Backcountry Marketing

As a small team, how do you manage 5 very different bike brands? Jill and her team at Alta Cycling deal with this daily as they manage Diamondback, Raleigh, iZip, Redline, Haibike, and Ghost. In this episode, we talk about how they manage and differentiate each of the brands from each other but also from their competitors. From the episode: "You can't ignore a brand's heritage, but you do want peo...

Chris Dickey is the founder of an outdoor PR agency named Purple Orange. Working with brands like BioLite, Peak Design and Oru Kayak, Chris and his team kept noticing short-lived results from outstanding PR work. This troubled Chris and motivated him to build a tool called Visably. Visably provides marketers a way to check their brand ranking against a keyword in search. It's no longer about someo...

Josh Weichhand is the Marketing Director at Chaco. In this episode, we chat about doing work you believe in and not giving up on the path to doing so.  We also talk about Chaco's use of their brand voice during the Bears Ear protection rollbacks and about Josh's own journey of finding his voice and doing work he believes in. For many, the journey to finding a good fit in a career is not without ch...

Jay Matthews is the Director of Marketing at Sitka Gear. Sitka is a high-performance manufacturer and industry leader for hunting apparel and gear. Jay's career started on the football field but when life had different plans he ended up at Nike's SPARQ program. Spending his time learning from the best, Jay left Nike as a brand manager and ultimately landed his dream job at a company that stands fo...

From a young age, John has been fascinated with the ad world. From reading Ad Age magazines in high school to spending the last 23 years working in all disciplines of the industry, John is currently the Chief Strategy Officer at Drake Cooper. In this episode we chat about the role of creativity in the ad world, defining the problem you're trying to solve, the balance between art and commerce as we...

Oru Kayak made a large splash in 2013 by launching the first folding kayak on Kickstarter. Since then they've launched 5 more models, each with a successful ending. Jess Anthony runs Oru Kayak's marketing efforts and in this episode, we chat about what it takes to launch a successful Kickstarter as well as Jess's mission to increase equal representation for all people in the outdoors. From the epi...

When he's not working with some of the outdoor industry's top brands, Charlie spends his time skiing, hiking, and enjoying time with his family. After spending time in Seattle working at Outdoor Research, Charlie moved to Colorado to bring his talents to the agency, Backbone Media. Backbone is a PR and marketing agency with 70+ clients in the greater outdoor industry. These include Patagonia, Fils...

Casey isn't your average guy. From a young age, he's had an urge to break rules and do things differently and it's no surprise that his career has taken him to amazing locations with cool people. He even ran his own backpack company for a while before selling it to a major outdoor retailer. In this episode, Casey shares a bit about the work he's doing at Fjällräven as well as how he ended up manag...

Stephen Matthews is the Brand Manager at Rocky Mountain Bicycles. Born from the rocky mountains of North Vancouver, their bikes are tested and designed for the world's toughest terrain.  In this episode, we chat about the sport of mountain biking, the birth of freeride, and why race results aren't the only thing that matters to a brand like Rocky Mountain.

In this episode, I'm joined by Tom and Kyleigh and their two dogs from Freedom Vans. We discuss their origins, the realities of van life and how YouTube has doubled the waitlist on their production timelines.    

In this episode, I sit down and chat with Doug Thielen, the marketing director at Filson about the challenges and opportunities of working with a brand that was started in 1897. We chat about their history, but also how they are using branded films to continue the Filson legacy.

In today's episode, I sit down and chat with Michael Goldstein from The Heist, about his origins shooting mountain bike videos at Whistler to now, shooting commercials for GMC and Lulu Lemon and Jaybird.  

In this episode, I sit down with Sean Fields from Gear Aid and talk about how they have built a brand around the idea of failure. We also talk about Sean's favorite pair of leather boots and the future of recreation.

In this podcast, I sit down with Brian Seales the Creative Director at Ketchup and Mustard and discuss how they as an agency approach solving their client's problems. It might surprise you, but the first step is often the hardest. We also discuss the latest brand shifts in the energy drink world, look into buying a mattress and talk about where their name came from.