• by Karl Greenberg , October 7, 2015

Columbia Sportswear's biggest campaign in its 77-year history is global, with TV ads, print, social, digital, out-of-home, partnerships and a lot of content.

But the whole idea started small.

Instead of dreaming up a grandiose brand juggernaut from the boardroom in Portland, Oregon, the company went to its stores to get inspiration from its products on shelves.

One result is some visual iconography in the form of a physical stamp, “Tested Tough,” that will also be the thematic stamp on all creative.

That stamp motif, which in days of yore featured the likeness of the company's founder and chairman, Gert Boyle, her signature, and the “Tested Tough” declaration, is being updated.

Boyle’s image is gone, replaced by one of Mount Hood. But Gert Boyle herself is back, reprising her role in advertising, when she was shown testing the brand’s gear by making her son Tim undergo grueling outdoor ordeals while wearing Columbia gear.  

This time, instead of her son (recently in the news for flying the three guys who thwarted the train terrorist to a ceremony in Paris), it is employees experiencing the Jack London life at the company's headquarters.

In one of the three spots, a pair of Columbia Sportswear new hires undergo orientation: an all-night sit on a ski-lift in the winter. Boyle arrives on a crane, not to retrieve them, but to give them pizza, then leaves. In another, an employee has to dig through a snowbank to get to the office copy machine. Which is out of paper. Another digging project as Boyle watches from her office. 

Stuart Redsun, Columbia Sportswear Company’s CMO, tells Marketing Daily that the campaign, via Portland, Oregon-based North, fixes a years-long gap in Columbia marketing strategy: no uniform brand voice.

“The campaigns changed every year, all focused on new products and new technology, so consumers were having to relearn what we are about every season; it was ‘speeds and feeds’: yours versus ours.” The goal of getting back to “Tested Tough” is refreshing the brand story for a younger consumer. “It’s sticking with something consistent, season in and out, that they know is true about the brand,”  notes Redsun.

Driving social engagement for the new campaign is a sort of brand ambassador in extremis program, “Directors of Toughness” featuring two intrepid adventurers who were chosen from some 3,000 applicants for the job. The two kick off their program with an appearance on the Oct. 12 episode of ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live.” Then off they go, on a paid, six-month adventure using Columbia gear, including footwear and equipment. 

Redsun says the company is keeping the “Directors” in the dark about what those exploits will be. “Part of the idea is we want them to be in the moment and not think about what's next. But we are sending them into the coldest, wettest, hottest places on earth, and they will be telling stories all the way.”

He says the two will record their experiences both with longer-form YouTube video, and with real-time content on apps like Periscope and Snapchat to #TestedTough. 

Long-term plan, per Redsun, the plan is to roll in user-generated content programs, which begin with the company's own employees, worldwide, who are encouraged to create content around their own outdoors experiences. Their videos are also employing the “Tested Tough” stamp motif. But instead of Boyle's signature, the stamp features the signature of the employee whose exploits are captured. 

The effort also involves a partnership with Outside Magazine, one of whose former writers is one of the two “Directors of Toughness.” In addition to in-book advertising, Columbia will take over the magazine's Winter Buyer’s Guide by running Outside's first-ever faux cover. 

Support also comes via wallscapes, billboards, transit shelters and station dominations worldwide, as part of the 63-market campaign in Europe, Asia, South America and North America.

Redsun says part of the media strategy involves advertising, including a local tactic with digital ads on weather sites; weather conditions trigger which ad is served. There is also a mobile program that will cover geo-fencing retailers, weather triggered units and mobile video.