- Columbia Sportswear is embracing grit and humor with a new multi-season ad campaign that arrives nearly a 12 months after the outdoor apparel maker revamped its marketing leadership and agency roster, per news shared with Marketing Dive.
- “Engineered for Whatever,” a part of Columbia’s first brand platform relaunch in a decade, leverages dark humor to display the sturdiness of its gear. The titular 30-second spot begins with a hiker stopping to smell the flowers before getting jumped by a snake, setting the tone for the narrative that shows people in peril.
- Columbia also enlisted real stunt performers to place its goods to the test in hairy situations, similar to dangling above predator-infested waters. Beyond the video ads, the corporate is refreshing its visual identity with a new typeface, logo lockup, color palette and touch-ups for other assets appearing across retail, social and digital channels.
Columbia is taking notes from “Jackass” and “127 Hours” with a campaign that mixes laughs with a tough-as-nails attitude. The revamped messaging and visual identity follow the brand appointing new marketing leadership in October, with Matthew Sutton joining the outdoor company as head of marketing. Around the identical the time, Columbia named Adam&eveDDB as its global agency of record following a competitive review.
“Engineered for Whatever” goals to position 87-year-old Columbia as a disruptor in a category that tends to portray the nice outdoors as “pristine and excellent,” executives said. The brand had seen a sales recovery in recent quarters after a period of flagging consumer demand but is now grappling with the impact of tariffs. One of its goals has been to bring product strategy and marketing closer together to boost awareness for proprietary technology innovations like its Omni-Heat, Omni-Max, Omni-Shade and Omni-Freeze offerings.
The new campaign puts that mandate into motion with ads depicting heightened versions of the extraordinary testing Columbia goods undergo. Those trials include: being chased by desert vultures and the literal Grim Reaper; enduring temperatures so cold they crack teeth; and face-planting within the mud on a trail run. A thrash metal cover of the often dreamy “Blue Skies” serves because the soundtrack.
“Some people think nature is like this,” a gap narration says over footage of a hiker stopping to understand the flowers on an idyllic trail. “It’s actually like this,” the narrator continues as a snake suddenly shoots out from the comb to bite the hiker.
The business features an appearance by mountaineer Aron Ralston, who again finds himself trapped between a canyon and a falling boulder, a situation that led him to chop off a part of his right arm in 2003. The harrowing predicament inspired his autobiography, “Between a Rock and a Hard Place,” which was later adapted into the feature film “127 Hours.” Henry-Alex Rubin directed “Engineered for Whatever,” with production by Smuggler.
“By embracing the true and unexpected sides of adventure we’re staying true to our legacy and breaking away from the ocean of sameness in our industry,” said Columbia marketing head Sutton in a press release.
A separate video, releasing later in August, shows off the sturdiness of Columbia’s ROC pants by having a stunt performer dangle over waters teeming with alligators, his lifeline to a helicopter made up of multiple pairs of the pants tied together. Future stunt-oriented creative will show people strapped to a snowplow to advertise Columbia’s Omni-Heat Infinity technology and tumbling down a mountain slope in a snowball while keeping warm with the brand’s puffer jackets.
In addition, Columbia is running out-of-home ads that carry the identical throughline of punchy humor. Social, display, audio and connected TV elements round out the media plan.
Columbia Sportswear’s sales increased 6% within the second quarter, the corporate announced last week. However, sales were down 2% within the U.S., which was offset by growth in international markets. The company expects tariffs to place pressure on sales going forward.
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