Channel Mastery - Ep. 42: Paul Kirwin, Founder & CEO of Channel Signal

Channel Signal

**your consumers are telling you what they want. are you listening? with paul kirwin**

“Consumers are going to talk about a couple of critical things in product reviews. They're going talk about their storyline… And these are storylines are how they wrap their lifestyle around the brand and the product.”
- Paul Kirwin

EPISODE PREVIEW:

The question every brand asks about becoming more consumer-centric is, “How do we really know what they want?” Isn’t it all a lot of guesswork? Sure, there are some educated guesses around consumer-centric strategies, but if you really want to know what your consumers think and what they want….listen! In online reviews by the millions, customers are telling us exactly what they want.Enter Paul Kirwin. His company, Channel Signal, collects, aggregates and analyzes reviews to help brands more quickly and more efficiently deliver for their end consumer. Customers are sharing what they want, when they want it, and how they want it to be sold to them. In other words, customer reviews are laying out design, innovation, drop schedules, and marketing strategies. Let’s start to listen…

GUEST PROFILES:

paul kirwin

Paul is the founder and CEO of Channel Signal. He also founded eXperticity, the fastest growing online retail training platform in the outdoor recreation business. He was the creator of Kirwin Communications, an award-winning advertising agency, which specialized in creating all forms of media for clients.Paul began his career as a radio and television journalist. In 2010 he was named by the news publication SNEWS as one of the ten most influential people in the Outdoor Industry. He is a Rocky Mountain Emmy award winning writer and director. He is no stranger to most outdoor pursuits in the mountains of Park City, Utah.

TOPICS COVERED:

consumers reviews, using consumer reviews to plan product and marketing, words never to use in marketing, positive word association, aggregating data, market segmentation, consumer-driven production cycles, online merchants as publishers, the value of point of sale data, pivot language

SELECT QUOTES:

“Consumers are going to talk about a couple of critical things in product reviews. They're going talk about their storyline… And these are storylines are how they wrap their lifestyle around the brand and the product.”
“What’s happening now is a huge market segmentation because the shopper is shopping for a specific product. And so once they narrow down the three or four products, that's when they really start their research.”
“We are fixing our products on the fly and that provides positive momentum on a variety of different fronts.”
“You end up measuring and you become a lot more agile as a brand when you do this. As you know, when we started in this business it was, everybody lived and died on the point of sale data.”
“Pivot language is when [consumers] pivot away from talking directly [about the product] to talking directly to the brand to say, ‘Here's how I would improve the product.’”