Latest / The Marketing Brief / Sarah & Brian Talk Ecosystem-Building, Community and Consumers IRL (S1 E10)
Transcript
- Brian Aucoin: Hello and welcome back to the Marketing Brief. I'm your host, Brian Acquan, and this is the podcast where we briefly touch on subjects across the marketing landscape. as always, we're joined by industry experts and we're very excited today to be joined by Sarah Knapp. Sarah, how are you doing today? Sarah Knapp: I'm doing great. I'm really excited to be chatting with you. Brian Aucoin: Awesome. Well, welcome into the pod. Would you like to introduce yourself to the listeners? Just kind of talk about what it is you work on. Sarah Knapp: Yeah, sure. So my background has been in entrepreneurship. I founded and run a bunch of companies, including a media publication, an outdoor adventure festival, and a platform for outdoor enthusiasts across the country. Right now, I'm really focused on freelancing and doing my own consulting projects, having Sunset the Community Mappy Hour last year. Brian Aucoin: Awesome. I'm also an outdoor enthusiast. What is your sport or activity of choice in the outdoors? Sarah Knapp: Oh my gosh. I feel like that is like asking you need to pick my favorite child. Um, I, you know, listen, if I had to choose above all, it would be skiing. Yeah. Yes. I mean, there's just nothing like it, Yeah, exactly. But I also want to like love hiking just as much. Yeah. Brian Aucoin: It's a Sophie's Choice for you. Okay, awesome. Mine is snowboarding above all. So, right there. right there with you. Yeah, powder is ⁓ ⁓ Yeah, agreed. Awesome. Already, we've already got some common ground. I love it. thanks for coming on. I, you know, as you know, I reached out to you and said I'd been writing a lot about authenticity, community and people and value ⁓ and as a self described ecosystem builder. I thought we could have a nice conversation about community. Is that a good place for us to kick it off? Sarah Knapp: Yeah, I'm always down to talk about community. It's my favorite topic and there are so many ways I feel like this conversation could go. Brian Aucoin: True. Okay, well, let's see which way it goes. ⁓ I think a lot of brands now are kind of saying, you know, I want to be in community, I need community, you I want this grassroots following around my brand or service. I'm sure you're seeing that too. How you respond to brands that kind of jump into it that way? Sarah Knapp: Alright. Yeah. I think what's really interesting is that this is not new. It's just newly arrived in 2026. I feel like every five years or so brands realize that community is important, invest a lot into it and then let it go. And so I think for brands either I'm working with or honestly just watching what's happening, I'm always wondering like why this time and why is it potentially distinct from the last community you built or the last way that you approached it. like from ⁓ a commute, like the purpose of community is that it is long-term. Otherwise it's a campaign or an activation. So ⁓ pushing back on wanting to be in community versus wanting to maybe connect with communities ⁓ ⁓ with a community and then move on. Brian Aucoin: Mm-hmm. Yeah, totally agree. is it important for brands? Do you think I get the long term thing, right? Like, but why do you think it's important to activate a community around your brand? Sarah Knapp: Yeah, I think there are a few different ⁓ I think it's important depending on what the brand is going for. I at the core, it's about values, which you mentioned is one of your key insight ⁓ for 2026, that a is built around a shared value. And so for a brand to come in and participate in a community or start their own community, ⁓ they are this really direct association with Brian Aucoin: Yeah. Sarah Knapp: whatever that core value is. And I think that that messaging is so deep and impactful that brands are willing to pay more for that than they are for XYZ digital engagement. So I think like above all that is the why. Brian Aucoin: It's value they get from it. Yeah, think, yeah, the affiliation of being part of that community. Sarah Knapp: and see that affiliation. And sharing those values, right? So at the core of it, how does a brand say, I have XYZ values when they're a corporation? A community is the one of the ways to do that. Brian Aucoin: Yes. Yes. Yeah, I agree with you. I think when I talk to clients about community, one of the big things that I like to make clear to them is that your customers ⁓ like you, but they also may like you as a platform, right? That brings together people who they think think like they do, right? Because they also bought your product or they also like your service and they want to be part of this community where brand can be the platform. And I think that's little nuance that I think it's tough sometimes for marketers to understand because they might think of it as a transactional relationship, but it can start as a transactional relationship and it can be ⁓ longer term community relationship as well, right? Sarah Knapp: Absolutely. I think that's where you get the value. Like I do think, especially in my, you know, experience through Mappy Hour and Outdoor Fest, we have had partners that want to come in for event and not that there isn't any value in that. Of course there is, ⁓ I can report back way stronger returns for a brand if they've been with us for ⁓ year, five years, 10 years, because of the depth of that relationship, the ability to figure out exactly how that brands can integrate because it's going to be different for every brand, how it aligns with their other goals and how they talk about community, authenticity, reach, all those things internally, because it really is different across brands. Even like the word community could mean in person, it could mean digital, you know, there's just, ⁓ it could be like customer service, right? A lot of people, lot of companies use community to be a Brian Aucoin: Yeah. Sarah Knapp: you know, answering platform for questions about a product, right? ⁓ even that, even like flushing that out takes time. ⁓ I feel like with all, like if we're talking about brand sponsorships of community, the value and like, yeah, the ROI on it really takes time because of all those questions that have to be answered that aren't straightforward. Brian Aucoin: Yeah, I think, and I think I wrote this, but sometimes community even exists in the comment section of your social media posts, right? Like just the people who are commenting and living in the comment section of a post that you put out. Sarah Knapp: Right, yeah, right. Like how are they interacting? How do they feel about themselves in relation to the comments? Brian Aucoin: Yeah, I'd love to also examine this side of it. me, consumers seek community, think, excuse me, for a number of reasons. They want IRL experiences, right? They want real life experiences right now. So I think that's a big reason for seeking community. What are other trends that you've seen with consumers kind of seeking, coming together in like areas and seeking community or any other examples from your work. Sarah Knapp: Yeah, I mean, can share. We did surveys all the time asking people like, why are you here? Why are you giving us money? Tell us. for sure, the number one reason, especially for Mappy Hour and our core mission and our core value statement is like, how do you live in a city and also love the outdoors? So framing that, giving context to that number one reason was always my friends don't go outside as much as I'd like to. And I'd like to meet other people. Brian Aucoin: You Sarah Knapp: that also go outside. So exactly what you're saying is that social connection to other people. Every time that was number one. ⁓ exactly. It's like just, you know, and hard. It's I mean, that's a whole different thing. You can't promise people friends, ⁓ you there's like a lot of things that that lead to people developing relationships with each other. But, you know, it's a ⁓ it's for understanding the motivations at the very least. ⁓ Brian Aucoin: Amazing. Yeah. Sarah Knapp: Yeah, and then, yeah, I think you see kind of based on market actually different answers. So like something I always found fascinating is like in a New York City, an answer that, you know, kind of tracks toward novelty is going to be potentially more popular ⁓ than a market where for us it was I'm new to this ⁓ city I'm trying to understand the city, right? So like very different reasons for participating. were actually very regionally specific. in terms of my experience, there was a gamut, but above all, was always about I want to meet other ⁓ that I can be relationship with. Brian Aucoin: That makes sense. And also market dependent makes sense, right? lived in New York. You don't have problem getting touch with people in New York. You're on the street bumping into them, literally touching them like every single day. But I've lived in Denver and I've experienced that too, people moving there to their transient city ⁓ and trying find their community, trying to find their people once they're there. Sarah Knapp: Yeah. Totally. this is like, mean, I know we're talking about community, but we're also talking about in-person events. So this is like a whole discussion on event design, right? Like New York, we're talking about people who are taking the subway. Denver, we're talking about people who are driving, who are primarily in their car, separated from other people. So like even the like experience that we're giving them once they get there is gonna be very different because of just how they're living, how they're arriving, how they're interacting. Brian Aucoin: and Sarah Knapp: you know, an hourly basis. Brian Aucoin: Yeah, totally. What do you love about this work? Like I can tell by the way you talk about it that it's something you really enjoy doing. Like what is it that keeps you doing this work? Sarah Knapp: Yeah, that's such a great question. I mean, I definitely love seeing people. like find their place and find that level of comfort. You know, my work has traditionally been in these dense urban environments where, you know, I mean, where people are talking about the loneliness epidemic. And that is a trendy phrase. think in general, people like humans have a unique desire or innate desire, I should say, to connect with others. ⁓ for me, what's been really Brian Aucoin: Mm-hmm. Sarah Knapp: What started all of this was just the love of bringing people together. And I think what's continued it is how do I figure out how to build a business around bringing people together, which is a distinct challenge from actually doing the work of creating spaces that connect people. Brian Aucoin: Yeah, well, that's always what everyone's looking for, right? Can I do what I like doing and also make a living doing it? That's great marriage. Sarah Knapp: Yeah. Yeah. I think this is what's interesting about the community discussion of 2026 where everyone, you know, not everyone. This is my LinkedIn algorithm. like, knows if it's everyone. Everyone I see is talking about how community is the new trend and we need to be doing community and Every time I see one of these like trend reports, and it's so funny because people text me too, they're like, ⁓ community is popular now, you know, I like, okay, our people has this actually changed consumers willingness to pay for community in any meaningful way. are people just continuing to report that they would like to feel less lonely, which I think has been an ongoing trend ⁓ many years. Brian Aucoin: Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sarah Knapp: Even since before COVID, obviously COVID like augmented that to like a pretty intense degree, but this has been a conversation. So I always think it's interesting when like, you know, the bigger consulting people are like, this is the trend. And I'm like, okay, that might be the trend, but like who is actually paying for this? And are they going to continue to pay for it so that, you know, businesses, brands can see the ROI long-term or is it just a cool thing to do today? Yeah. Brian Aucoin: Right. Yeah. Great point. It's a great point. on the heels of that, I'd love to ask you a question I ask all of my guests. What are you excited about right now? It can be in your professional capacity. It can be personally. ⁓ something you're excited about that's coming up? Sarah Knapp: I'll speak to the professional. feel like that, you know, I've talked about the businesses that I've had and they've all always been consumer facing and I've obviously loved them. As you said, you can tell from the way I speak about it, ⁓ I'm really excited about this new consulting journey because it offers the opportunity to go into other people's operations and other people's businesses and like dig into that. Brian Aucoin: Mm-hmm. Sarah Knapp: and see how, you know, the behind the scenes there. And so for me, I'm very curious and I just like love to see how things work, you know, like I want to like open up the back of the computer kind of thing. And so, yeah, for me, that's, that's just been really fun of just like dipping my toes into different types of businesses that aren't even necessarily like in the same industry and seeing how it works, seeing what things are exactly the same and then what things are radically different. So that's something that I'm really enjoying right now. Brian Aucoin: awesome. Well, you are an ecosystem builder. How do people get in touch with you? What's the best way for them to get in touch? Sarah Knapp: Yeah, I think LinkedIn, I'm just Sarah Knapp or my name, is Knapp, like reverse for my email. So it's nap.sarah.l ⁓ Gmail. ⁓ know. Well, ⁓ was too slow to get the original, you know, I didn't get someone else has Sarah Knapp at Gmail and I hate her. ⁓ but I think yeah, LinkedIn probably is just like the easiest way. I feel like I'm on there at least a few times a week. Brian Aucoin: Okay. Well, clever. You Awesome. Well, I've really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you for joining us, Sarah Knapp. right, this is, yeah, not the other one. This has been the Marketing Brief with Brian Iquon, our guest today with Sarah Knapp. And ⁓ stay curious, everyone. Sarah Knapp: gmail.com, not me.