Insights: Marketing Insights
Mountain Culture
An interview with Adam Howard, founder of Height of Land Publications
Of course, the publishing industry has changed dramatically since Height of Land was founded. But despite the rise of all things digital, and the innumerable challenges of producing print publications in the Internet era, Adam Howard and the 18 Height of Land employees have managed to carve out an expanding...
Marketing Insights
The age of the consumer, part 2
2018 represented a crisis year for trust on social media. Let’s start with the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Just the idea that millions of people’s personal data was used without their consent is enough to shake the foundations of trust. On top of that, Facebook confronted unprecedented pressure from users and...
Design
Talking Shop with Yorgo Tloupas, the Creative Behind Black Crows Skis & More
For the past 20 years, Yorgo Tloupas has been the head of Yorgo & Co, a multi-disciplinary design studio in Paris, France. Yorgo’s experience spans being the creative visionary for the black crows skis brand, art direction for premium fashion brands such as Cartier and Cognac, and being at the helm of Vanity Fair France. We caught up with Yorgo to pick his brain on design trends, logos & identity development, and the marketing and branding scene of France.
An interview with Adam Campbell
You could say that professional athletes find themselves pushing their limits because it’s their job- further enabled by their sponsors and fans. Alternatively, you could say that outdoor brands partner with these athletes because they’re inherently the type of people who strive to do what everyone else deems impossible.
Social Media
Why community management is more important than ever
We dug into the importance of community management and how to measure its performance.
Resort Branding
The proof is in the purpose
Taos Ski Valley is an example of what can happen when a brand stays true to its values and rallies around its purpose.
Outdoor Business
Destination marketers: find your essence, define your purpose
A Purpose-driven brand is one where the organization has consciously placed its ‘Why’ front and center– in how it communicates, but more importantly, in how it actually behaves in its business conduct. It drives what it will and will not do. It defines what services it provides, what products it sells, what people it hires, promotes and rewards – in other words, how it does business.
Marketing Insights
Adapting your marketing approach to a constantly changing world
To stay at the forefront and breakthrough, it’s crucial for marketing teams to pay attention to up and coming trends and apply creative, innovative thinking to their work. In this article, we highlight the key trends for 2019 and how marketers can put them to work.
Marketing Insights
Why recruiting and retaining is a marketer's game
When done well, an employer’s brand helps attract the right talent, allows prospects to self-select for fit with your organization, and increases the likelihood that they will develop into long-term, valuable, high-producing members of your team.
Content Marketing
Outdoor Retailer 2019: Content marketing for the outdoors
This year at Outdoor Retailer 2019, we traded our mountains for some other, bigger, mountains and presented our insights into the changes that companies are currently facing with content marketing. Download the presentation here.
Content Marketing
What’s your story? Storytelling as an influence tool
We don’t do “advertising”. Rather, we help brands tell their best stories, in ways that create measurable impact. Throughout the years that we’ve been doing this, we’ve unearthed a number of tools and methodologies that we think work quite well. So with that in mind, we popped the hood open and let you in to take a peek at how to use storytelling as an influence tool.
Marketing Insights
ASSQ May 2019 - L’évolution du « consumer journey »
Outdoor Business
Which way to the outdoors?
To try and get a better understanding of what it’s like to be a “newbie” in outdoor sports today, we put an ear to the ground, so to speak, and reached out to retail staff at stores in British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario, Vermont, and Chamonix.
Social Media
Which brands are winning at social in 2018?
The social media landscape is an ever-changing beast to tame. Nowadays, it often feels like there’s a new feature being released on Facebook or Instagram every week. Understandably, it’s a lot to keep up with. But with most consumers following and engaging with their favourite brands primarily through social media, it’s become a fundamental pillar of a successful digital marketing strategy in 2018. With that in mind, we took a deep dive into which brands are winning social media in 2018 and why.
Tourism
NEIRA Annual Meeting 2018: Place Branding
We are seeing many of our tourism and hospitality clients facing a new range of challenges associated with growth and evolving industry trends. In this new landscape, place marketers need to go above and beyond their traditional capacity, and take an active role in defining and delivering a positive destination experience to safeguard their brand's best interests in the long-term.
Video
Ready to make a video?
Once the decision has been made to make a video, there are a few things you need to keep in mind. We've put together an infographic to help you ask the right questions- whether your objectives are brand awareness, comments, conversions or getting people to buy sh*t.
Marketing Insights
How to set your marketing budget
Marketing budget benchmarks vary widely. Most commonly, they're anywhere from 3% to 12% of the brand’s total revenue. That being said, there are a few key indicators to help figure out where you should be in that range, and several factors to consider when setting your total marketing budget.
Outdoor Business
Protect Our Winters launches in Canada
POW Canada is a rapidly growing community of outdoor enthusiasts, professional athletes, social innovators, and industry brands dedicated to connecting this collective passion for the outdoors with positive climate action across Canada. Though it is a new organization, it draws on the experience and strength of its parent organization POW USA, but with a distinctly Canadian approach. We asked founding members Mike Douglas and Marie-France Roy for their insights.
Social Media
What is Vanlife and why is it taking over?
The Why Search Vanlife on Google and 10.8 million hits will come up. On Instagram, nearly 4 million pictures and videos feature the hashtag. Tutorials on how to renovate your 1999 Sprinter have flooded YouTube, and WordPress is now home to countless travel stories of life on the road. And...
Marketing Insights
Five deadly sins of branding
Next time you undertake the journey of building your brand, be sure to watch for these five common traps along the way. 1. The Sin of Ambiguity No matter the industry or client, there is a consistent pressure we see clients face perhaps more commonly than any other; the pressure...
Interactive
Emails can be sexy
We showcase a few key email elements in the context of a project we’ve completed recently for Jay Peak Resort, and speak to resort marketing manager, Kim Hewitt, to provide examples on how Jay keeps their mailbox sexy.
Marketing Insights
Exploring lululemon's "disruption" strategy
lululemon actually hires and trains community mavens to connect their local relationships and stores to the brand, creating the stories that define the brand, in a relevant and hyper-local voice. The Maven is “a people and industry leader who collaborates with area partners to create and implement a community strategy,...
Tourism
2018 Outlook: The digital marketing landscape for the travel industry
The idea with this webinar and the attached deck is really to give those brands in the travel (and hospitality) industry some food for thought. Much of what we reviewed is based on recent research and we tried to look at it from the following angle: Who they are -...
Social Media
How to leverage social contests to reach your goals
Looking for that magic bullet to upgrade your social strategy? Many brands are turning to contests as the answer. Here are a few things you should take into consideration before jumping in.
Tourism
Three MTB destination marketing tactics to try in 2018
This year, why not consider exploring a few non-traditional approaches to destination mountain bike marketing that take advantage of burgeoning trends in the bike world? YouTube “Everyman” Creators In the last few years, we’ve seen an explosion of mountain biking YouTube creators posting weekly vlogs about trails, products, tips and...
Social Media
The rise of the micro-micro influencer
Facebook recently made a large announcement regarding the re-prioritization of its algorithm - How will this impact your social media strategy moving forward?
Content Marketing
Is your brand educational?
It’s a testament to the fact that education and learning is a huge part of what people are looking for online. Whether its answers to a specific question ( how to... ) or entertaining - and sometimes obscure - learning topics ( what is the Fermi Paradox? ), there are...
Social Media
Social media trends heading into 2018
With 2018 looming, we sat down to take a look at the state of social media in the outdoor industry. There is no doubt that social media is still seeing significant growth, but what we have noticed is that growth has started to slow among some of the major channels. We speculate that this is a result of platform maturity rather than a reflection of a trend of declining popularity.
Tourism
How Place Experience (PX) impacts destination brands
Customer experience is changing expectations The marketing industry is abuzz with discussion and articles about Customer Experience (CX) and the impact it has on brands, and rightly so. Today’s consumers are demanding simplicity, instant gratification, and immediate resolution to the slightest inkling of something they don’t deem satisfactory. And as...
Outdoor Business
Outsource or in-house?
Why bring a new marketing specialist in-house? Here are a few factors that would push the in-house decision. Keep in mind here, we’re talking mostly about bringing something to your organization that you don’t currently have (social media expertise, digital marketing, website content strategy, etc): Long-term needs Pros of in-house:...
Interactive
Should you redesign your resort website over the winter?
For most of our resort clients, summer seems like a logical time to start planning a new website for fall. The crowds have gone, and the slower summer season brings renewed energy and time to your marketing team. But this may not always be the case.
Outdoor Business
5 Consumer Trends Impacting Outdoor Marketing
Not dissimilar from a mountain breeze, consumer trends in the outdoor industry can be fickle and ever-changing. To avoid missing the winds of change, we’ve rounded up a handful of the top trends influencing outdoor consumer behaviour today.
Marketing Insights
Is our obsession with conversion killing the ski industry?
In an industry that has been characterized by corporate consolidation in resort ownership, declining participation levels and pass price wars, we think it’s time for those of us working in the industry to take pause and ask ourselves, “what the hell are we doing wrong?”.
Outdoor Business
How to write an RFP that doesn't suck
Developing a brand, a campaign, a website or a piece content is about more than adding up the best score on a spreadsheet. Successful relationships are rarely developed by committee. The process of choosing a creative or strategic partner is an incredibly collaborative one between agency and client—one that needs...
Interactive
Rebuilding your website? Start with goals and objectives
Goals, Objectives, Strategies and Tactics At Origin, we use a strategic planning framework commonly referred to as G.O.S.T (Goals, Objectives, Strategies and Tactics). One of the strengths of this framework is its adaptability— that it’s robust enough to be used to develop a three-year strategic plan for a business and...
Content Marketing
We Hate To Burst Your Content Bubble
In the last 5 years, many of us ski area marketers prophesied over content marketing—so much so that today 93% of brands are using content marketing as a cornerstone tactic in their marketing efforts.
Content Marketing
Inntopia Insight 2017: Presentation Deck
Content that used to cut through the clutter has now become the clutter. This presentation shows how consumer habits have changed, some solutions for resort and destination marketers to consider, and offers take-aways you can apply to your marketing strategy today.
Marketing Insights
Focus on the feedback
Origin’s consumer insight study pairs qualitative results with hard data to reveal some valuable marketing insights, with a look into how outdoor sports participants perceive the brands they interact with.
Content Marketing
Working with brand ambassadors: from their perspective
Outdoor brands were quick to partner with grassroots ambassadors as a way of building brand from a more accessible point of view. We sat down with some ambassadors to get their perspective.
Content Marketing
Origin at Mountain Travel Symposium 2017
Origin principals Danielle Kristmanson and MJ Legault will be speaking at this year's Mountain Travel Symposium conference in Banff on March 29th. The presentation will focus on the changing habits of your consumers and expand on recent research from Google's micro-moments.
Content Marketing
How to make the most of Instagram's new features
2017 has seen the launch of two new features that have drastically changed the way users interact with the platform, and can have a huge impact for the brands using the platform. Here is an overview of these features, and several things to consider before incorporating them in your social strategy.
Outdoor Business
Resort CRM best practices
Founded in 2004, Ryan Solutions was born in the resort industry where siloed data and multiple revenue centers demanded a flexible, powerful, and customizable CRM platform that could expand from a single resort running one system to a multi-property ownership group running a half-dozen software platforms across hundreds of properties.
Tourism
How outdoor brands are getting into your hotel room
This started back in 2012 when Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide formed a partnership with New Balance, allowing hotel visitors to rent footwear and apparel for a small fee. From what we can tell, The Westin was the first to get on this trend of lending guests the running and...
Social Media
Vlogging 101 for marketers
According to Google/YouTube research , travel vlog content is the most popular travel content on YouTube, accounting for almost half of its travel content subscriptions. This content performs well across all age groups, but resonates especially well with younger Millennial and Gen Z segments. What can we learn from these...
Content Marketing
Journeys in video content
What started as a film project three years ago, “A Skier’s Journey” is now in its final season. Directed by North Vancouver photographer and filmmaker Jordan Manley, the series—which explores the edges of skiing and the people, cultures and landscapes it encompasses—culminates with a return home to British Columbia (and the global headquarters of Arc’teryx).
Tourism
The rise of experiential travel
In a recent report , Trend Watching discusses a new type of consumerism: one with a more sustainable and ethical focus. As general consumers demand that businesses become more accountable for leading solutions to social problems, tourism brands are taking action, building a social mission into their operations and changing...
Outdoor Business
Ever asked a woman rider what she thinks?
Like so many in the mountain bike business, Rocky is setting out to determine an approach for marketing to the admittedly small women’s market. Perhaps it was the influence of the strong contingent of females in their marketing department, but they chose the novel approach of listening before acting. I...
Tourism
Inside the mind of the new travel consumer
The Millenial mindset and the new travel consumer Those of us in the mountain resort business have been talking about Millennials for what seems like decades. A dozen years after they started appearing in the world (in 1981), we took notice — because they were our target market’s children. We...
Social Media
Making the most of brand advocate love
As outdoor and resort marketers, we’re acutely aware of how powerful brand advocates can be when they sing our praises. These are the people who post online reviews, provide product advice and discuss your brand with other enthusiasts online communities — not because you pay them to, but because they...
Outdoor Business
Local vs. global marketing with Lululemon
Origin was recently mandated with a fascinating challenge by Lululemon to create a truly (and first ever for this market) localized campaign. We worked with Tina Sarazin, Content and Localization Manager, Brand + Community who has made content creation and brand localization a focus of her career. With a background...
Outdoor Business
Next level content marketing for outdoor brands
Moving into 2016, we’re seeing outdoor brands place a huge emphasis on the quality of the content they produce. The content is rich — photos, videos, interactive — and it's evergreen, telling stories that are universal and timeless. This reflects well on the industry: we’re here to stay, delivering qualitative...
Content Marketing
Segmenting the outdoor industry participants
I can’t sum up the 155 pages in a post here, but what’s really interesting is understanding how the general population defines the outdoors and what the outdoors means to them. Let’s start with what outdoor participation looks like (because it’s not what you or I might consider “outdoor action”)....
Interactive
A, UI, UX. WTF? A 5 minute guide to design jargon
So what does this mean to your marketing team? No longer is one channel of delivery the norm. What you did last year should never be the default. Give us your overall objective and let us come back to you with a suite of sweet options. With technology changing so...
