The Weekly - June 23, 2020 - 14

Resources and Education
Kristin
Carpenter

The Battle for
Trust, Attention,
and Engagement
Verde Brand Communications founder Kristin Carpenter
delves into the ways media institutions can serve today's
ever-evolving consumers as they search for trust and
community online. Read about it here and join us for a
deeper discussion on The Weekly Chat.
By Doug Schnitzspahn
THE FOUNDER OF VERDE BRAND

Communications, Kristin Carpenter spent a decade working
as a journalist before founding
the agency in 2001. In 2017, she
created Verde's award-winning
weekly podcast, Channel Mastery, aimed at business and brand
leaders seeking to understand,
serve, and nurture today's evolving
consumer. Last month, Carpenter
and the Verde team launched the

agency's first digital product, the
Multi-Channel Marketing Academy, an eight-week course that
teaches marketing professionals
in specialty markets how to serve
and sell to their target consumers
across multiple channels.
Media is her big area of expertise, and she is seeing a big shift
happening: Legacy media institutions no longer control the narrative today as social media, search

14 THE WEEKLY / OUTDOOR RETAILER SUMMER 2020

What major shifts are you seeing in the media landscape?
The same major shakeups happening in businesses are also hitting the
institutions of media. We're seeing
community form around brands and
consumers gravitating to YouTube
creators, ambassadors, and athletes-they're building both content
and community.
Amazon, YouTube, and largescale brands are training our
consumers to expect a lot of content
and online experiences through
that content. It's delivered in an
incredibly personalized way. Consumers are choosing to self-identify
with their favorite brands via social
media, YouTube, and narrative
brand content.
Another big change is that
people are identifying with a
human more than a masthead.
This is really easy to do when you
follow YouTube creators, athletes,
and ambassadors on Instagram
or other social media channels. I
think it's safe to say that consumers are trusting content creators
because of the human-to-human
connection. They can look at a content creator and see themselves.
More traditional endemic media
must start to position the content
creator visually and via video to
evolve along with this change.

Does traditional media still
have a place in this new
ecosystem?
The endemic media and legacy
broad-market media do have a
role in the consumer discovery and
research journey. In fact, they're
more important than ever. Fake
news, robo-reviews, and major
news outlets using shock-and-awe
headlines just to get clicks is truly
desecrating the sacred and muchneeded nature of trusted editorial.
Can brands also be content
creators along these lines?
When it comes to search engines
and marketplaces, brands must
be more disciplined at targeting
a very specific consumer. Niche
until it hurts. Then niche more.
That's what influencers, ambassadors, and YouTube creators are
doing, and it's building a powerful
audience that's emotionally connected with the creator.
Why are creators
succeeding?
They handbuild their content for a
very specific audience. The people
connecting to these creators
connect emotionally with the person-the creator. This human-tohuman connection turbocharges
community growth far deeper and
faster than the institutions of media. Think about it: Do you connect with a person or a masthead?
Larger media companies continue
to focus on the advertising and
monetizing of content, but, like all
of us, they really have to focus on
the human-to-human connection
opportunities. Media plays a critical role in the consumer discovery process and online decision
journey.
And they're really getting

CO U R T E SY V E R D E B R A N D CO M M U N I CAT I O N S

engines like YouTube and marketplaces continue to train consumers
to expect a very different experience than what traditional media
offers. What's more, COVID-19
and the current nationwide unrest
are rapidly accelerating this paradigm shift. Carpenter talked to us
about how the new landscape has
a profound effect on how consumers research brands and buy from
specialty retailers.

The Weekly - June 23, 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Weekly - June 23, 2020