Chris Dickey is the founder of an outdoor PR agency named Purple Orange. Working with brands like BioLite, Peak Design and Oru Kayak, Chris and his team kept noticing short-lived results from outstanding PR work.

This troubled Chris and motivated him to build a tool called Visably. Visably provides marketers a way to check their brand ranking against a keyword in search. It's no longer about someone finding your website but recognizing your brand.

In this episode, we cover a wide range of topics from Google's algorithms, brand vs distribution, and advice for new companies on where to invest their marketing dollars. 

From the episode:

"How could we have won this big award but not move the needle (for our client)?"

"70% of all traffic goes to the first 5 organic links"

"If you want to know where your brand sits in search, you can't do it right now."

Josh Weichhand is the Marketing Director at Chaco. In this episode, we chat about doing work you believe in and not giving up on the path to doing so. 

We also talk about Chaco's use of their brand voice during the Bears Ear protection rollbacks and about Josh's own journey of finding his voice and doing work he believes in. For many, the journey to finding a good fit in a career is not without challenges along the way. For Josh, it took 6 unpaid internships, a summer fishing in Alaska, and a 9-month road trip to finally find his place at a company he had been a customer at since summer camp.

From the episode:

"All of a sudden Chaco found itself on the front lines of this very important conversation in real-time and had some credibility to it because we're an established partner of the National Park Foundation."

"There's something about having this one really great pair of sandals that have been with me through it all and then getting to share it with people professionally." 

Jay Matthews is the Director of Marketing at Sitka Gear. Sitka is a high-performance manufacturer and industry leader for hunting apparel and gear. Jay's career started on the football field but when life had different plans he ended up at Nike's SPARQ program. Spending his time learning from the best, Jay left Nike as a brand manager and ultimately landed his dream job at a company that stands for his own personal values.

In this episode, we talk about the commitment to solving a problem with your product over profit, the rise in the conscious consumer and what that means for brands, and how storytelling transcends everything the team at Sitka does.

From the episode: "I think the commitment to earning that trust comes from guaranteeing that the product will do what you say it'll do."

From a young age, John has been fascinated with the ad world. From reading Ad Age magazines in high school to spending the last 23 years working in all disciplines of the industry, John is currently the Chief Strategy Officer at Drake Cooper. In this episode we chat about the role of creativity in the ad world, defining the problem you're trying to solve, the balance between art and commerce as well as John's experience working at the agency his father started.

From the episode:

"We have this little pool of money, who do we focus it on?" "...we have to really define the problem in order to help."

Oru Kayak made a large splash in 2013 by launching the first folding kayak on Kickstarter. Since then they've launched 5 more models, each with a successful ending. Jess Anthony runs Oru Kayak's marketing efforts and in this episode, we chat about what it takes to launch a successful Kickstarter as well as Jess's mission to increase equal representation for all people in the outdoors.

From the episode: 

"I think you have a platform for communication, for ideas to move, to spotlight work other people are doing, and to contribute to projects they're doing." 

When he's not working with some of the outdoor industry's top brands, Charlie spends his time skiing, hiking, and enjoying time with his family. After spending time in Seattle working at Outdoor Research, Charlie moved to Colorado to bring his talents to the agency, Backbone Media. Backbone is a PR and marketing agency with 70+ clients in the greater outdoor industry. These include Patagonia, Filson, YETI, Sitka and Eddie Bauer.

For Charlie, the work that gives him the most satisfaction is work that combats the effects of climate change. The outdoor industry has made strides in lobbying for Mother Earth but there is more work to be done.

Casey isn't your average guy. From a young age, he's had an urge to break rules and do things differently and it's no surprise that his career has taken him to amazing locations with cool people. He even ran his own backpack company for a while before selling it to a major outdoor retailer.

In this episode, Casey shares a bit about the work he's doing at Fjällräven as well as how he ended up managing content for the Swedish Heritage brand.

Stephen Matthews is the Brand Manager at Rocky Mountain Bicycles. Born from the rocky mountains of North Vancouver, their bikes are tested and designed for the world's toughest terrain. 

In this episode, we chat about the sport of mountain biking, the birth of freeride, and why race results aren't the only thing that matters to a brand like Rocky Mountain.

In this episode, I'm joined by Tom and Kyleigh and their two dogs from Freedom Vans. We discuss their origins, the realities of van life and how YouTube has doubled the waitlist on their production timelines.

In this episode, I sit down and chat with Doug Thielen, the marketing director at Filson about the challenges and opportunities of working with a brand that was started in 1897.

We chat about their history, but also how they are using branded films to continue the Filson legacy.