Calling:
Outdoor industry founders and marketeers:
How to get your outdoor brand to climb the mountain of growth
all without losing what makes you authentic.
Being distinctive and different is essential for brand growth
Yet you and I know that many outdoor brands look the same, sound the same and deploy the same marketing tactics.
What compounds these typical problems in the outdoor industry, is the fact that the marketing landscape is increasingly noisy and your target audience is increasingly distracted.
We’ve seen first hand with many clients that this is a real marketing problem when you are trying to grow your brand and increase sales.
You can’t generate cut-through and awareness for your brand, which means you can’t connect with new audiences.
Every time you launch new products or services, it feels like groundhog day, your internal teams caught on repeat, with no fresh ideas.
And whilst influencers and content creators might make beautiful ‘top of the mountain’ content, are they really delivering anything unique for your brand?
All sound too familiar?
Then you might want to consider a creative partner like ourselves to help you create growth and achieve your goals.
By working with Excursion Studio, you are accessing a specialist outdoor knowledge, and 20 years worth of diverse experience working across global brands outside the sector.
This guarantees fresh thinking, and gives you strategy, design, ideas, advertising and content to help cut through the noise.
Want to climb the mountain of growth today?
To the great outdoors via 20 years of building some of the world’s biggest brands:
Need to grow your outdoor lifestyle brand?
Read on
From Basecamp for your brand:
Nomads stand out, they don’t blend in
My fellow outdoor industry marketeers and founders, welcome to basecamp.
You made it, and you are ready to climb the mountain of brand growth.
And with a global adventure tourism market that will grow 584% between now and 2030 the view at the top won’t be priceless..
... it will be worth a cool $2,823.4bn
But here is the thing.
Whether your thing is trekking, camping, leisure, running, cycling, climbing, skiing or whatever your outdoor passion is you might have realised something.
You aren’t the only brand trying to make the metaphorical climb.
And what’s worse, you are all:
+ Wearing the same high vis jacket
+ Sharing the same stories around the camp fire
+ Planning the same route up the mountain
+ Trying to bring the same people with you
In short you are blending in to the wonderful community.
You aren’t standing out.
Now you don’t need me to tell you this ain’t good for your marketing.
If you’ve been listening to the esteemed marketing professor, Byron Sharp, of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, you’ll know being distinctive is key for being memorable.
And if you’ve been following IPA advertising legends Les Binet and Peter Fields studies, you’ll know that creating fame, and growing reach is central to growth.
So what’s it going to be?
Are you going to find a different path to the top?
Let's tackle these 5 monsters of outdoor industry marketing:
1. Swimming in a sea of sameness
You know you must be different and distinctive in order to stand out.
And whilst your awesome internal design and creative are great, they are finding it hard to break free from the language of the category.
Imagine if your teams had a fresh
perspective on how to swim above the tide.
2. Outdoor echo chambers
The Instagram and YouTube community you’ve built are solid, and loyal.
But you need to recruit beyond the close knit community of your niche; and as we know penetration isn’t easy.
Imagine if you had a different strategy to take to launch new products to new people.
3. Hooked on performance
Google and Instagram is your drug that keeps on giving.
But it’s never going to truly connect your brand with your target audience beyond the transaction.
Imagine if you could build brand as well as drive performance.
4. Staying authentic
Grow you must, but you want to stay true to what got you this far.
And trust us, you aren’t the only brand struggling with growing up and building a brand around communities.
Imagine if you could get ideas on how to do something new, but stay true.
5. Justifying the price premium
You’re not cheap, and who wants to be cheap anyway?
But the category likes a discount. That’s quickly become a race to the bottom.
So imagine if you had a partner who could help give you extra premium swagger.
Brand Explorer Proccess
How we get your brand to climb the mountain
Orientation
Where are we now? Where do we want to go? What might get us there?
A discovery process to understand the challenge and to identify insights and opportunities for growth.
Exploration
Which expansive space should your brand / product occupy? How and why will we get there?
Explore spaces for your brand/product, then define the strategy and expansive space.
Visibility
How do we stand out? What’s the story? What’s the brand identity?
Develop the ideas, stories and the distinctive design language that will take us up the mountain of growth.
Ascent
How do we execute the brand? How do we take the brand to the top? What’s the growth strategy?
Execute the brand in marketing, comms, content and experiences taking the brand to your target audience.
What our clients say about us:
“Working with Excursion Studio is like a shot of adrenaline”
Ed Cracknell
Head of brand
“My ‘go to’ strategist, Neil makes strategy incredibly simple and forward thinking, and has delivered brilliant strategy work for me across brand positioning, marketing and retail.”
Bhavna Buttan
Former COO
“Despite a small budget, Neil and the Excursion Studio team created a new brand for us at ACS and went over and above what we expected at every step of the way.”
Chris Mooney
Chief Revenue Officer
“The process was incredibly smooth, and real professionalism was shown throughout. We have ended up with a strong result, far better than what we could have expected.”
Richard Wilde
Founder
What to expect when working with us:
Insight, ideas and strategy
We build solutions through ideas, which come from insight and proven strategy.
Beyond the outdoors
We operate as specialists to the outdoor industry but bring generalist experience as 20 years of brand building in FMCG, luxury, retail, sports & fashion, beer, wines and spirits, finance, tech and digital, youth.
Creative and channel agnostic
We’ve built brands across the marketing mix. We’ll simply solve problems with the right tool for the job from design, innovation, advertising, experiential, content, packaging and even retail.
Inside or outside your creative/marketing team
Flexing to budgets and requirements we can operate as a fresh eyed extension to your team, or assemble the right creative team around you brief and challenges
Creatives beyond the outdoor niche
We’re plugged into the very best talent globally, and whilst we can speak to those who stay in their outdoor niche, our family of designers, creatives and copywriters have operated in all corners of advertising giving you a completely different fresh perspective.
Your base camp
Just like the most awesome team on a climb, ride or run, we’ve got your back. We’re here to help. Friendly and supportive, yet because we’ve got your best interest at heart we’ll tell you like it is.
Outdoor industry marketeers, and founders: Want help with your brand and marketing?
On our free brand appraisal, we’ll offer free advice on how to overcome your brand and marketing challenges:
Ready to get your brand climbing the mountain of brand growth?
It’s as simple as booking a 1 to 1 FREE brand appraisal with Neil.
- Click this link
- Choose a time that is good with you.
- Show up and be prepared to discuss your brand.
On the 1 to 1 Zoom call we’ll have conversation about where your brand is at and share the options in how we can help your brand.
Who is
?
Excursion Studio was founded by me, Neil Bennett in 2022.
I’ve spent 20 years building some of the worlds biggest brands, and some of the UK’s most revered independent agencies including Mother, AnalogFolk and LOVE.
Having put no same day to the test for all of this time solving all sorts of brand, communication and creative problems, our growing studio is a creative partner for the outdoor industry; a swiss army knife in strat- egy and creativity.
Want to discover more?
Download our FREE Mini-Paper: 3 x things outdoor brands need to stop doing to stand out more.
To get a head start on how you can kick start your brand to growth today.
Excursion.Studio Ltd is a company registered England and Wales (Company No. 13762205); registered office Oriel House 2 – 8 Oriel Road, Bootle, Merseyside L20 7ep; studio address: 16 Bennetts Hill, Oxton, Prenton, Ch43 5rz. All work copyright of Excursion.Studio
