Robert Sawyer (00:00):

This is a new outside and I think for us it was kind of a re-energizing in the company, which is like, here's a new way forward. I reignited this passion in myself of these opportunities have real tangible effects on community and on each other, and seeing that is just such a joy for me because nature plus community equals magic.

Cole Heilborn (00:21):

Welcome to the Backcountry Marketing podcast. I'm your host Cole Heilborn. On this podcast, you'll hear from leaders in the outdoor marketing industry discuss the gritty details of their work as well as the latest challenges and lessons they're learning along the way. If you want to hone your craft and become a stronger marketer, then this podcast is for you. This podcast is produced by Portside Productions, an outdoor film production company based in the Pacific Northwest. If you work at a brand or agency in the outdoor industry that needs help bringing a video project to life, head over to portsidepro.com and send us an email we'd love to help. Welcome to the Backcountry Marketing podcast from Portside Productions. Today we're talking about this idea of marketing as a laboratory. We're going to be discussing how marketing can be used as a laboratory to forge a new model of outdoor gathering. Today's guest is Robert Sawyer. He's the creative director of experiential marketing at Outside. Robert, welcome to the show.

Robert Sawyer (01:14):

Hi. Yeah, thanks for having me. Really excited to be here and be a part of the podcast.

Cole Heilborn (01:19):

Yeah, it's great for you to take the time. I'm excited to dig into this conversation. Can you give us an opening statement, this idea of marketing as a laboratory, and we're going to be specifically when you're talking about the outside festival that happened earlier this year and some of the things that you were working on bringing that festival to light, and then some of the lessons and the things that you've learned since that festival. As we were discussing topics and what could we bring to the audience today, you had this idea of could we have a conversation about forging a new model of outdoor gathering? So why is this something that's top of mind for you?

Robert Sawyer (01:51):

To be honest, it's one of those things where I've just been hearing statistics about cultural pain points with regards to living in cities, living in suburban America and not having access to green spaces and how it's having detrimental effects on people's mental and physical wellbeing. And then also, so having that pain point and how that translate to a deep passion of mine and why I'm here really at outside. And so part of this conversation is to try to figure out how to meet those pain points with the greatest points of passion that I have.

Cole Heilborn (02:26):

I think you'd mentioned, I think you said culture is in pain. I think you had a couple of statistics that were interesting. You said, we look at our phones 144 times a day for an average of four and a half hours a day and 50% of us experience loneliness. Can you kind of expand on what you mean by cultures and pain and some of those stats and how that fuels your passion for getting people outside?

Robert Sawyer (02:49):

Yeah, it's just, as a father, it's 70% less likely social interaction for younger demographics than two decades ago. And that for me is super striking and having people report feeling lonely every day or multiple days a week is something that I feel like is painful. And also just living arrangements where American cities are in cultural flux, probably now more than ever, anger is about high housing prices and gentrification has led to protests. Urban wage premiums have disappeared for skilled workers, and access to green space is kind of at the forefront of state and federal conversations at this point. And so I feel like a lot of those things are ultimately leading to this is a pretty visible picture of pain and culture despite where you live or how you are mentally and physically. It's just kind of something that's happening in culture and I've been picking up on it on these statistics that hopefully we can address at outside.

Cole Heilborn (03:57):

Yeah, I mean it seems like, and we're going to get into this, but it seems like there's such a, you talk about these big topics and these big statistics about life and how people are living, and then you think about the solution, which maybe is something as simple as getting someone outside or connected to others outside. It seems like, I'm not saying that is the remedy, but that maybe is a piece of the remedy and it seems simple. Does that strike you as being kind of an odd comparison between these huge dynamic forces and something that's really such a simple concept?

Robert Sawyer (04:31):

Yeah, often I feel like the simplest things are kind of somewhat an indication or a clue to the solution. And one of those things is that being outside decreases depression, it improves heart health, it reduces stress and anxiety, and I would wager probably reduces social and racial prejudice too. Just being out there in the elements, you're kind of confronted with more basic parts of yourself and a lot of those complex things kind of wash away and you're able to connect on a more fundamental level. And I think the outdoors is a tool for that experience. And so it's a large concept, large solution. I don't think it's really that easy, but I think the outdoors is kind of the mechanism and method to get to that ultimately restoration process.

Cole Heilborn (05:23):

So let's back up a little bit. Can you give folks a quick introduction, quick background on yourself and what your role is at outside and more specifically with the festival?

Robert Sawyer (05:33):

So I'm the creative director of experiential marketing and outside, I came from print, I had an MFA in print media and then slowly transitioned more into experiential marketing and in real life events through the Warren Miller film tour and now through the inaugural outside festival, which we threw last year.

Cole Heilborn (05:52):

I love that nature plus community equals magic. That should be for folks who can't see Robert Tour, a really ironic hat right now. Maybe you should get Nature plus community equals magic also on a

Robert Sawyer (06:05):

Hat. Oh yeah. And I feel like it's one of those things that other companies really buy into REI saying A life outdoors is a life well lived, poignant, perfect hug Barry, see you out there. And that combination of the invitation and the grace is where the magic happens. So it's not just outside, we are doing nothing new. This is something we're building together, and honestly, it just takes magicians in all of those different companies to help construct this thing together. I think that can help address some of those pain points.

Cole Heilborn (06:38):

So yeah, tell me more about the festival. It sounds like it was a great success. It was the first ever outside festival. Can you give us some background on where the idea for the show came from and then your team was involved with much of the rollout with the show? Break that down for us.

Robert Sawyer (06:59):

So I'm going to have to give a ton of credit to the director of the festival, Christopher Gerard, and we had such an amazing roster of partners, sponsors and people who are actually putting on the show that quite frankly we wouldn't be able to do without. And honestly, that's again where I can continue to point to is we would not be able to do this thing at all. And honestly, a lot of the reason why we did it was because we had seen a kind of strategic opening in Denver and Colorado specifically where a lot of the political conversations are starting to lean towards helping provide open access to green spaces and seeing that as kind of a cultural and a company mission statement. For us, we just found it to be an easy partnership for the two of us and also multiple other entities, and we just felt like, well, why not give it a shot? We ended up with an amazing festival over three days, 18,000 participants, gobs of impressions, lots of eyeballs, people traveling from lots of other states and people now who have sent us plans are saying, can't wait to come next year. This is a destination in my many stops along the festival tour that I typically take. So

(08:20):

Really thrilled with it, excited to take it into the next step. It's still in its infancy and likely we're really excited to be where it's at, but really, really, really pumped about where it came.

Cole Heilborn (08:32):

And share more about your role, what you were working on within the festival.

Robert Sawyer (08:38):

Yeah, so I was kind of the creative director. I did a lot of the visuals behind it, helped guide a lot of the creative messaging. Interesting.

Cole Heilborn (08:49):

So connecting this back to the outside festival and understanding your passion for getting people outside and helping people experience the outdoors for all the reasons we listed. I'm curious, you have a really deep, I feel like you're very in touch with the words and the meaning behind words and how we describe things to others and how we invite others to an event. In this case, your particularness about words in a tagline, how does that connect to all the creative work that you were doing at the outside festival

Robert Sawyer (09:25):

When building the brand strategy and the brand deck, which I think are some of the most important pieces in the campaign, letting your sponsors know what you stand for. There's brand standards, right? There's the way that you show up normally. And then in my opinion, there's also brand expressions, and this is probably something not really new, but it's something I've been thinking about critically, which is brand standards are how you show up normally, brand expressions are how you show up, showing your feeling. How does your brand show joy when there's something to be celebrated and how does it show sorrow when something is sad? Some of the best brands in my opinion, show up different depending on who they're interacting with. And I turned to Nike again because I think they show up in corporate meetings and RFP decks and sales things with a specific way, but they also have a plan to show up in neighborhoods and cities establishing the feeling of being inherently a part of that community.

(10:24):

And I think that's the best way of creating that brand loyalty, which is knowing and seeing them and understanding their needs before you even meet them. And that's the best way that they show that you're a part of that family because you identify and you're showing that identification first as opposed to shoving an advertisement in their face. So in my opinion, when it comes to the most critical assets and deliverables that we're talking about right now, it's the brand standards and the brand expressions of how is that built in flexibility for the festival show up for the communities that we're talking about statewide and nationally.

Cole Heilborn (11:07):

Interesting. And how much consideration do you give to your audience, your intended audiences for the show as you're working on your standards or your expressions or do you let those, you define those and then you reach your audience or do you consider your audience and then develop the standards? Which way? How do you think about that?

Robert Sawyer (11:25):

Yeah, yeah. It's trying to come up with the conversation in my head, which is like, all right, there's the introduction. That's the saying hi, that's the tagline we're talking about. And then there's the actual meeting, which is how we first show up to them. And I've got a lot of my experience with this with the Warren Miller film tour where we've traveled to a variety of different cities around the nation and all of them have their own different ski enthusiasts and all of them have their own outdoor adjacent folks. And the problem is just kind of learning how to speak generally to everybody because trying to encourage everybody to get outdoors, which is a lofty goal. But then there's also the nuance of we're also talking specifically to outdoor enthusiasts who have their own BS meters that go a mile high and their own reasons for getting outdoors that are pretty particular about the gear that they wear and why they do it and who they do it with and how they do it. So learning to craft the message differently for every person so that they feel like they're confronted with what they want first.

Cole Heilborn (12:28):

What about for the audience that isn't your outdoor enthusiast and maybe they're the type of people who don't get outside, but they're experiencing loneliness or they're experiencing some of this cultural pain that we are speaking to. Obviously getting them to a festival like this or encouraging them to get outside has a lot of benefit. How do you think about how the festival plays a role in how you speak to those people in bringing them to the festival or encouraging them to get outside?

Robert Sawyer (13:00):

For me, it's just about doing it and being there in the center of Denver and what we experienced quite literally was we had only a certain number of tickets sold before the event, but then the massive influx of people who were just walking up to the festival, they heard music, they saw the amount of people walking in and they just joined the crowd was a part of the magic that actually happened was like, Hey, we're doing this thing. Our gates are open, you come buy a ticket and you have access to absolutely everything here.

Cole Heilborn (13:36):

What role do you feel like a festival like this can play in getting people outside? Do you feel like it can play a key role in someone's journey to find themselves outside?

Robert Sawyer (13:47):

I think so. There's a specific letter I wanted to, this is a very perfect case study for how I think it worked. It's a very short letter. I'll just read it real quick.

Cole Heilborn (14:00):

Yeah,

Robert Sawyer (14:01):

Dear outside team, hello. I wanted to share what an impact outside had on me. A couple of years ago I deleted all social media and news outlets. I started to look for other ways to keep myself occupied without scrolling. I love the outdoors and my family bought a camper last year so that we could raise our children and love and appreciate nature around us. I happened to see an advertisement at the outside festival and told my husband it would be a dream that I could go. I should also state that I live in Dallas, Georgia, right outside Atlanta, so color is across the country for us. A week before the festival, my husband told me that he could take work off so that and watch our children set, my friend and I could go. I couldn't believe it that we were actually doing it. I had never been to Colorado, so was excited to visit a bucket list state at the festival.

(14:45):

I had so much fun walking around at the vendors, playing games, winning prizes, entering the competition and watching people on the climbing walls. All this to say outside inspired me to take a cross country spur of the moment trip. It made me fall in love with Colorado and inspired me to get outside and see more of the world. Thank you so much for all the work you did, and I can't wait to visit outside festival again next year. So in my opinion, there's the perfect reason for why I think it's working, which is people from Georgia are seeing what we're doing and taking last minute flights, booking last minute hotels to get here.

Cole Heilborn (15:23):

That's cool. That's a neat note to receive and I'm sure you received many more like that.

Robert Sawyer (15:29):

Oh yeah. It's all the more reason for me to want to keep doing it and to put in just as much blood, sweat and tears to do it Again, just seeing that and also imagining that for, I'm doing this for my neighbor, I'm doing this for my city, I'm doing this for my state, I'm doing this for my family and I want to be able to say that they have the equal opportunity to do that. No prejudices involved at all. I came home right after the festival was over and my daughter came to me and said, Hey dad, can we go camping? So I said, we haven't gone camping yet. So this was like, it's a success. It's hitting someone who's three years old.

Cole Heilborn (16:07):

So when you say marketing as a laboratory, what's the laboratory and what's the experiment that you're running?

Robert Sawyer (16:15):

Yeah, the laboratory is honestly, it takes, it's a mind trust of individuals that go in and are talking externally with other brands but are talking internally with how everything kind of aligns to the three pillars we're talking about is as long as you show up sustainability inclusively and are creative, then we have something to talk about. And so when we have that kind shared sequence between us, then we can start to really meddle with let's take a risk and let's just see what outside festival can do. When we talk about satellite shows, when we talk about something where let's bring in some more fashion forward things which maybe appeals to other individuals who might not be outside focused but really love GOCO for example. So we're hitting those instances as well. Well, from what I do in my trend research is fashion is another thing that really hits Gen Zs hard, and this is one of the reasons why I'm wearing this hat too, which is like there are multiple different ways to engage with younger audiences and ultimately every audience, but I think ultimately what we're trying to do is just be open about the brand standards and our brand expressions and being able to take those risks and try it out.

(17:41):

And that's what we ultimately experienced with last year is some of these brands, they don't take part in first year festivals, but they did and they ultimately saw that amazing reward about doing it.

Cole Heilborn (17:55):

You mentioned the risks involved with producing something like this. I also think about the risks involved with not producing something like the festival. If this is a catalyst for someone to leave Georgia and come to Colorado for a week and visit, I can only imagine what sort of impact that might have on that person's life for the next 10 years. But if you didn't produce the festival, if you didn't take the risk to produce the festival, what's the downside? How might that negatively impact someone's life? But we wouldn't even know it.

Robert Sawyer (18:28):

Yeah, I mean I just feel like we're running the risk of not trying. The whole point is to try and that's implicit in the risk is to try it. And if you don't try then you're not ultimately not going to address any of the pain points we've talked about previously, which I just get scared if you don't try. My wife is a children's play therapist and we're already seeing the impact of phones and screens on children's brains in development, and it's heartbreaking to see that social interaction just keeps dropping. And for me as a father, I'm just trying to address that as best I can in my own family context, but also bringing that energy to outside and really helping address children who might not have the same resources that we do so that they have the same opportunity. Ultimately, what I believe is that outside is for everybody. Outside is for everyone.

Cole Heilborn (19:37):

Do you think about that on a daily basis as you're working through the creative for anything that you're working on for this case, the festival? Does that run through your mind constantly?

Robert Sawyer (19:47):

Yeah, yeah. I mean what constantly gives me more juice for my creative. Everybody knows for me I have a creative tank and where that tank is depleted, my creative goes way down. And I'm sure that sentiment is shared amongst a lot of creatives as well is when that you got to keep your tank energized and sometimes that just means you having the proper work life balance, but also means having the right energy to kind of refuel that tank faster. And so ultimately that feeling and remembrance of joy in the outdoors and how that can be a fundamental human and how everyone deserves access to it, ultimately gives me that reinvigorated energy because I feel like it's the community helping me move forward just because people need it. The feeling of join the outdoor is a fundamental human is ultimately a reality.

Cole Heilborn (20:43):

Does it feel, I'm imagining this is very simplistic image that I'm conjuring up here, but I'm imagining you pushing this giant rock uphill and this rock is your calling to help people get outside, and I'm imagining you trying to do that through the festival, through all of the creative components of the festival. That feels like a large uphill battle. Does that ever weigh on you?

Robert Sawyer (21:14):

Oh yeah. When you say it was like a boulder, it was a frigging, it was a nugget of a boulder. It was one step up the other. There was more people to kind of keep pushing that rock uphill and ultimately what led to this. And so that's why my call to everyone else who might be listening is like, it takes a team, it takes everybody. It's not anything magic that we're doing here. The magic is everybody all building it together and that's ultimately where're open, we're happy we're doing it again. And that's what makes the Boulder light.

Cole Heilborn (21:46):

I think at one point you had mentioned said idea of the outside portfolio is kind of a melting pot and how can we use this portfolio to help get people outside? I'm expanding beyond the festival now, but considering all of the components of the outside company, how do you guys think about that at large?

Robert Sawyer (22:06):

To be honest, seeing outside networks reach in terms of how it appeals to a variety of different audiences through our own portfolio of brands is quite astounding. And that's the reason why we have so many eyeballs and so many people can see this is because you could see us through pink bike, you could see us through backpacker. You might be able to see the festival through yoga journal, which might not typically come through the yoga journal method, but it's something interesting and you show up and there's actually yoga in the park in the morning led by core power yoga. All of a sudden each of these individual brands has their own ways of doing things and create this opportunity for cross-pollinization, which I think is ultimately what we're trying to get to is like, yeah, we have all these individual brands and they live by themselves, but they ultimately point directly towards this core, which is the melting pot and the magic and the cross-pollinization of all these things is you might be interested in skiing, but you also love going backpacking in the summer, so therefore we have that connection for you. Sounds great to me.

Cole Heilborn (23:11):

I wanted to come back to that note of feedback that you got the positive feedback. Was there any critical feedback about the festival? And I guess I'm curious about critical feedback that maybe made you realize we weren't speaking to a particular audience in the right way, or this group of people didn't feel invited to the outdoors, it's making you rethink some of your elements for next year.

Robert Sawyer (23:35):

Yeah, the critical feedback kind of came early in the campaign to be honest, which was just like, I don't know if outside can do it.

(23:46):

It was a lot of just kind of the nay saying, we've seen you try and a bunch of other campaigns. I followed you and didn't quite hit the mark or it didn't quite get what you were trying to talk about. So a lot of that naysay came early and then it went quiet and people just watched and they waited. And ultimately when the event came, I think people are, they were shocked a little bit with this is a new outside, and I think for us it was kind of a re-energizing in the company, which is like, here's a new way forward. Which is why helping us force this new model for the company too, is just getting to that place. And this is what the director of marketing told me in the two plus decades of my outdoor industry. This has been by far the most diverse event that I've ever been a part of.

(24:39):

And so having that just be mentioned was kind of another evidence after the fact that was like, I was watching, I was waiting, I was looking for this, but ultimately I was pleased to see how it turned out. So I think the criticism came early, not so much criticism afterwards. I think it's kind of a, okay, you did it. Let's see you do it again. Let's see how you can actually replicate it. Everyone knows that making the first film might be good, making the second can be another task. And so I think that's what we're up to right now,

Cole Heilborn (25:14):

Which makes the trilogy of the Lord of the Rings all that much more impressive.

Robert Sawyer (25:18):

Exactly. Exactly, exactly.

Cole Heilborn (25:23):

Yeah, that's cool. What do you hope that people can learn from observing the festival and either apply to their own events, their own brands, and I guess specifically again in this idea of using marketing as a laboratory using these big risky ventures as a laboratory for getting people outside?

Robert Sawyer (25:46):

Yeah, I guess my 2 cents, why the hell not go for it? Because not doing it is not moving. I was a basketball player and an athlete, you miss a hundred percent of the shots you don't take, so just try it. But the best way you can try it is probably by doing it with other people. So find people who are interested with you, have similar perspectives and worldviews, and then start talking to them. Try not to work in a silo. Make sure there's ego is taken out of the equation. Ego is one of the biggest killers, in my opinion. This is one of the things that we're all doing together. If we all kind of agree on these things, ultimately what we're trying to serve is the community at large by our individual platforms. So my two sons would be those things.

Cole Heilborn (26:43):

How much of marketing is risky?

Robert Sawyer (26:46):

Yeah, that's a really good question. I would say for probably our marketing ops person, I feel like she sees the numbers so much more than I do. I'm just like, let's do it. And she's like, let's make sure that this is, what is the conversion rate? How much can we do this? She's the one who actually addresses the risk involved versus the return. And I said, everything in marketing is risky, so long as you want to move the ball forward. If you don't want to move the ball forward, sounds great. You're not going to take risks, and I don't think you're not going to make any movement really in what you're trying to do. So I think risk is implied with success and failure, but if you don't do that, you won't succeed at all.

Cole Heilborn (27:28):

So in this mission of getting people outside, what do you attribute most to getting people outside? And I'm leaving that really vague just because I want to hear your response.

Robert Sawyer (27:40):

What do I attribute most to people getting outside

Cole Heilborn (27:44):

Folks who are new to it,

Robert Sawyer (27:46):

Who

Cole Heilborn (27:46):

Maybe,

Robert Sawyer (27:47):

Yeah, I think it's that appeal to joy. It's kind of seeing the person who has done something and go like you, that was freaking great. They want to experience that same energy for themselves. I think that's it. But I think the perceptions that could prevent people from doing that would be the high cost of investment in what it took to get to that place. The fear of injury of possibly not getting it right. They might not be as physically adept or they just might not be able to quite pull off those stunts.

Cole Heilborn (28:21):

That this idea of joy, does that influence any of the creative for the festival? Oh yeah. For next

Robert Sawyer (28:30):

Year? Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm stoked where we are next year, where we are in our iterations, we're working with some funny illustrators and the element of joy and excitement and wow, that looks fricking cool is going to be amplified. And I just can't share a whole lot about that, but I can just say it's going to be a whole lot more fun looking.

Cole Heilborn (28:52):

Robert, is there anything that we haven't chatted about that you want to share? Any last thoughts or takeaways from our conversation that you want to leave people with?

Robert Sawyer (29:00):

I heard this one thing, one of my commencement speeches when I graduated from school, and it was this guy who basically said, don't take care, take risks. We have to do something about the pain that's very real in society that everybody in every business is still so keenly aware of, and if we don't do it, it's just going to get worse. So take those risks if it's worth taking, spend the money, spend the time and work together on those things is ultimately where I want to leave most people with is drop the ego work together.

Cole Heilborn (29:36):

That's it. I like that. Don't care. Take risks. I don't have to think about that.

Robert Sawyer (29:40):

Yeah, think about it. I've been thinking about it for probably four years now, so it's just kind of one of those things where I will see how it sits, but it certainly got me thinking and I think creating in a new

Cole Heilborn (29:52):

Way. I'm going to add that maybe we should start a backcountry marketing quote wall because there's been a number of quotes that if folks have said that I've written down and they're on a post-it note somewhere. Another one that I love is Crumbs Make a cake. Mike Rogie from Mountain Gazette shared that quote with me and I was like, oh, that's so good. Everything takes time. Everything is built to peace at a time, and you don't just show up one day and a beautiful cake is ready and presentable. It takes piece by piece, crumb by crumb as they come

Robert Sawyer (30:25):

Together. Yeah, absolutely.

Cole Heilborn (30:27):

That's a new idea. Maybe we'll have to put that together a a virtual quote wall or something.

Robert Sawyer (30:32):

There you go. If you got a quote wall, I'll make it half for it.

Cole Heilborn (30:34):

Oh, there you go, man. Alright, now we're getting into the merchandise. I like this. Well, Robert, I want to thank you for taking the time to chat and share the behind the scenes of the festival and just getting to learn a little bit more about some of the very specific things that your team was working on, but also how it all ladders up into this much bigger mission of getting people outside and genuinely trying to, well, as you said, going beyond caring, taking risks, putting this stuff together, and making the investment to try to help people. So thank you for trying to continue that mission and thanks for sharing the story here on the show.

Robert Sawyer (31:15):

Yeah, thank you so much. Thank you for having me. It's been great.

Cole Heilborn (31:17):

Robert, if folks want to follow along with you, if they want to continue this conversation, where can they find you?

Robert Sawyer (31:23):

Yeah, LinkedIn, please follow me on LinkedIn. Message me on LinkedIn. That's my primary go-to

Cole Heilborn (31:29):

Once the next festival comes around, we should just turn on our computers and we'll see something about it. Is there anywhere specific people should go to learn more about the second festival?

Robert Sawyer (31:37):

Yeah, the outside festival.com. Perfect. The new website will be launching? Yeah, probably sometime in next month. Cool.

Cole Heilborn (31:47):

Awesome. Robert, thanks again. I hope you have a great rest of your day.

Robert Sawyer (31:50):

Alright, thank you. Bye bye.

Cole Heilborn (31:52):

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Backcountry Marketing Podcast. Please share it with a friend or leave us a review on Apple. I.

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