Harnessing Brand Trust to Engage Diverse Audiences and Deliver Tailored Solutions Under One Unified Identity
Randi Stipes, CMO of The Weather Company, explores the far-reaching impact of weather intelligence across industries and shares how data and technology are key to fostering brand trust
Randi Stipes is CMO of The Weather Company, responsible for global marketing and communications. She takes an agile, data-based approach to drive business growth and deliver measurable results for customers and consumers. Randi and her team helped build The Weather Channel into one of the top 10 most trusted U.S. brands and the world’s most accurate forecaster. She’s also helped elevate The Weather Company to be an AI-driven ecosystem player while devising solutions that help consumers and brands confidently leverage data and technology to make more informed decisions.
Randi excels at unlocking creativity and high performance on the teams she manages, resulting in some of the industry’s top recognition and awards from Cannes Lions, The Drum, Festival of Media Global Awards, Effie Awards, IAC Awards, Marcom Awards, and many more. She is also passionate about the intersection of driving business growth and societal change, which she believes are not mutually exclusive for successful brands. As an advocate for positive industry and societal disruption, she sits on the boards of the Ad Council, BRIDGE, and the OAAA Brand Council.
The Continuum sat down with Randi to discuss the impact weather has on so many aspects of our lives and our businesses.
Your early background is in journalism. Can you tell us about that and how it led you to marketing?
I grew up watching women like Diane Sawyer, Barbara Walters, and Connie Chung, who had immense influence because people trusted them for news. Inspired by that, I set out to be on camera, believing it would be my mission.
I did all the right things—studied journalism, interned, and landed my first job at an ABC affiliate in Sacramento. I was the junior team member, far from the camera, but determined to get my foot in the door.
In the mid-1990s, my newsroom director introduced me to the World Wide Web. He asked me to explore posting news scripts online for viewers who couldn’t watch live. I bought HTML for Dummies, and months later, we launched one of the first local TV station websites.
That moment shifted my career. Instead of just focusing on broadcast journalism, I became passionate about embracing the best ways to deliver news, leading me to various editorial and content strategy roles in news and lifestyle outlets.
You’ve been with The Weather Company for over 15 years in a variety of roles. Was weather a secret passion of yours?
Not necessarily, and certainly not to the degree it is now. I was the managing editor of UPS.com during a major shift in the company’s history, as it evolved from a shipping business to a logistics leader. I loved being part of the transformation, though I wasn't passionate about the subject matter.
That led me to The Weather Company (then The Weather Channel), where I saw the opportunity to turn weather into lifestyle products that truly impacted people’s lives. My first role was in product, and I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything.
I also started attending sales calls to better understand our two key audiences: consumers who rely on accurate forecasts and advertisers who want to align with trusted, broad-reaching content.
Marketing blends both worlds, and having experience in other areas has made me a more empathetic leader. I understand the value of product, content, and sales, as well as the importance of cross-functional collaboration.
The Weather Company has both B2B and B2C. Can you start by explaining the B2B products?
The B2B aspect of our company spans a variety of industries, helping them understand how they can use weather to fuel their business and connect with customers. We provide insights based on weather intelligence for brands to create relevant, scalable marketing campaigns, for example. Not only can they advertise on our own owned & operated properties like The Weather Channel app and weather.com, but they can also use our weather intelligence off-property across the advertising ecosystem. We don’t believe in walled gardens.
Another area of our business is aviation where we have a relationship with many of the global airlines. We provide products and services that help flight operations and pilots in the cockpit leverage our data to help planes take off and land safely. One of those products is a turbulence solution that helps pilots detect and mitigate turbulence.
We also work with most broadcast TV groups and stations across the country and beyond the United States to provide local meteorologists with weather forecast data, graphics packages, and technology to better engage their viewers. Think B2B2C.
Additionally, we have a data API business where any developer in any industry can come in and use weather data to fuel their consumer-facing properties or any of their applications. We’re also getting more involved with the defense industry. For example, the military does a lot of training simulations with all types of weather conditions to better prepare them. They usually use synthetic weather for practice, but – for the first time – we are providing real-time weather data to help them prepare in more realistic conditions.
There's a growing recognition that weather impacts all industries. We’re helping businesses not just react to weather but proactively leverage the data and weather intelligence to become smarter, more proactive, and more resilient.
“There's a growing recognition that weather impacts all industries. We’re helping businesses not just react to weather but proactively leverage the data and weather intelligence to become smarter, more proactive, and more resilient.”
What about your B2C products?
Most people know us through our flagship consumer brand, The Weather Channel app and weather.com. We have the ad-supported app and a premium product that we launched a few years ago that people can subscribe to for added features and benefits, such as 72-hour future radar and extended hourly forecasts. The Weather Channel goes beyond the forecast to help translate how the weather impacts your daily life, activities, and physical and emotional well-being. We’re hopefully enabling and inspiring people to make the most of the weather when it’s great and the best of the weather when, well, it’s not so great.
Additionally, we have Weather Underground, affectionately known as “WU,” in our portfolio. It’s crowd-sourced weather, fueled by and serving citizen meteorologists and weather enthusiasts connecting data from over 300,000 personal weather stations across the globe. Lastly, there is Storm Radar, which is an app that’s exactly what it sounds like. Since everyone consumes information differently, this one is for people who are really into maps and radar and want a deeper, more granular look at the weather.
When you look at all of those properties combined, we have a significant audience; more than 300 million people visit us every single month across 178 countries.
From a marketing perspective, how do you change your messages for a consumer audience versus a business audience?
We have a broad base of customers, ranging from the everyday consumer to pilots to developers to brands. And while these audiences have unique needs and challenges we must cater to, at the end of the day, they are all individuals looking for information they can trust to make informed decisions. I'm a firm believer we need to remove the B2C vs. B2B label and talk to people like they are human beings -- with greater empathy, humanity, and less business jargon.
Now, that said, it's not a one-size-fits-all message. We have marketers embedded in each distinct line of business so we can truly understand our customer's pain points and market to them in a relevant way, with specific solutions to meet their needs.
“We have marketers embedded in each distinct line of business so we can truly understand our customer's pain points and market to them in a relevant way, with specific solutions to meet their needs.”
How do you keep a cohesive brand that stays top-of-mind when you have so many different mini-brands, as you say?
We’ve worked diligently over the years to cultivate, earn, and retain brand trust and brand awareness. No matter who we are talking to or which brand brought them to us, people are coming to us for a reason. Sometimes the reason lies in small, everyday decisions like how they should dress the kids for school, and sometimes, it’s bigger life-and-death decisions about, say, flight safety.
The Weather Channel has about 97 to 98% brand awareness, which is a lovely gift and something we don’t take for granted. At the same time, there are thousands of apps available, including one that’s built into everyone’s phone. Our challenge is maintaining brand relevance while growing brand preference outside our loyal audiences. Like every other brand, we are on a quest to engage the elusive Gen Z audience so that we can future-proof our brand.
How are you reaching Gen Z?
The short answer: we need to meet people where they are and then deliver information in a way that resonates with this demographic--authentically.
While there's a time and place to have the proverbial "woman or man in front of the map," that's not going to cut it with this audience. Rather, we've been experimenting with different formats to engage our nearly 20M followers on social media and partner with creators to reach a broader, more targeted audience.
These creators aren't meteorologists but rather show the role weather plays in their lives and how it empowers them in their activities and personal pursuits. The outdoor adventurer who is using The Weather Channel app to gauge snowfall, the beauty influencer who pays attention to seasonal shifts to guide her skincare choices, the amateur photographer who is trying to get the perfect shot at golden hour.
According to our research, 62% of Gen Zers say weather impacts their emotional well-being, so it's going beyond the functional needs and appealing to this audience on a more personal and relatable level that empowers them to make decisions with confidence and control.
It feels like we’re living in a moment when everyone is talking about the weather. How do you work with that?
It's funny, isn't it? Weather used to be polite dinner party conversation. Today, the weather is so much more than idle small talk.
Our weather is changing. That's not a political statement; it's a fact. 2024 was the hottest year on record. We’re seeing hurricanes form earlier and intensify more rapidly. Hurricane Beryl in the summer of 2024 was the earliest-forming Category 5 hurricane on record. Hurricane Helene last September affected areas of the country that don’t usually see hurricane effects, like Western North Carolina. The U.S. recorded the most tornadoes in at least a decade in 2024, including a tornado in Santa Cruz County that resulted in San Francisco's first-ever tornado warning. I live in Florida, a stone's throw from the beach, and was recently shoveling snow. According to the World Economic Forum, extreme weather is the world’s #1 risk. I could keep going.
The point is that Mother Nature is off the rails and keeping everyone on their toes. As a business, we provide value in a few ways. First, we provide facts and lead with science. We have more than 100 meteorologists on our team who work tirelessly to analyze more than 100 models to ultimately derive the world's most accurate forecast. That's not opinion; that's proven by a third party called ForecastWatch.
We're also helping businesses and brands understand the importance of having a weather strategy. As weather becomes more volatile and impactful, its influence will only become more powerful; it is the ultimate contextual accelerant. Savvy marketers understand that weather impacts consumer behavior, and we're partnering to help them understand how best to leverage those insights to better connect with their customers.
“According to our research, 62% of Gen Zers say weather impacts their emotional well-being, so it's going beyond the functional needs and appealing to this audience on a more personal and relatable level that empowers them to make decisions with confidence and control.”
At the Continuum, we’ve talked a lot about people wanting brands who share their values and even wanting brands that make a statement. Do you feel like you’re doing that around climate change?
Again, it’s not our position or motivation to make a statement. Our motivation is to provide people with the facts. Some people might interpret that as us taking a position, but our mission has been steadfast for over 40 years, and that is to instill confidence, drive decisions, and propel the world. In order to propel it, we first have to protect it.
Last year, we were honored to partner with the United Nations Development Programme and World Meteorological Organization on a global initiative called "Weather Kids." The campaign featured kids showing us what 2050’s forecast could look like, should we continue to delay climate action. The story was told through the lens of weather because that’s the primary way people feel the impact of climate change and through the voices of children because we can all agree we want a better future for the next generation. The goal was to boost awareness of the impact of climate change and mobilize people around the world to take meaningful action. Weather Kids was more than an opportunity; it was our responsibility--to use our brand trust and reach for good.
“Savvy marketers understand that weather impacts consumer behavior, and we're partnering to help them understand how best to leverage those insights to better connect with their customers.”
There have been a lot of high-impact storms in recent years. How do you react to those?
We cover the weather every single day, rain or shine. During more active weather, we go into high gear because there are people and businesses who are relying on us for their survival. Sadly, these events are becoming more common, and we have playbooks that we run while remaining nimble; no two events are the same.
Our approach originated in our coverage of hurricanes, but now we also use them for big winter storms or fires like the devastating ones earlier this year in California. The entire company unites in these moments—marketers, meteorologists, writers, our product team, and customer support—we feel an incredible responsibility to provide people with real-time, trusted information when they need us most.
The increasing frequency and severity of these events are also forcing us to up our game in terms of science and coverage. We’re looking at how we show up in places beyond our owned and operated properties to super-serve communities. Make no mistake, we’re a for-profit business, but there’s a real sense of responsibility and pushing ourselves to do even more because we've seen the devastation firsthand. That’s one of the things I love about this company and one of the things that has kept me here for so long.
Last question: what’s your favorite weather?
As someone who's California born and raised, I would be very happy if it was 70 degrees and sunny—preferably with little humidity—365 days of the year. Not great for business but good for my soul.
February 27, 2025
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