Conference Video: The Weather Company is All About Local

Weather is an inherently localized subject according to The Weather Company’s Denise Chuddy. She and I spent lots of time talking about that on stage at our December Leading in Local conference.

This opens up all kinds of opportunities for the company (formerly The Weather Channel) to do location targeted mobile content delivery. And not only is weather inherently local, but it’s inherent in lots of product advertising (think umbrellas or soup).

This is unfolding in lots of interesting ways that are endemic to BIA/Kelsey’s upcoming Leading in Local Conference in May. The topic there is National entities that are competing at the local level and reflecting as much in their ad targeting.

The Weather Company interview came to mind today, not just because we’re gearing up for lots of similar fireside chats at the May conference, but because of two observations this morning. The Weather Company was central to both.

The first is its partnership with Songza to apply weather to the art of music discovery. This makes music yet another thing that weather relates to (think Zeppelin’s The Rain Song). It’s also conducive to Songza’s music discovery paradigm, as opposed to on-demand listening a la Spotify.

The second item jumped out at me during morning news gathering. Seen above, The Weather Company’s new banner ad further characterizes its Mobile Local push. It is a direct representation of everything in the interview below, and something we expect to continue seeing from TWC.

The video is below, and we’ll have much more where that came from in May in Atlanta. Hope to see you there.