Remembering who you really are...
months
12
+28%
growth
FALLING OFF THE CLIFF
Extremely well-made. Rugged. Durable. Comfortable. From the Grand Tetons to the Himalayas, Vasque had enjoyed a longtime reputation for being essential footwear among outdoor lovers and adventurers. But in recent years, sales had begun to slide - a function of a marketplace that had exploded with consumer demand, new competitors, and a variety of knock-off SKUs.
There was a deeper problem, too. By the early-to-mid 2000s, even Vasque’s most loyal and vocal fans - outdoor adventurers - had started defecting from the brand.
I was asked to be the marketing team's eyes and ears, to discover and fix what had gone wrong.
PROBLEM #1: PROSPERITY = CATEGORY FRACTURE
At one time, Vasque was considered professional grade - one of the top mountain footwear brands in the world. In fact, Vasque's high price often served as the principal barrier between off-the-street posers and those high-country adventurers.
In the early 2000s, however, rapid growth in consumer wealth changed all that.
Soon, "professional grade" became a popular fashion niche for people who rarely set foot in a local city park, much less spent time hiking a tectonic fault line or climbing in the dead zone of a stratospheric mountain. To be fair, the brand didn't actively pursue these casual consumers. But Vasque didn't reject them either (Hey...sales are sales, right?). As a result, the brand's mystique and mountain-cred eroded quickly when Vasque boots started showing up on the feet of suburban housewives, teenagers, fashionistas, rappers, and urban lumberjack wannabes.
PROBLEM #2: SACRIFICING VOLUME FOR POPULARITY
How many rugged boots do you go through in a year?
If you are an adventurer, climbing professional, or an aggressive outdoor hobbyist, you'll go through about two or three pairs in a year. On the other hand, at best, fashionistas and urban hipsters purchase boots about once every three or four years. By inadvertently becoming a fashion brand, with fewer repeat purchases, Vasque was placing itself into a low-frequency category. We're talking a nearly -43% drop in per-capita repeat purchases.
Recapturing the imagination - and loyalty - of our hardcore adventurers wasn't just a matter of brand preference or positioning...it was a matter of economic survival!
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In the end, Vasque needed to get back to its core! To embrace the roots of the brand. Maybe even go overboard, placing these boots back where they belong. If suburban housewives buy the brand…so what? Our focus, our communication, and our brand experience must always be in the hearts, the lungs, the spine - and the soul - of our adventurer...
...Up where the air is thin, the load is heavy, and the risk is great!
"IT'S IN YOUR HEARTS...IN YOUR LUNGS...IN YOUR SOUL."
The creative challenge: The outdoor gear category was littered with sameness, with virtually every brand - from footwear to jackets, from ear muffs to navigation devices - featuring the images you see on this page (climbers backdropped by amazing landscapes). This had created "brand blindness" among a large segment of our audience. We needed to differentiate, distinguish, and disrupt.
So, over the next year, we completely departed from cliché outdoor images.
Instead, the lungs, heart and spine permeated most of all of our brand messaging.
Credibility in this category required the brand to "Be where the consumer really lives...and almost dies." We also convinced Vasque to renew its commitment to outdoor sponsorships and partnerships, as well as its strong presence at professional-grade adventure events. Mountain-cred returned and soon Vasque was once again climbing.
PERFORMANCE
Garnering huge attention, advertising recall, brand recall and a rebound in positive brand perceptions all experienced high double-digit growth. By year's end, we converted Vasque's slump into +28% growth.
