Niclas Bornling (00:00:00):

What happened? These brands just completely missed out on the cultural switch or the change in consumer landscape that happened around 2010, 2015 or something like that. What we're seeing today in the outdoor world is comparable to what happened at that point, and that's a little bit of a doom and gloom as well, but it also spells huge opportunity.

Cole Heilborn (00:00:23):

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 that are learning along the way. If you want to hone your craft and become a stronger marketer than 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 portside pro.com and send us an email we'd love to help.

Cole Heilborn (00:00:56):

Welcome to the Backcountry Marketing podcast. Today I'm sitting down with Niclas Bornling. He is an outdoor veteran, been in the industry for 25 plus years. Niclas, you spent sounds like about 10 years over in France and you've spent the last 10 years or so here in the US working for a number of US brands, Salomon, Black Diamond, and a number of others. Niclas, welcome to the show.

Niclas Bornling (00:01:16):

Thanks, Cole. Exciting. Looking forward to it.

Cole Heilborn (00:01:19):

Yeah, I am looking forward to this as well. This is a couple years in the making. I feel that we tried to pull something together a little bit ago and here we are ready to record and ready to sit down and dive in. We've got a fun conversation. I dunno if fun is the right word. We have a timely conversation, I think scheduled for today. We've been on a bit of a doom and gloom click with the episodes we've been rolling out over the last few weeks, and that isn't intentional. It just seems to be, this seems to be what's on people's minds. We recently put out an episode with Josh Weichand from Rumpl talking about this forest fire rolling through the industry. That was the analogy that he used. Before that we had an episode with Matt Powell talking about just some of the economic challenges that the industry has.

(00:02:07):

And Niclas, we're going to kind of continue that trend a little bit, but talk about the challenges the industry faces from a different perspective, looking a little bit back in time to hopefully forecast and help us prepare for the future. And Niclas, I think you said it best, when we connected for an intro call a couple of weeks ago, you said, you asked me a question. You said, Cole, what do the brands, Quicksilver, DC shoes, Roxy and Volcom all have in common? And you said, I didn't know the answer and I think you helped me out. And you said they're brands that were once juggernauts and who knows where they are today, you said we should be paying attention to this lesson that happened in the early two thousands, 2000 tens. And so with that, Niclas, I'd love if you could give us an opening statement on what you've got kicking around.

Niclas Bornling (00:02:55):

Well, the comparison that I am making and the reason why I asked you what happened to Volcom, what happened to dc, Quicksilver, Roxy, Billabong, rip Curl, and the list is long, right? I mean, they were incredibly powerful at the time. They were big brands, they were driving a lot of revenue and they were intertwined with at the time a very culturally relevant trend that is happening around and then huge brand stores on the middle of Manhattan. And I'm thinking about the Quick Civil Roxy store and all that kind of stuff to nothing, absolutely nothing today. And there is something to be learned from what happened there. And whatever I'm going to say about that is obviously my own sort of learnings and reflections and trying to make sense of the outdoor landscape in general and also as an extension, athletics and sports because it's all sort of intertwined and you can add to that fashion and lifestyle and all that stuff.

(00:04:08):

What happened in the way that I look at it is these brands just completely missed out on the cultural switch or the change in consumer landscape that happened around 2010, 2015 or something like that. And I think that what we're seeing today in the outdoor world is comparable to what happened at that point. And that's a little bit of a doom and gloom as well. But it also spells huge opportunity and we're going to get into it and if you want me to continue digging into just that one, but really there is a learning from what happened to billion dollar brands that were right in the center of culture at the time to being completely not part of culture today and what happened to outdoor brands and what outdoor brands are going through right now in outdoor retail.

Cole Heilborn (00:05:07):

Well, yeah, sounds like we've got a lot to dive into. This is a hefty idea, hefty episode. Before we do, could you give us a quick little background on yourself, where you've been over the last 20 years and some of the brands that you've worked with?

Niclas Bornling (00:05:24):

Yeah, sure. I think I'm probably getting a little bit on the old side right now because when I'm going back in time, I started realizing that I started in the industry a long time ago, but I am originally from Sweden. I was trying to be an athlete at one point and that led me on to working at an ad agency in the beginning and then got really lucky, got picked up by accident. I tend to think by Salomon in a local marketing role. And that set off the most informative learning experience, pivotal to me in my career. What I learned during that period of time at Salomon, which was 15 years, I have to thank for pretty much everything else that comes afterwards, even including meeting my wife. Actually, this is at a point of time when people started racing in the outdoors, actually going from A to Z the fastest you could.

(00:06:39):

This is when Salomon was almost the world global leader in inline skating. Believe it or not. It was a very creative period of time. It's a lot of stuff happened in that time that today has huge ramifications on brands that either made it to the next level or stayed where they were and potentially have almost started to sort of disappear. And after having sort of done the executional nature of marketing locally, I wanted to be working at HQ and got a transfer to one of the most beautiful places on the planet, which is right in the center of the French Alps within a striking distance of a hundred ski resorts and the most famous one being Shani, which is 45 minutes from Nessy where Salomon's global headquarters is based and Nessy is right next to the Swiss border and an hour from Italy and you name it, it's paradise really, which I spent 10 years at.

(00:07:50):

And about seven of those years at the end I got lucky again and got picked up so that I could run the Salomon Global brand for about seven years. Incredible amount of learning experiences from that too. And during that period of time, I met my wife at a sales meeting in Germany. She is American from Portland, Oregon. And eventually that led us to deciding to move to the US and create a family and all that stuff. And I got recruited by black diamond equipment in Salt Lake City where I spent four years just the VP of marketing, but then eventually Keen Footwear brought me up to Portland, which was sort of like coming home for the family. My wife is from Portland and this is where most of our relatives and friends live today. But a good place to be if you're in sports and outdoor. I live really almost within walking distance to both Nike and Columbia. And now there isn't an athletic brand or outdoor brand that has an office somewhere in Portland. That's a little bit about my background.

Cole Heilborn (00:09:08):

Yeah, fascinating. You mentioned that you had this realization or you were working with a brand and you were tasked or you thought, Hey, maybe I should map the industry. Maybe I should try to have a better understanding, a holistic understanding of where our industry is going. And at what point did you realize maybe it was a good decision to look backwards in time to try to understand what's going to happen in the future or what could happen in the future? And tell me about that moment and what you started to realize as you started to look backwards and look at some of these large brands like Quicksilver and DC shoes and started to realize what lessons could they teach us?

Niclas Bornling (00:09:45):

Well, one of the things you start realizing when you've been around and worked long enough and had long enough of a career is that nothing is static and nothing is forever. The only thing that we can say for true, for sure is that the pendulum always swings back. And this happens everywhere all the time. When you start realizing that the pendulum will always swing back and forth, you start realizing that the outer space is not going to be static. There is going to be things that come and go, and that's the only thing that we can say for certain.

(00:10:35):

We can also say for certain that younger generations will be looking backwards for inspiration. We'll be looking backwards for putting an imprint on themselves in culture, but making it theirs. And that's a really important learning call because you look at Gen Z, gen Y today and you look at their fascination for brands traditional, I mean traditional brands in the outdoor space such as the North Face, such as Patagonia, such as Salomon and a bunch of other brands. But you also start understanding that they just don't want to have exactly how it was back in the day. They want to make it theirs. When the outer industry, the apparel outer industry was really sort of forming and shaping to what it would become today, it was in the nineties. And so a Gen Z's fascination with outdoor is in a larger context, gen Z's fascination with the nineties in general.

(00:11:42):

And that's really important to know because that makes it even more fickle for certain that younger generations will not stay fixated on a period of time. They will move on. So there's going to come a time, and lots of us have thought that that would've been over already a couple of years ago, which has proved to be wrong. There's still a fascination with technical outdoor apparel, authentic brands from back in the day, but it will taper off. And I would even venture out saying that it has already started tapering off. That's one of the things that makes you go, what's going to happen to this thing? Is the bubble going to get burst? And what happens in that case to a lot of brands that have been enjoying this uptick in demand. So there's one of the learnings, and as you hear, I will always come back to understanding the consumer landscape, which belongs to just a very simple, almost generic way of defining a brand's go-to-market. Market or just marketing and brand and consumer or product plan, which is answering three questions. You have to be able to answer the question, who am I targeting?

(00:13:22):

And by the way, let's just not use the word targeting. I'm sorry, all listeners, it's such a boring military reference. Who is my audience? Who am I speaking to? Who am I telling stories to? And then you move on from there to answer the question, what am I offering? And that's an important one because you cannot answer the question, what am I offering? If you haven't been very clear with your who first you just can't do it, the answer, the answer is, what's the story that I'm offering you? What's the equity that I am offering you? So it's a who, what and how. Super simple, very easy. It doesn't sound very advanced, but the thing is that you'll find 90% of your answers by really digging super deep into that and you start realizing that if I don't have a really good understanding of my audience, the other things will probably be inaccurate. There's lots of examples of companies and people that've gotten lucky by just being right in time. Exactly right. But that's not really a strategy, that's not really a model that you can replicate. So

Cole Heilborn (00:14:42):

I mean, what happened to those big brands back in the day? I mean, I think I was looking it up in Quicksilver at one point, at its largest was a $2 billion brand. And if you can, yeah, what happened? Why did they disappear?

Niclas Bornling (00:14:56):

Well, what didn't happen is that participation in action sports did not decrease, which is really important because you could pretty much just sort of track this down to, well, there were much less people that were skateboarding and snowboarding and surfing and riding BMX bikes and whatnot, but there is more people today as far as I know at least that are snowboarding, skateboarding and surfing than has ever been before. So it wasn't a lack of interest in the practice. It wasn't a lack of interest in surfing and skiing and snowboarding. It was a change of culture.

(00:15:43):

The culture that was portrayed through these brands became kind of irrelevant to the larger culture of that generation of younger generations that were targeted. You asked Gen Z about climate anxiety, 86% says that they have anxiety about the climate, and none of these things that became culturally relevant were part of the narrative of any of these brands any longer. They just felt like they were stuck in a time that they couldn't really get out of. The other thing that you started seeing is that the targeted audience or the audiences that we were going after at the time became more and more curators. They were picking and choosing stuff that they thought would be relevant to them and their culture. They would pick a piece from a fashion brand and they would mix that with vintage clothing found in a secondhand store. They just did not really conform to the codes that you would have to be dressed from top to toe in action. Sports brands. It just wasn't interesting to them any longer. They would still go snowboarding, skiing and surfing and skateboarding, but they would look completely different. And that was just a miss by these brands and fail to understand that the consumer landscape had shifted drastically,

(00:17:33):

And that is really why almost a whole industry, because it's not just these brands, it's also a lot of wholesale retail that disappeared in the same time.

Cole Heilborn (00:17:48):

What changed? Did the brand stay true to its course and the consumers changed or evolved, or did the brand deviate expecting that the consumers would follow the deviation and they didn't?

Niclas Bornling (00:18:02):

No.

Cole Heilborn (00:18:03):

Or is it a combination of those two?

Niclas Bornling (00:18:04):

No, I think the brands stayed very true to what they thought was the core would probably in many cases could be yourself that is working inside the brand. I don't think that's it. I don't think they lost the course in general. I think they just lost touch with their audiences

Cole Heilborn (00:18:33):

Because the audience was changing. It was evolving. So what does that mean for us today? Is that a story that you see being written currently?

Niclas Bornling (00:18:42):

Yeah, there are signs, pretty strong signs that we're seeing about the same thing happening in the outdoor space as well.

Cole Heilborn (00:18:53):

And how so? What are you seeing?

Niclas Bornling (00:18:55):

Well, it's enough listening to Matt Powell's podcast that you had on here to understand that there is a lot of the numbers, the financials, the revenue, and the amount of retailers and brands that are out there that are not showing very good signs right now, they're not healthy at all. I mean, VF has obviously reported all kinds of pretty negative quarterly reports lately, the flagship ran the North Face that used to pretty much drive. The VF group is no longer growing, if anything going backwards, and I'm not even mentioning Vans, which doesn't really sit in the outdoor space, but sits in the action sports space also going backwards, also tanking, and you listen to the layoffs that are happening constantly within the industry, REI, laying off people, Columbia Sportswear, laying off people, profit warnings to the left and to the right. So the science, so the metrics have not been favorable to a lot of actors in the outdoor space.

(00:20:20):

Wholesalers declaring bankruptcy. I hear it every single day, so what's happening? What's going on? Yes, there are factual things. We know that the pandemic inflated the business to a level that wasn't realistic, and that was the only place people could go and rewarding yourself with a pair of new hiking boots or a new jacket or whatever. It was a nice thing to do. It inflated demand to a degree that was completely out of proportion. Brands started producing and making inventory levels that were insane. Wholesalers thought this would probably last and it didn't. Right? So that's one of the things that we know for certain that has happened, but what also happened in the pandemic is that it opened up the doors for an audience of people that had previously not been part of the outdoor landscape. I mean, you went to any of the trade shows and you would see the same people, middle-aged, white guy walking the horse, sharing experiences, sharing insights and understanding of the space, but the people that found themselves spending time outdoors were new audience of people, people that had previously not been accounted for at all, and they came in with a different perspective on what is an outdoor practice.

(00:22:02):

I mean, for us, it used to be I ski at least 50 days a year. I sport climb, I climb indoors, I run trail run and hike and stuff like that, and I go the Pacific Rim Trail, like these were the standards and the definitions of an outdoor user. Now people are coming in and they may be birdwatching.

(00:22:30):

It is become a real practice done by a lot of people that are still not really accounted for in the outdoor space, just taking a walk with the dog, just being outside in the forest, breathing the air from the trees were becoming real things done by a lot of people that the outdoor industry had no idea how to speak to, had no idea how to tell stories to because it just wasn't us, right? It's hard to relate to and with the influx of these people, and you combine that with core, that opened up the gates for an audience of urban dwelling audiences with very different preferences with very different cultural references. Overall, it is now changing the outdoor consumer landscape to a degree that brands and retailers have been unable to most part, I would say, because there are brands out there that are showing very good signs of really understanding these cultural changes and trends that are going on, but a lot of them, us, I should say, have not, and it is not easy, I can tell you because you have then brands that have been around for 25, 50 years spending time with yourself and the people that are part of your community and sharing interest and building community that way now have to completely shift their mind to what's an outdoor consumer in an urban landscape.

(00:24:28):

How are they thinking? What are their wants and needs? What are their habits and practices? How are they looking at the world? How do we tell stories to those people when you're not part of it? Not easy. It's actually really tricky. How do we meet their wants and needs in terms of product? They're not looking for stuff that they can climb the fourteeners with or go to Himalayas with or do any of the core practices that we have. They're looking for apparel and footwear that solves for very different needs and wants, right? So there is a fundamental change in the consumer landscape out there right now and combine that with the pendulum all with swings. GOP core will not stay here forever. Combine that with the after effects of the pandemic. You have pretty much a perfect storm currently.

Cole Heilborn (00:25:40):

That's the analogy I was drawing before you said it. It seems like it's a perfect storm of variables and of kind of tectonic forces at play. If you had to pick one between the audience landscape, changing the go core trend, maybe fizzling out at some point, and then just the general pendulum swing, which one, are they all three equal in terms of their impact or is there one that feels the most potent? Yeah,

Niclas Bornling (00:26:12):

I mean the pendulum always swings, so it'll swing back at one point when I don't know, but it will. So I would put that one aside and if anyone from a brand side and from retail right now is listening, I'm just going to tell you guys that do not hinge your future on core continuing because it will not, that's for sure. There will be a new look back on something else will drive things right then the nineties cannot last forever. So that's it.

Cole Heilborn (00:26:48):

Well, I think you said that a lot of brands are seeing massive revenue growth in China and Asia go core trends in those countries, and that's maybe bolstering the revenue numbers for those brands, but that's not going to last forever.

Niclas Bornling (00:27:10):

Maybe not. That's a tricky one for me to answer honestly, because definitely not a specialist in the Asian markets. I mean, I know, let's be clear about who we're speaking primarily about China because the uptick of brands and American, Canadian, European brands that are today growing pretty quickly in China, there are many of them. Will it last? Will it not last? Well, I mean if you think that it's going to last because it's a fashion expression, then that would not be a very good thing to hinge your future on if you think that the outdoor user base is growing as well and creating a solid foundation for an outdoor brand to build on for the next 25 years, which could be the case. I don't think the growth of China can purely be explained that outdoor brands are being positioned as luxury, technical fashion. I don't think it's that simple. I think there is also an uptick of outdoor practitioners in China. How big that will be. I do not know.

Cole Heilborn (00:28:30):

Gotcha. But I guess back to my original question before I interrupted you, it sounds like the audience change is really the primary force there at play that

Niclas Bornling (00:28:42):

You see. I think so. Yeah, I think so. And I think it's probably the only one. I mean if you want to be looking at positively having a positive outlook on the future, that's the one piece that you can do something about.

Cole Heilborn (00:28:58):

You can figure out where those people are

Niclas Bornling (00:29:00):

And you can start telling stories that are relevant to them. You can start offering solutions that are relevant to them that can be done.

Cole Heilborn (00:29:10):

How long, if you had to guess or if you have any science around this, how long does it take for an audience landscape to shift? How long did it take for the audience to change for those Quicksilver and other brands? Was that a 10 year shift, five years? Is that a repeatable cycle that we can count on?

Niclas Bornling (00:29:30):

Yeah.

Cole Heilborn (00:29:30):

Is that a generational thing?

Niclas Bornling (00:29:32):

I think so. I think skateboarding is probably one of the best isolated spaces and practices to look at in general. And it seems like skateboarding has been following this seven year rule over time that it's like it takes about seven years for it to sort of simmer and go back to the core. And then for about seven years it'll start affecting and influencing the mass and much bigger audiences and then it'll about seven years. So I don't know if that exact same time period will be transferable to other spaces overall. But I don't think you're talking, you don't talk less than five, that's for sure. I don't think you talk more than 10 either. So there you go. Somewhere right in the middle, about seven years for the pendulum to swing.

Cole Heilborn (00:30:33):

And you'd mentioned in our intro call that maybe part of this, I guess I think about, I used the word tectonic forces earlier and I think about earthquakes and I think about seismologists and scientists put sensors out into the earth to detect, to detect earthquakes before they actually hit. And I'm curious, what are ways that we can be predicting what is changing? What are ways that we can be listening better as an industry? What are tools that you see working or could be used to predict where these things are going? I mean, it sounds like a lot of this stuff you have to kind of have a front row seat in culture and be listening and be observing, but are there metrics or are there things that we can be using? Are there sensors that we can be using to track this stuff rather than just relying on a gut feel?

Niclas Bornling (00:31:38):

Yes, and honestly it's not that complicated and I'm not going to say you've got to be paying for the best consumer insights reports that exist and stuff like that. It is who you surround yourself with. And that is the key to the whole thing goal, right? Because as I said, you walk the halls of, or ispo, you would pretty much see an incredibly homogenous crew of people that looked exactly like we did, right about the same age living and that's super dangerous. So you have to start employing people that are different than you are. And we get back to diversity and inclusivity. It is more than a social justice. It's actually a survival instinct that you should be employing or a survival tactic that you should be putting into place. It is hugely important that you employ people or you work with people that are diverse and different than you are, right? You've got to have that person that sits in the room that has a very different frame of reference and you have to listen. And the listening part is also trickier because biases are real. Then you just want hear what you want to hear here. Do not just employ and bring them close to you, but really listen,

Cole Heilborn (00:33:26):

If you had to, I don't know, give me a good, a better, decent or worst prediction of where things could go, possibilities, depending on the industry's ability to listen and evolve. What are those possible routes the industry could take?

Niclas Bornling (00:33:47):

I think it's very real that within the next five years there will be brands disappearing. I don't

Cole Heilborn (00:33:57):

And are you talking like some of

Niclas Bornling (00:33:59):

The juggernauts of the industry? No, I don't think so. The juggernauts will have enough finances, resources to shift and swing and learn, and they are probably surrounding themselves right now with people that are looking at the world very differently. I don't think so. I think we're talking about midsize brands, midsize, specifically midsize. I'm actually less concerned about smaller ones. I think smaller ones can pivot quicker and adjust, and I think smaller ones are younger in general and young is good when it comes to this. I think the mid-sized ones, the ones that are sort of like, I dunno, 50 to $150 million are the ones that are mostly in danger currently.

(00:34:54):

And that is not just brands in the sense that it's a producer of goods, it's also retail that is on the line here. So it's a very real possibility that we'll see quite a few of the actors falling off as we move on here in the next two to three, four years or something like that. And I think that it may have already happened faster if it wasn't for the uptick of revenue generated from China. I think that has probably saved quite a few of them. I think there is a bunch of smart people in this industry that knows exactly what we're talking about right now, Cole, that have understood this for quite some time, that are building an infrastructure internal organization that is already there, that is already answering to a bunch of these things. I know personally that there's some very good people out there that knows exactly what to do. I think that if you look at a classical outdoor apparel brand and you look at sort of the offering and you look at the stories that are being told traditionally it's going to 80% or whatever technical apparel solving for a specific need, whatever that be, skiing back country skiing, front side skiing, climbing, mountaineering, hiking, et cetera. The solving for these issues has been about 80% of the offer and hence 80% of the stories that have been put out there.

(00:37:00):

I think the future looks different than that. And by the way, I forgot to mention that the other 20% has probably been referred to as lifestyle that will no longer be a recipe for success in the future. If anything, and you want to be drastic, it may even flip to 80% solving for practices that are non-core for a functional life in general, people that are asking for functional performance apparel but not functional for climbing mountains, not functional for skiing, functional for life instead. And then 20% of the offer and stories will be designed for solving core needs, core problems, core things. That's probably a little bit revolutionary. I don't know if a lot of people will agree with me on that one, but I truly believe that younger audiences are looking for smaller wardrobes, smaller closets, less stuff, better stuff that lasts longer, but maybe even more importantly than lasts longer solves for a big majority of their daily how to wear and what to wear needs.

(00:38:39):

And if you want to ask me my personal opinion, that's exactly where I stand. I will be looking at the materials and the fibers that have been used going into production of stuff. I'm always eager to listen to innovation that is happening in this space, but if you ask me what can I do right now to limit the harmful and negative effects on our planet, it is to have a smaller closet that is much more productive. I have less stuff, but the stuff that I have I can wear on an everyday basis and also doing my outdoor stuff at the same time.

Cole Heilborn (00:39:26):

So back in the Quicksilver days, 2000 tens users were changing their wardrobes. They were changing what brands they wanted to represent, what they wanted to wear. You mentioned that people were going to thrift stores and piecing together wardrobes rather than representing one brand entirely and daily life. Is there a point though where maybe we're already here where it's no longer, I don't want to use the word fashionable, but it's no longer the taste of the audience to represent a brand. Is there a point where we don't want to have a logo slapped on our chest, we want something that's nondescript or doesn't have a logo or because we don't, I think you mentioned earlier, everyone wants to be unique. There seems to be this trend that you don't want to conform and in some ways some brands are anti, and so that draws people ironically to them as an establishment. But is there a point where we don't wear a brand because we don't want to be part of a culture. We want to be our own authentic independent selves. If that's a trend that continues or take stronger roots, how do brands adapt? Do we just start? Do they start hiding logos?

(00:40:48):

What's the recipe for success there?

Niclas Bornling (00:40:50):

I think what you're saying is super interesting goal, and I've thought about that a bunch too. I mean, the nineties was all about big freaking logos, right? Colorful in your face, very expressive. The codes were super expressive and hence brands that were living that were looking like that have been picked up back again and come to forefront now, I honestly don't think that that will last. And I think we've already started to see that it's becoming less and less relevant to be wearing big logos right in your face. I think individuality is being expressed slightly differently than having a big logo that is shining in your face. I used to work for a beautiful brand company called Houdini Sportswear for a few years, and we had this debate constantly because with DE, you can barely see the logos on the garment. They're tone in tone, they're small, they're sitting in places where it's not left chest and right shoulder. And there would be the people that said, we just need to make the logos more prevalent in your face, not tone in tone sitting bigger, et cetera. And there was a pushback from within the company that said, no, we don't want to do that because we don't think that that's our audience.

(00:42:38):

We don't think it's the future either. And I've left the company still remain an incredibly huge fan of it, but I am pretty sure that actually the people that were driving that point of view were correct.

(00:42:52):

I don't think the future, and I'm not saying the indefinite future, but the next 10 years is going to be about big logos. I think it's going to be less in your face just in general, more about yourself. And it's definitely not going to be the one brand uniform. It's going to be much more curated. I'll pick a piece from this brand, but then I'm going to pick a piece from a brand that it doesn't even belong in this space because I am going to show that I'm different. I'm going, I will not conform. And I love that. I mean younger generations, the rebellious attitude is just amazing. I wish I still had more of that left in me, but as long you go a little older, you sort of like soften up the edges a little bit as you go. But I am a hundred percent sure that that is going to be a trend goal. So what do you do? Well, you understand and you put your own point of view on what that means for your brand, right? You're not going to rewrite the purpose of existence of your brand every time a trend changes, but you can show by adjusting course a bit or launching a range of product that is slightly different and so on and so forth.

(00:44:28):

There's definitely ways of meeting that and it will all stem from you really understanding the audiences that you have to speak to.

Cole Heilborn (00:44:37):

Well, and I guess that comes back to your three points, which is, yeah, I understand your audience, know what you're offering them and then find a way to tell 'em a story. Those are your three points, right? That I get those, right?

Niclas Bornling (00:44:48):

Sounds simple, doesn't Nicole?

Cole Heilborn (00:44:50):

Yeah, sounds real simple, but I think I feel like the moral of the story with every episode I think we do on this show, everything sounds simple in theory and obviously execution and practice is significantly more difficult than the words, the theory behind it all. Where does this put us in terms of, it puts us the industry moving,

Niclas Bornling (00:45:10):

It puts us right back to the one thing that will not go away. And it's to tell stories that are meaningful, that are relevant because at the end it's what we do. We either tell good stories, we tell bad stories, and with bad, I mean stories that aren't relevant or we do not tell stories. And I think there are ways in today's digital landscape to downplay the need of telling stories a little bit. But a majority of brands out there have to do and tell great stories as we move on because it's the one thing that will not go away from us human beings. And it is the one thing that almost makes us human to a degree.

(00:46:14):

And the story isn't something or brand storytelling, which is something that I don't really, it should, I mean it should not sit within the marketing department. It's not owned by the marketing department. It's a company wide thing. Every node that has any kind of visibility to the outside world is part of your story. How your human resource HR people interact with employees or hiring a new person is a huge component. Your customer service people, how they interact with the world, every single component, your sales teams be that wholesale sales teams or e-commerce, sales teams or stuff. Everything is a story. And if you remember Cole, the definition of a brand is basically the sum of the stories that people remember about you.

(00:47:24):

So in a sense, you don't even own your own brand. The brand is owned by the people that is part of your community that you speak to overall. And all that we're trying to do is to nudge them in a certain direction so that they start thinking about you in the way that we would like them to think about us. So I will never, ever budge from my core belief that crafting and telling culturally relevant stories that are powerful is the essence of what we do. When you can prove that you can connect and you have a book and the book has a title, which is pretty much this foundation for your storytelling of your company and your brand, and then it has chapters, but the chapter, this indefinite amount of chapters and every time we interact, we open a book to a new chapter and we continue doing that over and over again.

(00:48:35):

And you also know that really what made us the dominant species of this planet was our capacity and capability of organizing ourselves and transferring knowledge between ourselves so that we can organize ourselves in big groups was our capability of telling stories. It is how we have transferred knowledge since day one and we will continue doing so. It will never go away, in my opinion, the day that goes away. I don't even want to be around any longer right now. So that means when the stories that connect with your audience, it's the day to start amplifying hard. But I would not suggest that anybody amplifies until you've gotten to a point that you know have a story and a concept overall that connects to a very specific audience. And the more narrow and the more niche that audience is, the better it is. Because mass will always look into the smaller niches to smaller cultures and be interested and try to figure out what's going on there and want to be part of it. So don't be afraid. Don't be afraid to address the few. It makes it intriguing and powerful and interesting. And then you push the amplification buttons and that's in how

Cole Heilborn (00:50:12):

I love what you said there. And so this is something that I think about a lot and something I've talked a little bit about, but I've been developing this idea when it comes to storytelling and the ability that stories have, and I, I'll run this by you, but you mentioned tell a story to a very specific audience. And when I look at the film production process and the steps and the decisions that have to be made in order to tell a story just through the video medium, obviously there's so many other ways you can tell stories, but in that world, the world in which I live, I'm always amazed at one, the amount of decisions that have to be made in terms of really nitty gritty details that you don't think about locations, time of day, the character that we're casting or the customer or the ambassador that we're choosing to be in this spot, thinking about things like wardrobe, thinking about what are the activities that are being presented on screen?

(00:51:20):

And I'm always amazed how each of those decisions has the opportunity to speak to a very particular person. The person that we're casting the things that they're wearing, the color of their skin, the language that they speak or their accent all have the ability to reflect someone else who exists in the world. And one of the questions we always ask new clients when we're working with them is like, well, who is our audience? Who are we trying to reach? Who are we trying to share this message with or connect with or whatever the goal is? And oftentimes the answer to that question is always incredibly vague. It's usually like, well, we're trying to reach a millennial.

(00:52:06):

And I'm always amazed at just how much missed opportunity there is because while storytelling feels like it can be this very lofty and ambiguous, like emotionally driven a methodology that doesn't have any science behind it, while that can be true, it also has the ability to surgically reflect or represent a very specific population or demographic or a user. And the choices that you make on set or leading up to set are all ways to reflect that user, that person. And so I love this idea of know who you're talking to, but really know them, know what drives them, know insights about them. And those are all tools that you can then incorporate into, in our case, into storytelling through the video medium. And it's a missed opportunity. I don't see many of our clients doing that. And it's unfortunate because you could see tremendous results.

(00:53:09):

There was this political ad I saw a couple few years ago and it was this Latino woman running, I don't remember what she was running for senator, a state senate. And it was so clear who her audience was because she knew her wardrobe. There was inside joke, she was wearing high heels and she was waiting for the train. And I don't remember what exactly happened, but there's this moment where she takes off her heels to walk across the grate onto the train, and it's this one five second moment, but it connected so well with her audience because you look at the comments and everyone's like, oh, I do that. I have to take off my heels or I have to do this thing. And it just showed so well how well she knew who her audience was. And you don't know the value of what is the value of knowing that about your audience? Well, you can see it in the comments because people are like, she knows me, she is me. I am her. I'm going to vote for this woman. And so that's honestly the best example that I've ever seen of a commercial or a story that a brand or politician has put out there who really knows who their audience

Niclas Bornling (00:54:24):

Is. It's everywhere. Cole, right? It doesn't belong to us marketers and brand people. If you realize that a brand is an accumulation of stories that lives in the minds of the people that you're speaking to, you start realizing pretty quickly that the idea of building a brand is something that is done all the time out there by all kinds of different people in different situations. And they may or may not even know that it's the case. And quite often the best work and the best stuff is happening when you don't even know that you're building a brand overall. But it will come down to you telling a story that is relevant to an audience of people. And if it's scales, it's because that story can sort of disseminate beyond afterwards. It's really hard to plan for the latter part of what I just said there, but it is not that difficult to plan for the first one. B sharp, right? B sharp, be niche, be very specific about who you're speaking to, show those signs and be clear about it because everybody will be interested in a brand that has a very strong cult following because there is the potential of scaling that afterwards.

Cole Heilborn (00:55:53):

So if you moving forwards, what do you recommend? I mean, it sounds like the moral of this episode is know your audience, pay attention to your audience and realize that your audience might not be you.

Niclas Bornling (00:56:06):

Yes. I mean, at the end of the day, that summarizes what we do. And the warning to us that has worked in the art industry is that the world has changed. It has changed because of a lot of different things that has happened in larger culture. It's not just economical aspects that are affecting us today, but it is affected and changed the way that younger generations are thinking and how they're going to be thinking in the future. The pandemic was not just the virus, it was much more than that. It has changed us for generations to come. The way that we're looking at life, at recreation, at home, at work, as family, all of those things were affected by the pandemic. The war in Ukraine has had an enormous effect on the European countries and to an extent the us, but not as much. We are a little further away, but in Europe, it's right next to you. I mean, I'm from Sweden. We are basically practically bordering Russia. So it's there, the Baltic Ocean, Baltic seas just one step away from the war, and that affects how people think about the future.

(00:57:52):

So things have changed and it is a new reality that we're living in and that will affect the way that we tell stories and listen to stories overall. It will obviously affect how we make purchase decisions. There's no question about, but those are rational things at the end of the day, and people don't make rational decisions when it comes to buying outdoor gear. We make emotional decisions. We will let our heart and our gut guide us in the purchase decision. And when that decision is done and you're wearing the thing that you bought, now, you will rationalize your decision to the people around you. The world has changed forever, but we keep making emotional decisions, so that's stable.

Cole Heilborn (00:58:49):

Listen to the emotions and realize that what you're feeling might not be what others are feeling. I mentioned this before we started to record, but there's this quote, I can't remember who said it. It was some president, but he said, where you sit determines where you stand, and everyone has a different seat. Even though Niclas, you and I might be sitting next to each other in fairly adjacent seats in the same row, we each have our own different perspective, and that influences how we see the world and how we interact with it. And it's a complicated world. Everyone is complicated and multilayered and multifaceted.

Niclas Bornling (00:59:25):

Yes, so much. And it's what makes it interesting, right? It's fun.

(00:59:34):

I think that the best marketers, the best brand builders are in general, the people that are the most tuned in to other people. So I remember when I was at Solo in France, France has this amazing program during your college years, you have to do a year and a half of internship. It's long. So you can divide it and you'll divide it into two pieces. But most students will spend a year inside a company. During a year, you will become much more than an intern. You will become part of the company and you will be regarded as a normal employee after a while. But towards sort of the latter end of that period of time, I sometimes had intern students that would come to me and said, okay, what do you think I should study?

(01:00:34):

Should I do more of this kind of marketing or should I go and finance and whatever? And I'm like, if you want to be a great marketer, don't study marketing. Whatever you do, don't do that. Because the playbook of marketing is evolving pretty much every single day. And the playbook of marketing will be different from one company to another company anyway. So you're going to learn the playbook in the company that you get to, and then you're going to be very tuned into the ever evolving tactics and practices of marketing and the digital landscape, et cetera, et cetera, that you have to be. But if you want to be a great marketer, you go back to university and you study human behavior, you study history, you understand and learn about Greek mythology. Greeks got it right. They knew already at that time, 12 archetypes of human storytelling.

(01:01:50):

And Cole, you probably know already all about this kind of thing. And you can organize it all according to these 12 archetypes. And Hollywood is built on the understanding of these archetypes. And any great movies will have the rebel in it, and it will have the sage in it, and it'll have whatever that comes together and friction is created and all that kind of stuff. Learn that. Learn art, right? Learn philosophy, learn psychology, learn all of those arts, because that is a foundation for you to be a great marketer that will give you a platform to understand, analyze how people are thinking all what we do, right?

Cole Heilborn (01:02:39):

Yeah. Well, Niclas, thank you for the time. Thank you, Cole. Thank you. Thank you for the perspective. Thank you for the ideas, the insight, and also just, I know you put this disclaimer out there before we actually sat down and recorded, but this episode, these ideas are yours. This doesn't mean that everything we've discussed isn't true or is true. There's obviously nuance with everything. Yeah. I just want to thank you for coming on the show and sharing some of your ideas. If folks want to follow along with you, if they want to connect, talk more. Where can people find

Niclas Bornling (01:03:18):

You? They can find me on LinkedIn as usual, right? I'm there and I'm more than happy, honestly. I would love even more context from people that just kind of ping me and ask me from experience and guidance and mentorship or obviously projects where I can be of help for a company or the brand.

Cole Heilborn (01:03:46):

Amazing. Any last thoughts before we sign off?

Niclas Bornling (01:03:51):

No, I think we've touched on quite a lot of different things. There is more to talk about obviously, but we'll do that another time.

Cole Heilborn (01:04:00):

Yeah, it sounds like we're going to get another episode on the books. We're going to talk about the lessons that we can learn about branding from politics, so stay tuned. We'll see if we can bring to you listeners here. That'll be an interesting conversation. So stay tuned. Alright, Niclas, I hope you have a great rest of your day. And yeah, we'll check in and see how any of your predictions or theories pan out over the next couple of years here. It'll be interesting to see for

Niclas Bornling (01:04:26):

Sure. They're probably going to be totally rolling.

Cole Heilborn (01:04:30):

Well, we'll listen and we will evolve and adapt as we go. Alright, thanks. Hope you have you a great rest of your day. Bye bye.

Cole Heilborn (01:04:39):

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.

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