How Columbia Sportswear Discovered Our Global Storytelling Agency
The Most Significant Product Launch Since GORE-TEX
Columbia Sportswear sought the perfect destination to produce a press event for a top-secret new product. Hailed as the first significant evolution in waterproof fabric since the invention of GORE-TEX in 1969, OutDry Extreme demanded a debut in a location that could produce rain in biblical proportions. It needed to be wet, in July—really wet—and the invitees were going to remain dry—astoundingly dry. The result: WhereNext was hired to produce the event, and Columbia's press team, editors from Men's Journal, Outside Magazine, Backpacker, and other journalists delivered astonishing editorial content.
The Colombian páramo - it’s usually a lot wetter than this!
One Night at a Bar in Killarney
A marketing executive, a global creative agency founder, and a tourism official walk into a bar in Killarney, Ireland. The first man dreams of a torrentially rainy paradise, the second man longs for adventurous clients, and the last man becomes an unsuspecting cupid.
At this preamble-to-a-punchline moment, Columbia Sportswear was still considering up to a dozen potential locations, and vetting creative agencies to produce their necessarily soggy press spectacular. Their marketing team had not yet discovered an agency that would rise to the top.
Our itinerant global creative agency founder, WhereNext's own Gregg Bleakney, travel-weary and rallying from a day of speaking and conference sessions, simply hoped to enjoy a few drinks on this last night in Killarney. His t-shirt broadcast the subject of his passion, his adopted home, and the home of WhereNext's studio and production team:
It's Colombia
Not
Columbia
Into the pub walks our unwitting matchmaker, the wheeling and dealing tourism official, who happens to know the other two conference-goers. His is a life of gaining favor and trust through cementing new relationships. He psycho-navigates his way through the bar, seeking clues to inspire his next move. Gregg's t-shirt was all the invitation he needed.
Advertising, timing, and a little bit of luck, matters. Boom.
"Gregg, I've got someone you need to meet."
The introduction was to a senior marketing executive from Columbia Sportswear.
"Maybe that shirt should read, Columbia in Colombia," mused the executive.
Kismet.
Exploring a wild place that was once strictly off-limits to travelers
I Guarantee Rain
There began the romance. Gregg quickly deciphered Columbia Sportswear's challenge and knew that he had an ace up his sleeve, which he must pitch to Columbia Sportswear's marketing team.
Where Next's backyard, Colombia's high altitude moorlands, páramos, are near-endemic ecosystems that have an incredible ability to store water through vegetation and unique—otherworldly—geological and ecological features. Colombia's páramos also happen to be some of the wettest places on the planet. Gregg knew the páramo was the ideal location for Columbia Sportswear's press event, and there was no more skilled, knowledgeable, and ardent team than WhereNext to produce such an event.
What could he say to cement this opportunity in the Columbia Sportswear marketing executive's mind?
"I guarantee rain."
And Rain it Did
The páramo delivered in buckets, sheets, and cats & dogs. WhereNext led the production of Columbia Sportswear's 2016 OutDry Extreme product test and press event in Colombia. We organized winding hikes in sideways rain and teed-up stories about Colombian food, beer, cycling, culture, and history. We produced a video about mountain guide Miguel Ángel García who we sourced to lead journalist Stephan Regenold on a grueling ultra-run across the 12,500-foot-high páramo moorlands, and who is leading trips across the same remote wilderness area where his father was kidnapped and marched by the FARC guerillas.
Colombia’s páramos are extremely wet places: not ideal for many productions, but exactly what Columbia were looking for (Photos by Felipe Nieto)
Colombia's Promise
Generations of internal conflict made outdoor recreation and exploring Colombia's wildlands practically impossible. In recent years, Colombians have increasingly enjoyed the peace and ability to travel and discover the ecological and geographic wonderland that is their own country. Yet much of Colombia is still unquestionably wild, unexplored, and filled with promise. The world still sees Colombia through a lens of danger, focused on decades of armed conflict—no thanks to Netflix's Narcos—Pablo Escobar, and the war on drugs.
We wish for Colombia to be seen through our eyes: its hundreds of rare and endemic species, its climatological surprises, its dazzling landscapes, and for the pride and ambition of its people.
As an upstart global creative agency, we are grateful Columbia Sportswear trusted in our vision of Colombia's potential and boldly decided to join us in realizing that promise.
“I’ve led lengthy excursions with tourism partners in the Kingdom of Jordan, Sweden, Ireland, and Japan, among others, and the team from WhereNext took it to an entirely new level.”
OutDry Extreme found a natural home in the wet mountain moors of the Colombian Andes
Learn more about our global creative agency here.
The Discovery Channel contracted our Colombia production company to produce and film a series of videos about urban wildlife and ecosystems for Discovery Channel Latin America, Animal Planet, and the Mayor of Bogotá, Colombia.