Channel Mastery - Ep. 142: Doug Schnitzpahn, Outdoor Retailer
Outdoor Retailer
Replay of The Weekly Chat Webcast with Doug Schnitzpahn
“There's ways we manage profitability. Those things have usually been built around a point of distribution, some cases, the media it's built around advertising different things, but at the time everything now should be focused on the consumer and that enables us or makes us, rather, have to be very nimble, flexible pivot...all of our favorite words that we're hearing over and over again right now, but ultimately, the secret sauce is that people want to connect with other people.”
- Kristin Carpenter
episode preview
This Channel Mastery episode originally aired as a live webcast produced by Outdoor Retailer in late June 2020. The webcast, The Weekly Chat, is an extension of The Weekly, a digital magazine for Outdoor Retailer. It launched in the face of the pandemic and economic shutdown and was very well attended by Outdoor Retailer’s audience.
Channel Mastery host, Kristin Carpenter, was asked to appear on the show with Doug Schnitzpahn to discuss the battle for trust, and engagement, and how more traditional media institutions can serve today's ever evolving consumer as they search to build trust and community online.
Traditional media entities are searching for ways to bring value to their audiences and readerships. Let’s face it - media is being disrupted in a big way and has been for the past few years. People are continually re-trained to expect both content and community to be presented in new ways and on new channels, and this evolution is not slowing down.
There isn’t a playbook for the pandemic and now recession so it’s our responsibility as business leaders to listen to and watch where the consumers are going, how they’re getting there, and adjust our way of thinking to best serve that North Star - our target consumers/shoppers.
Doug and Kristin dive in on this topic as it pertains to the discovery facet of the consumer decision journey.
featuring
Doug Schnitzpahn
Doug Schnitzpahn is an experienced innovative freelance writer, editor, and team leader with a demonstrated history of working in the publishing industry. He is skilled in Journalism, Corporate Communications, Social Media, Digital Media, and Editing. Doug is a strong media and communication professional with a Master of Fine Arts - MFA focused in Creative Writing from University of Washington.
select quotes
“There's ways we manage profitability. Those things have usually been built around a point of distribution, some cases, the media it's built around advertising different things, but at the time everything now should be focused on the consumer and that enables us or makes us, rather, have to be very nimble, flexible pivot...all of our favorite words that we're hearing over and over again right now, but ultimately, the secret sauce is that people want to connect with other people.”
“...We don't have a playbook right now. We're basically listening to where the consumer is going and we're creating things as we're going with that….We're in the middle of this gap jump and we're not quite sure when we're going to land it or if we can stick it, but the number one thing that we can do to get through it, and this is media business, et cetera, is to understand who are serving and be nimble and watch how they're interfacing with everything that we're doing.”
“Think about these brands between the brand, their ambassador, their athletes, the retailers, and the media coverage that they get in the content they produce, they have really big reach. And when they can use that reach to create positive change or move the needle in a positive way, consumers respond to that and have reverence for those brands.”
“They {Specialty Brands} all have the best of intentions and they're so trepidatious to mess up that they're just triple checking what they're doing. And ultimately they're really looking for value in terms of - take my hand and help me with this, tell me what to do. - And I also think one of the ways to set the expectations right now of the brand is to let them know that failing forward is okay, whether it's inside their workforce or whether it's something that we try, as long as it's in the spirit of, we're trying this to serve your audience.”
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related links
Replay of the Original Broadcast
Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall
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