Winning in today’s business landscape requires marketing that maintains a balance between AI-driven efficiency and heart-felt authenticity. Zara Carbonell-Near is a global leader in brand storytelling and social media strategy who has achieved countless wins in that area. As co-founder and managing director of social media at STOCK, she helps her agency’s clients develop strategies that leverage the power of AI without losing the human touch today’s consumers want to see.
“In the age of digitization and automation, marketers tend to disregard the most important value of all, which is humanity,” Carbonell-Near says. “At STOCK, our mission is to make marketing feel human again. We’re a new-age, AI-optimized organization that takes pride in being human-first. From the culture we set to build, to the way we communicate with our partners, to the solutions we offer, our goal is to merge AI solutions without losing that touch of humanity.”
STOCK is an expert-only-led, cross-functional commerce team that helps brands win on retail media channels and beyond. Its unique operating process diagnoses what’s limiting the growth, builds a clear plan, executes with speed, and optimizes relentlessly.
While STOCK is AI-native, it’s not AI-only. It helps its clients use AI to move faster with analytical insights, greater testing velocity, and enhanced content production workflows, but it still allows people to own the strategy, establish retailer nuances, and make the decisions that impact profit.
Zara Carbonell-Near: Helping brands make an impact through social media
Carbonell-Near’s resume overflows with a long list of impressive accomplishments. She’s a pageant winner, published author, football league founder, and an entrepreneur. To others looking for insights on how to garner similar successes, she says courage is the key.
“Courage trumps perfection,” Carbonell-Near explains. “Many times we block ourselves from trying because we get so caught up in the possibility of failure that we forget to account for the possibility of success. But I’ve learned the more you know yourself and the goal you’ve set for yourself, the more natural courage becomes.”
Carbonell-Near says her overarching goal has always been impact. When faced with opportunities, she assesses whether they will make her better or give her opportunities to pay it forward. If the potential for impact is there, she dips into her well of courage and moves forward.
Through her work at STOCK, Carbonell-Near’s attitudes about courage and impact spill over into the work she does for the agency’s clients. Whereas other agencies focus on vanity metrics, the STOCK team focuses on efforts that make a real impact on a brand’s success. STOCK’s north star is profitable growth, incremental sales, contribution margin, and sustainable scaling.
“At STOCK, we treat our clients’ businesses like our own,” Carbonell-Near says. “We look out for them, look out for opportunities for them, tell them hard truths if we need to.”
Zara Carbonell-Near: Helping brands make complex ideas relatable
STOCK empowers brands to move from scroll to sale by giving them social strategies that build brand trust, move products, and drive measurable commerce outcomes. Establishing relatable narratives is a key element of these strategies. By crafting a story people can understand and appreciate, STOCK helps brands build authentic relationships with their audiences.
“People listen and engage when they feel connected,” Carbonell-Near says. “Whether that involves tapping into a shared human experience or feeling represented, curiosity and connection are what make us stay and key in. If we get too engrossed in the technicalities of our profession — whether business or tech or sports — we forget the end users, who are the very people who need to understand what we do. The social strategies we give our clients bridge the gap between their industry and the people they serve through real everyday conversations, not paragraphs of technicalities and jargon.”
Carbonell-Near also encourages brands to move from promotion to purpose. She believes businesses gain an advantage when they value people and seek actual solutions that improve everyday human experiences.
“We’re all at some capacity waiting for the other shoe to drop and thinking every interaction has some sort of modus, especially with brands,” Carbonell-Near says. “So our job as brand storytellers is to bring the founding story back to life. Why was this brand even built? What value does it add to your human experience? How do we serve you better? Instead of bombarding your audience with more trends, we aim to try and create value.”
To win in today’s social media landscape, brands must understand that social media posts don’t automatically translate to social media presence. Only when brand action translates to consumer activity do brands experience greater visibility and, consequently, measurable revenue growth. STOCK helps brands show up and convert on social channels through strategies that leverage humanity and authenticity to build connections.
“If you want your brand to build a strong presence, it’s time to start talking about what actually matters to the people you’re trying to serve,” Carbonell-Near says. “We leverage social media for the brands we work with to help them actually get social with the people they want in their communities.”