Episode 426Content StrategyEvents & Production

Bringing a Broadcast Mindset to B2B Marketing with Roisin Hunt

Roisin Hunt, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Great Place to Work, draws on a decade of Irish television and radio production to show how a broadcast mindset transforms B2B marketing. She explains why every piece of content should be built like a segment — with a hook, pacing, and a clear audience experience — and how the COVID era permanently raised the bar for digital events. Roisin breaks down the biggest mistakes brands make in virtual events (audio/visual quality, lack of audience energy, no pre/post personalization plan) and pushes back on the false belief that great production requires a big budget — her most successful event ran on Zoom Webinar with 2,500 attendees. She also shares how she turned her company's annual conference into a year-round content pipeline, using the conference stage to vet and produce case studies, digital event segments, and written content for the rest of the year.

Roisin Hunt

Roisin Hunt

Senior Director of Product Marketing at Great Place to Work

17 min
Listen on:Apple PodcastsSpotifyBuzzsprout

Key Takeaways

  • 1Treat every digital event like a live broadcast, not a meeting — dead air is a crime, pacing matters, and the audience experience must be actively designed, not left to chance
  • 2Production quality does not require a large budget — the most successful event Roisin has run had 2,500 attendees and ran on Zoom Webinar; the content, talent, and pacing mattered far more than the platform
  • 3Your conference stage is your best content pipeline — vetting stories through a conference submission process gives you case studies, digital event segments, and written content for the rest of the year
  • 4Customer stories work because the product is the catalyst, not the hero — the customer's challenge, the human impact, and the outcome are the arc; great storytellers go beyond the obvious reference to find the hidden story
  • 5Energy is not optional for virtual events — presenting online requires 10x the energy of a normal meeting because you're performing, not attending, and your audience feels every drop in engagement through the screen

About this episode

What if you treated every digital event like a live television broadcast instead of just another webinar? Roisin Hunt spent a decade in Irish television and radio before bringing that production-first mindset into B2B marketing, and the results speak for themselves. In this episode, Roisin explains why dead air is a crime, why production quality doesn't require a massive budget, and how to turn your customer stories into compelling content that practically writes itself. She also shares how her conference stage has become a year-round content pipeline. If your virtual events feel flat, this conversation will change how you think about them.

Topics covered

  • Applying a broadcast production mindset to B2B marketing and events
  • Common digital event mistakes and how to fix them on any budget
  • Using conference stages as a year-round content pipeline
  • Customer storytelling frameworks from broadcast journalism
  • Production quality vs. budget: what actually matters

Notable quotes

“Dead air is a crime in broadcast. You have 30 seconds of dead air and people think something's broken.”

— Roisin Hunt(5:20)

“I don't want to run a webinar. I want to run an experience.”

— Roisin Hunt(5:48)

“Your customers sell for you better than you ever could. If you really make them the hero, the story tells itself.”

— Roisin Hunt(13:40)

Resources mentioned

  • Framework

    Broadcast Segment Model for Digital Events

    Build every digital event as a series of condensed, self-contained segments rather than a single long presentation. Each segment should have a hook, a clear narrative arc, a transition, and a defined energy level. Think snackable, digestible building blocks — not monolithic slide decks. This model also makes post-event content repurposing far easier, since each segment stands alone.

  • Strategy

    Conference-as-Content-Pipeline

    Use your company's annual conference or summit as the primary intake mechanism for customer stories. A structured submission and vetting process surfaces the best narratives before the event. Accepted speakers are then prep-vetted, which gives you a year's worth of case study material, digital event segments, and written content at the cost of the conference itself.

  • Strategy

    The Inverted Journalistic Pyramid for Customer Stories

    Lead with the outcome, then work backwards: the business result first, then the challenge, then the human story, then the product as catalyst. The customer is always the hero — the product is what enabled the transformation. This structure forces storytellers to go beyond product features and find the human stakes that make audiences lean in.

Roisin Hunt (00:02) You need a lot of extra energy, like 10x energy that you would need. Like sometimes I come off an event that I've hosted or I've presented either internally or externally, I'm like my legs go from underneath me because that is the level of required energy to translate to bring your audience in. You know, like you're reaching through the screen across the miles and that's television. So it truly is a performance, it's not like a meeting, it's an experience. Benjamin Ard (00:57) Welcome back to another episode of Content Amplified. Today I'm joined by Roisin. Roisin, welcome to the show. Roisin Hunt (01:03) Hi, so glad to be here. Thanks for having me. Benjamin Ard (01:05) Yeah, Roisin, I'm excited to have you on the show. This is going to be a ton of fun. Your background is extremely relevant to today's episode. So to give the audience a good taste for who you are — let's share your background and all that kind of fun stuff and catch people up on who you are. Roisin Hunt (01:24) Absolutely, and I will try to keep this brief, Benjamin. It has been a winding road, let's just put it that way. So I started my career in television. I grew up in Ireland, as you may be able to tell from my accent. I started my career in Ireland and I worked for a decade in television and radio production. So different aspects of live production, outside broadcasts where you go on the ground, and also short documentary making and content for PBS-style programming, which is highly viewed in Ireland on a national stage. That was the best training that I could have gotten for any sort of storytelling. The pressure was immense. I was very young and I was given a lot of responsibility. And I did that for a decade and it was just a wild ride, fast paced and just taught me everything that I needed to bring into marketing. I also did an internship at NPR for a year in that decade in the States. Then I moved back to the States in about 2015 and started working in immigration nonprofit — lean team, doing everything, a lot of communication and scaling their brand and stories. I was at an impasse of being offered a job at the UN doing communications or leaning into the Bay Area tech scene, and circumstances led me toward tech. I started working at a small boutique leadership communications agency that had been around a long time, worked with a lot of early founders at Google and the big names you know. That was my first intro into sales, tech, and then events. COVID happened, I got back into broadcast content at scale and worked at Zendesk on their global events team, small but mighty. And I'm now most recently at Great Place to Work as Senior Director of Product Marketing, leading digital event strategy. A full circle moment I couldn't have imagined, but I'm thrilled. Benjamin Ard (03:55) That does sound like an awesome ride. And it brings us here today to learn about bringing a broadcast mindset to B2B marketing. How has your background in TV and radio production actually shaped the way that you build marketing strategies today? Roisin Hunt (04:07) It shapes everything. It's the lens through which I see the world. My brain is just wired that way from my early career. My degree was in media studies. I've learned that the classics remain — we've been telling stories the same way since we sat around the fire in cavemen days. Delivery formats have changed, attention spans have definitely changed. When I think about production and how I bring that to marketing strategies, every piece of content has to be compelling and you're speaking to humans. Yes, we're speaking business to business, but there are humans driving that. The production mindset has taught me the power of format, delivery formats, your narrative flow, what you say and how you say it. I always think about segments — condensed packages rather than a big presentation. It's more like what are the different building blocks that can create an experience that are digestible, engaging, snackable. Dead air is a crime in broadcast. You have 30 seconds of dead air and people think something's broken. So it's the vamping, it's the pace at which you deliver and transition between different segments. Programming anything is an experience. I much prefer to think about programming in a digital event experience mindset. The word webinar, I don't want to run a webinar. I want to run an experience. And so that drives everything. Benjamin Ard (06:31) I love that. You mentioned COVID and these digital events and webinars and bringing this production quality to those events. What are some of the biggest mistakes you see companies making when they do these digital events? Roisin Hunt (07:04) If we go back to COVID, the bar was raised significantly. Prior to COVID, some people were doing it okay and others was long presentations, one to many, no interaction, no dynamic between the audience and presenters. Standards were raised very quickly. We don't want to look up anyone's nose anymore. When you think about how people positioned themselves in frame — if you're not at eye level we're like what is going on with this brand, they don't know what they're doing. And buying is all about trust. People became the stars of their own 14 inch screens and the market got saturated very quickly. There's a lot of noise — and that's applicable not just to digital events but in general. How do you cut through? The biggest mistakes — you have to think about your audience all the time. What is going to be good for them? You need 10x energy. Sometimes I come off an event and my legs go from underneath me because that is the level of required energy to bring your audience in. It truly is a performance, not a meeting. It's an experience. Lack of audio or visual quality — those are table stakes and without them you're digging the credibility of the talent, the content, and the speaker. And when people are having a good time, that's good for a brand. People are likely to remember things. Mistakes are standard production issues: audio visual, pacing, dynamic experiences. What are the resources you're adding? What's your pre and post follow-up plan for personalization? And dynamic talent that brings an audience in. Benjamin Ard (10:46) A lot of people think great production has to be really expensive. But ever since COVID, you can have an incredible setup for relatively cheap. Is that true? Roisin Hunt (11:13) How does cost come into production quality? Yeah, it can, but it doesn't have to. Think about what you're saying and how you're saying it. Go back to your content. What is the message you need to tell? You can do that on a phone. Phones are great. The quality from your phone, that human connection, works so well as a segment. But who's saying it? What are they saying? And how are you building those blocks to create this experience? The market has become much more competitive. Certain digital event platforms used to be really expensive and you had to pay a producer to upload all your content in advance. That's not the case now. One of the events early COVID that proved so successful and is still running — Zoom webinar. Two and a half thousand people on those events. They were simply formatted, they had budget to put behind great talent, and people loved it. Your design is more important than your tools. The tools help, for sure. But whatever way you can have a two-way dialogue is fine, whatever the cost. Benjamin Ard (13:02) When you look at a content strategy, so much of TV broadcasts as customer stories — how do you make that engaging? How do you pull that off in a way where it's interesting and not just "tell me your name, tell me what you do, why do you like my product"? Roisin Hunt (13:40) I go back to the classics. What's the hook? What's the challenge? Who are the humans that are being helped or impacted by the outcome of the story? The product is the catalyst, not the hero. Your customers sell for you better than you ever could. If you really make them the hero, the story tells itself. In terms of strategy, it's how did the combination of the relationship and the partnership achieve this great business outcome for them? Finding the stories — who are the best stories to tell? They're not always the sexiest brands. Sometimes the stories are hidden and you have to find them. Just like a journalist — go beyond who people are telling you to talk to. I want to find that small company that is having huge returns but nobody knows who they are. One of the things we do — I started our conference based on this. My whole content strategy comes from what are the stories people want to tell? They're coming to us because they know they have a story to tell. We sift through those, we search, and then they come and tell the story at our conference stage. The prep has gone in, it's been vetted, that's our pipeline for content for the rest of the year. These are the stories we're telling in written case studies, bringing to digital events, combining to build out our full marketing content strategy. Benjamin Ard (15:56) I love that. The question "so what?" is always a good one to ask yourself. Well, Roisin, we have run out of time. For anyone listening who would like to reach out and connect with you online, how and where can they find you? Roisin Hunt (16:38) You can find me on LinkedIn. Roisin Hunt — I don't know if there are too many with my funny name out there — at Great Place to Work. I would be happy to chat with people thinking about this space. Benjamin Ard (17:08) And for anyone listening, scroll down to the show notes. You'll see Roisin's LinkedIn profile right there. Roisin, thank you so much for your insights and time today. Roisin Hunt (17:22) Thank you, Benjamin. It was an absolute joy. I wish we had more time, but more to come.

About the guest

Roisin Hunt

Roisin Hunt

Senior Director of Product Marketing at Great Place to Work

Roisin Hunt is the Senior Director of Product Marketing at Great Place to Work, where she leads digital event strategy. Her career began with a decade in Irish television and radio production, including work on national PBS-style programming and an internship at NPR. After moving to the U.S., Roisin worked in immigration nonprofit communications, boutique leadership consulting for early-stage tech founders, and global events at Zendesk. She brings a broadcast producer's eye for pacing, storytelling, and audience engagement to everything she builds in B2B marketing.

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Frequently Asked Questions

It means treating every piece of content or event as a performance designed for an audience experience, not a transfer of information. In broadcast, you think in segments, pacing, narrative flow, and energy — not slides and bullets. You consider dead air (even 30 seconds kills credibility), audience engagement at every moment, and the transition between ideas as carefully as the ideas themselves. Roisin applies this framework to digital events, customer stories, and campaign structure across her marketing strategy.

Poor audio and visual quality (which immediately undercuts brand credibility), insufficient energy from presenters (virtual audiences need 10x the energy of an in-person room), no pre/post personalization plan, and treating the event as a one-to-many broadcast with no audience interaction. Roisin also notes that many brands underestimate how much their positioning in frame — literally, whether the camera is at eye level — signals professionalism and trust.

No. Roisin's most successful event ran on Zoom Webinar with 2,500 attendees. The platform mattered far less than the content quality, the talent, and the pacing. Phone cameras are now exceptional for interstitial segments. The most important investments are in what you say and how you say it — content strategy, speaker coaching, and segment design — not the platform or production hardware.

Use the inverted journalistic pyramid: start with the outcome, reveal the challenge, introduce the humans impacted, and position the product as the catalyst — never the hero. The best stories aren't always the most prominent brands; the hidden stories often have the highest resonance. Roisin recommends going beyond the obvious reference contacts to find the person on the front line who can speak to lived experience.

Use your conference as a content vetting mechanism. Accept story submissions, run them through a selection process, and prep speakers before the stage. The stories that make it to the conference stage have already been validated and refined. From there, you have case studies for written content, segments for digital events, quotes for social media, and narratives for email campaigns — all sourced and vetted at the cost of a single conference investment.

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