• by Sarah Mahoney , 4 hours ago

Columbia Sportswear is leaning into absurdity with a new campaign aimed squarely at Flat Earthers. The premise: Anyone who reaches the “edge of the earth” and brings back a photo gets the company’s full inventory of assets — from conference tables and copy machines to the taxidermy beaver in the cafeteria.

They don’t even have to wear Columbia gear on the quest, although CEO Tim Boyle, who stars in the deadpan spot, would prefer they did. The work, from adam&eveDDB, continues the brand’s “Engineered for Whatever” platform — and pushes it into darker, sharper humor. A recently launched spot in the series, for example, featured a one-armed mountaineer joking about losing his other arm to the elements, and at Halloween, the company hired the Grim Reaper as an influencer. It’s all a wink at the brutal conditions the gear is built for, and a sign that Columbia is reclaiming the irreverence it leaned on in the ’80s and ’90s.

A long-copy ad in the New York Times, signed by Boyle, lays out the Flat Earther challenge. “This is a message to Flat Earthers,” it begins. “I’ve seen your manifestos, admired your diagrams, watched you stand proudly on your, well, flat ground. So here’s the deal: it’s time to put your map where your mouth is.”

Should someone actually deliver the photo, he adds, they can have “all of it. The mannequins, coffee machines, snowshoes, toboggans, office plants — even the taxidermy beaver.”

The fine print clarifies that “the Company, LLC” — the entity being offered — is valued at $100,000, far below Columbia’s roughly $3.3 billion in annual sales. It also spells out the required “Edge of the Earth”: a visible, physical end to the planet defined as “a sheer drop, abyssal void, clouds cascading into infinity.” What does not count: a clifftop in Seattle, a Kansas cul-de-sac or “your buddy Dave legally changing his name to The Edge.”

The stunt arrives as Columbia flexes both confidence and credentials: Last year, its Omni-Heat Infinity technology wrapped the Odysseus robotic lander that touched down on the moon.

Next, the brand is taking the joke to social, joining conversations on Reddit, YouTube and other platforms where Flat Earthers, conspiracy theorists and the merely curious gather. The goal is to keep the bit going — and keep Columbia in the feeds of people who appreciate a brand with a slightly unhinged sense of humor.