Columbia Sportswear gets 4,000 faxes in 36 hours

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what’s good: Columbia Sportswear getting 4,000 people to send a fax to them in under 36 hours

This campaign was created with Columbia’s agency partner, adam&eve\TBWA.

The Columbia Helvetia fleece came out in 1991, so 35 years later Columbia is running a fall campaign where the first 91 people to send them a fax get a free fleece. They posted two social media videos to promote it, and partnered with certified It Girl, Ken Eurich (F U Bobby. IYKYK).

In under 24 hours, the content Ken popped off and got over a million ORGANIC views on Instagram alone. Here’s the content Ken posted as well as the posts from Columbia which also received over 200k views organically. Oh, and 4,000 people have already sent in faxes.

In a Tiktok from Connor Bates, the Director of the spot Ken made, he explains that she approached him when Columbia came to Ken with the concept. Ken took the original brief and decided she wanted to add some higher production behind the video and “show off her acting chops”. If you know Ken, you know most of her videos are “yapping” into the camera. She’s an elite yapper. And she has a massively engaged fanbase, myself included apparently.

(One learning: when all your content zigs, and you zag once in a while, it’s going to be a pattern disrupt for your engaged fans who are the first to see the video, which will give the content an early boost since the retention will be incredible while the close fans figure out what’s going on here.)

I spoke with Matt Sutton, the SVP of Marketing at Columbia, Scott Lloyd, Sr. Director of Growth, Andy Nordhoff, Director of Communications, and Jeramy Sewer, NA Activations Program Manager, about working with Ken and why Columbia has been on a bit of a heater lately:

1. Not to be an ass, but I would wager that there's a good chance you had no idea who Ken Eurich was prior to this campaign, why say yes? Who ends up making that final call for casting?

How’d you know? You are correct I had no idea who she was - but our amazing social team was all over it. Scott Lloyd (sr. director of growth) and I make the final call on partners here, and it’s based on our social team knowing the audience, our consumers, and hand-selecting talent. - Matt

Ken Eurich’s team and content blew us away when we got it back, bringing the campaign to life better than we could imagine. Our goal is to tell stories at full tilt to tell the consumer ‘who we are’ vs. ‘what we sell’. - Scott

2. The Expedition Impossible work won a Grand Prix at Cannes, what did you learn from that campaign that you and adam&eve\TBWA are bringing forward on new work?

We learned how much our fans love to participate with us.  The sheer number of wild submissions we got from people trying to find the edge of the earth was a real surprise and triggered a new path of engagement for us.  The unbelievable amount of faxes we’ve received for this week’s campaign is another proof of concept.  We weren’t even sure if a certain demographic even knew what fax machines were, regardless of whether they could actually track one down… - Andy

BONUS: CHECK OUT THIS AWESOME COLUMBIA PRINT AD THAT FEATURES THE CHAIRMAN’S MOM. THIS IS SOME SHIT I WOULD DO

3. Talk about the dynamic with adam&eve\TBWA? Looking back from beginning of relationship to now is there any insight you can give around building a solid agency relationship?

[adam&eve\TBWA] continues to be [a] great creative and thought partner to work with on our brand activations. They’ve helped remind us how to tap back into the irreverent and playful nature of the company’s mission to “Unlock the Outdoors for Everyone”. Building a solid partnership starts with strong communication and a healthy dose of debate to ensure there is a strong creative concept, then allowing each side to own their expertise and trusting each other to deliver on the execution with close collaboration throughout the campaign. -Jeramy

4. You are engaging the audience beyond just a typical CTA of "fill out this form for a sweater". I think more and more brands are getting creative with these "sweepstakes". What is the right balance of "creative execution" and not making it so that an audience legitimately can't get your product?

The balance comes from putting the consumer first and figuring out how many actions we’re asking them to take from beginning to end. If we can simplify the request, while adding a unique creative execution, we’re able to deliver a campaign consumers want to engage in. -Jeramy

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