Backcountry Marketing

In Episode 2 of The Relevance Project, Cole continues working with Kitworks, Loon'r, and SkyGOAT to move from brand strategy into actual content strategy. The episode starts by pressure-testing the idea of treating a brand like a character. For each of the three brands, those characters are becoming a tool for translating a point of view into recognizable behavior without necessarily putting a fictional character in front of the audience. The project then takes a detour into the fundamentals of marketing with Jenni Romaniuk. The conversation explores mental availability, category entry points, and the idea that much of marketing's job is helping a brand come to mind in the right buying situations. But strategy alone isn't enough. Joe Prebich of Benchmade introduces the other side of the equation: the creative still has to be interesting enough to earn attention. From there, the teams begin turning the strategy into actual content ideas. Kitworks explores gear management and the strange rituals of outdoor life. Loon'r begins building an entire creative world around a war on cold feet. SkyGOAT starts experimenting with the idea of bringing unexpected comfort into uncomfortable outdoor situations.   About: This podcast is produced by Port Side, a creative agency that helps outdoor brands build relevance, recognition, and attention.  Enjoy this episode and discover other resources below: Support Us | We've been bootstrapping this for 6 years. Help us keep this going The Archive | 250 hours is a lot to listen to; what if you could search it all?  Relevance Project | We're building three brands in public. Follow along Email List | Follow along and join our email list  LinkedIn | Connect with Cole

Creative is often treated as an expense. Joe Prebich, the VP of Benchmade Knife Company,  believes the best creative can become one of a brand's most valuable growth assets. In this episode, Joe shares lessons from his time at Red Bull and Benchmade about why bold ideas matter, how great content can create distribution and long-term brand loyalty, and why much of the outdoor industry has become too safe. We also explore the importance of having a strong point of view, why brands need to make real choices to stand out, how Benchmade thinks differently about organic and paid content, and why getting closer to the customer still matters more than another audience persona buried in a PowerPoint.   About:  This podcast is produced by Port Side, a creative agency that helps outdoor brands build relevance, recognition, and attention.  Enjoy this episode and discover other resources below: Support Us | We've been bootstrapping this for 6 years. Help us keep this going Relevance Project | We're building three brands in public. Follow along Email List | Follow along and join our email list  Slack Community | Tired of brainstorming with ChatGPT? Join us! LinkedIn | Connect with Cole

In the first episode of the Relevance Project, Cole sits down with the teams at SkyGOAT, Kitworks, and Loon'r to understand where each brand is starting, what they want organic content to accomplish, and how they'll measure progress along the way. The conversations reveal a shared challenge. The brands have audiences, products, and stories worth telling, but they haven't yet built a consistent organic content system that creates engagement, strengthens the brand, and continues working even when paid media is turned off. This episode goes behind the scenes of establishing those benchmarks and introduces the larger experiment ahead: developing content that leads with value, earns attention, and *might* create a more durable path to growth. About: This podcast is produced by Port Side, a creative agency that helps outdoor brands build relevance, recognition, and attention.    Enjoy this episode and discover other resources below: Relevance Project | We're building three brands in public. Follow along Email List | Follow along as we build in public by joining our email list  Slack Community | Tired of brainstorming with ChatGPT? Join us! Insight Deck | Want 20 of our favorite insights shared on the show?  LinkedIn | Join the conversation and share ideas with other industry peers. Apple Podcast | Want to help us out? Leave us a review on Apple. Guest List | Have a Guest in Mind?  Share them with us here.

Professor Jenni Romaniuk, Research Professor and Associate Director at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, Adelaide University, breaks down the science behind how brands are remembered. We explore why memory is at the heart of effective marketing, why only a small percentage of buyers are in-market at any given time, and what marketers should be doing to build future demand. Jenni explains the concepts of mental availability, category entry points, and distinctive assets, and why they're some of the strongest predictors of long-term brand growth. We also discuss why so much advertising goes unnoticed, how outdoor brands can escape the sea of sameness, and why marketers should stop trying to communicate everything at once and instead focus on leaving behind one useful memory.   About: This podcast is produced by Port Side. We help outdoor brands grow by building a content engine. Want to learn more about how we can help? Enjoy this episode and discover other resources below: Relevance Project | We're building three brands in public. Follow along Email List | Follow along as we build in public by joining our email list  Slack Community | Tired of brainstorming with ChatGPT? Join us! Insight Deck | Want 20 of our favorite insights shared on the show?  LinkedIn | Join the conversation and share ideas with other industry peers. Apple Podcast | Want to help us out? Leave us a review on Apple. Guest List | Have a Guest in Mind?  Share them with us here.  

Cole shares the thinking behind The Relevance Project and why he believes relevance has become one of the most important competitive advantages available to brands today. The goal of marketing hasn't changed, but the landscape and tools have. Attention is becoming scarcer, paid media is becoming more expensive, audiences have more control over what they consume than ever before, and brands now have access to free distribution at a scale that was unimaginable just a decade ago. The challenge? Most brands are still operating as if nothing has changed.     About: This podcast is produced by Port Side, a content strategy studio that helps outdoor brands become relevant, recognized, and build an audience. Want to learn more about how we can help? Enjoy this episode and discover other resources below: Relevance Project | We're building three brands in public. Follow along Email List | Follow along as we build in public by joining our email list  Slack Community | Tired of brainstorming with ChatGPT? Join us! Insight Deck | Want 20 of our favorite insights shared on the show?  LinkedIn | Join the conversation and share ideas with other industry peers. Apple Podcast | Want to help us out? Leave us a review on Apple. Guest List | Have a Guest in Mind?  Share them with us here.