Axios Event: Media leaders seek to earn loyalty at a chaotic time for the industry

CANNES, FRANCE – Trust is a key asset to reach audiences in today's competitive media landscape, speakers said at an Axios event at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

Why it matters: Public trust in the media has been declining for years, and companies are focused on building relationships with their audiences to keep them coming back as platforms compete for attention.

Axios' Sara Fischer and Kerry Flynn spoke with Candle Media co-founder and co-CEO Kevin Mayer and the Wall Street Journal editor in chief Emma Tucker at the June 17 event, sponsored by Mastercard.

Context: Candle Media owns children's entertainment company Moonbug Entertainment and Reese Witherspoon's media company Hello Sunshine.

• Moonbug Entertainment produces the hit children's show CoComelon, and Candle Media successfully brought the show from YouTube to Netflix. The process of bringing a show from one platform to another works really well for this particular brand, Mayer said.

The big picture: "The main thesis I had when we created Candle was that we'd look at multiple different audience verticals and create a similar flywheel for each of them," Mayer said.

• That flywheel is "social media storytelling coupled with traditional media storytelling, and by that I mean film and TV-length programming coupled with commerce that the social media component really generates."
• The Moonbug Entertainment brand and CoComelon are a manifestation of this original vision, Mayer said. The brand has built a strong foundation, reaching a wide audience of kids and their parents.
• Because of the show's social media origins, "the reach was already so large, and the ability to communicate on a two-way basis with audiences, and especially parents … that naturally lends itself to commerce, and to licensing, and to creating toys, and plush, and clothing that's branded CoComelon."

The bottom line: People repeatedly come back for more from the brands they trust.

State of play: The media industry is undergoing a period of transformation.

• Tucker says she is consistently candid in her communications with colleagues to build internal trust as the media industry faces a "crisis."

• She tells them the audience has to be at the center of everything they do, and to continue taking risks with the stories they're telling. "I've said to them if we really, really focus on that, and we deliver journalism that is useful, compelling and that people will come back for, the attributions will follow."
• Tucker said she agrees news organizations need to be more transparent about how they get information to build audience trust in today's environment. "I think the more we explain about how we do our journalism, the more our readers will trust us."

Content from the sponsored segment:

In a View From the Top conversation, Mastercard chief marketing and communications officer Raja Rajamannar said the company is investing heavily in experiential marketing to influence consumers through positive experiences.

• "Advertising the way it is today is dead. Every single aspect of the advertising ecosystem needs to be reinvented," Rajamannar said.
• "At Mastercard, what we did is we cut down over the last few years our advertising budget by more than 70%, and moved that money to experimental marketing."