those who borrow from loan sharks, without putting any of the IMLT or victims at risk of being identified.
IMLT wanted to feature 10 guests, all interviewed by one host, across the series. Originally, See Media planned to record the episodes from a studio near IMLT’s head office, but the COVID-19 pandemic meant this was not possible. With the POCA grants launching in June, See Media needed to find alternative arrangements to ensure the series could be recorded, edited and mixed to meet the deadline, whilst also keeping everyone safe who was involved in the creation of the series.
See Media created a clear podcast strategy for IMLT detailing the key messages and focus for each episode, as well as the guests needed to support those objectives. As part of this, See Media also identified pre-recorded audio snippets from victims and supporters of IMLT that could be repurposed and edited into the podcast episodes.
Once finalised, See Media then drafted a script and briefing note for each episode, so third-party guests were able to confirm their involvement with their organisations’ communications teams.
Given the circumstances, all five episodes were recorded remotely using podcast recording software via smartphones – each guest was also invited to take part in a sound test to ensure they knew exactly what was going to happen during recording and to mitigate any sound issues. To ensure the podcasts produced were high-quality, See Media provided additional equipment to the series’ host, which was delivered direct to her door.
The series was recorded across two days and was fully edited and polished, with music, within a week. This included tagging all the episodes for listing in popular directories and putting together show notes to accompany the finalised episodes to help increase the visibility of the podcast.
See Media created a podcast series for IMLT that raised awareness of the dangers of loan sharks and dispelled long-standing misconceptions. Each episode demonstrated how IMLT is working in partnership with other organisations to prevent crime and disorder, promoting its work to show how it is making a difference within local communities.
To listen to the series, visit IMLT’s website: www.stoploansharks.co.uk/podcasts/