Alex Maier (00:00):

Nobody cares about this product. Nobody cares about this innovation. Change my mind. And that's how we need to approach this stuff. I think maybe the trap here and a big takeaway is we fall back on brand marketing and say, we've done our job. People know what our brand is, but we don't ask, do you care about our brand? Yeah, we care about your brand. But do you care about the products, the innovations, the things that we have? Well, no. I like wearing it because I like the logo. I identify with the brand, but none of the products I actually use on a daily basis. Why?

Cole Heilborn (00:27):

On this podcast, we go behind the scenes with industry experts as they break down what it takes to produce creative work that works. If you're seeking insights from some of the sharpest minds of the industry, this is your guidebook to producing creative work that actually delivers. Welcome to the Background to Marketing Podcast. Today, I'm staying down with Alex Maier, the president of OnWater. Alex, welcome to the show.

Alex Maier (00:48):

Hey, Cole, thanks for having me. Longtime listener, you and I have chatted a few times, but stoked to finally be here and do this thing.

Cole Heilborn (00:55):

Yeah, you were just saying it's been six, maybe even seven years now that we've been connected. As you've been kind of bouncing around between positions, originally you were at Onyx and now you're at OnWater.

Alex Maier (01:06):

Yeah. Yeah.

Cole Heilborn (01:07):

Crazy how time flies. Well, Alex, I'm excited to have you on the show. You've brought up a really interesting topic idea to dive into. We're going to be talking about what the outdoor industry can learn from the software industry when it comes to product marketing. And you got a lot of interesting ideas, a lot of interesting anecdotes, but to kind of kick us off, can you give us a general thesis statement? Why is this something even worth thinking about? One

Alex Maier (01:35):

Of the things that drew me to the outdoor industry is the big full scale, beautiful brand marketing campaigns with landscapes and touting huge emotions and huge successes. I love that. As you mature in your career as a marketer and you get better and better and better, what you end up realizing is that you can do big, beautiful brand campaigns all day long, but if the product doesn't sell, your marketing budgets go down. So then you learn out of necessity to be like, okay, how do we support the actual selling and adoption of the products that we're creating? And the thing that I wanted to unpack today is that's come to life in such a huge way since I transitioned from being in the hard goods and consumer goods space at Nike for over five years, leading the global swimmer category is coming into tech how easy it is to listen to the consumer, the voice of the consumer and the customer.

(02:39):

And I don't just mean by getting a snippet so that marketing teams can create fancy persona documents and say, "Hey, I'm Cole, the mountaineer and hunter, and this is what I think. " But really getting down to the nitty gritty of why do consumers adopt products? Why do they vouch for them to their friends? What is it that successful companies do to have arguably overnight success in terms of product adoption and sales? And I think that comes down to product marketing being one of the biggest missing links in the outdoor industry when I talk about brand creative and direction. You talk about a ton of things on the podcast that are all amazing and I apply as much as I can to my day to day. One of the things that's awesome that I want to talk about is just some of the tools that we have and the ways that we take customer insight in near real time, granted we're in tech and apply that to a testing and learning methodology to be able to get better on product adoption.

(03:41):

At the end of the day, the more product adoption you have, the more trust you build in the products, the more trust you then build in the brand. And it enables you to then have the space to go do those big branded campaigns so that you're not only locking your customers down as users and evangelists of the utility that you create, but also aligning with the brand that they want to identify with.

Cole Heilborn (04:05):

Yeah. Oh man. Okay. There's a lot to dig into here. Yeah. Before we dig a little deeper, can you share a little bit more about your background and kind of how ... I feel like you've kind of come to this position from a unique journey working in the software world, but then also being in the outdoor industry and kind of seeing both sides. I also feel like your perspective is really valued here because the outdoor industry, as we all know, is kind of insular. We don't really look outside our own four walls a whole lot. And so share a little bit more about your background and how that has helped shaped this perspective.

Alex Maier (04:38):

Yeah. So going back, I worked for Onyx Maps and launched their backcountry product. So I did that for three years and then was stolen away to a competitor in the water rec space called OnWater and I'm now president there leading two platforms, one within fishing, one within paddle sports to help people get out and recreate on the water ethically, safely, and just getting more people into the sports.

Cole Heilborn (05:07):

Let's define a couple terms and start with some basics. If you had to define brand marketing and product marketing, how would you describe both of those?

Alex Maier (05:15):

It's a good question. And my definition might differ from those that are listening. Brand marketing to me invokes an emotion with the ultimate outcome and objective of increasing the number of people who identify with the emotion being portrayed. I think there's a lot of companies out there that do that very, very, very well. And the outcome there is that if you ask, "Why do you support? Why do you buy X brand?" They're going to answer with, "Because I believe in what they do. " Product marketing, on the other hand, is where you have this intersection of consumer insight meeting storytelling that if done very well identifies a problem that the consumer has or maybe doesn't know they have, but it identifies the problem and the solution. This is where we unpack the idea of value propositions being super, super important. I think a great example of this that we all see all the time, but maybe can't put our finger on it, is Apple has done a great job of this, as well as maybe let's just say a Yeti has done a really good job of this, where you didn't know you needed to keep things colder until you needed to keep things colder, that you could keep things colder longer.

(06:35):

And in my opinion, the difference between the two is product marketing is your foundation and brand marketing is your halo.

Cole Heilborn (06:47):

Tell me more about that distinction.

Alex Maier (06:49):

Again, it comes down to, and I think a big misconception here is if I say product marketing, the listeners might be saying, "Oh yeah, we do really good product photography." Or, "Yeah, we include, we drop our product in every single photo shoot that we do. " Or, "Hey, that's an e-commerce team thing that they have to figure out the merchandising online or in store for how we merchandise and how we sell the product." Or even going as far as saying, "Yeah, we do predominantly wholesale and the marketing of our product is really left up to our retail partners to do this. " When at the end of the day, if you don't focus in on the problems that you solve for your customers, all the marketing that you're doing is really now just looked at as brand marketing, right? It's something that it highlights, shows your products, but if you're not telling them why a consumer needs it, the problem that it solves, how it solves that problem, it's brand marketing.

Cole Heilborn (07:52):

Yeah, gotcha. So tell me about the difference between the SaaS world and the outdoor world. Does the SaaS world use any brand marketing or is it almost predominantly product marketing?

Alex Maier (08:03):

That's a good question. It's very little. I mean, there are some companies out there that do it really well, and I'm going to take big tech out of it for a second because big tech is just its own monster. Generally speaking, SaaS industries, the SaaS industry and what that is that software as a service, SaaS industries and mobile tech generally rely on utility. How does this product solve my problems? I'm sure everyone here listening has gone to the Apple App Store and has looked for a product to use. And as you scroll through, you might see brand design elements that draw you to one product or another, and that's purely aesthetics. But generally what you're looking for is, does this app solve a problem that I'm looking to have solved? Be it a time tracker, a fitness app, a mapping app, right? A utility of some sort to organize your to- do list, whatever it might be.

(09:07):

Generally, you don't see any kind of strong brand marketing on the SaaS side. You see a tremendous amount of product marketing.

Cole Heilborn (09:16):

So yeah, is that unique to the outdoor industry compared to SaaS and beyond? Does the outdoor industry over-index on brand?

Alex Maier (09:26):

That's a good question. I hadn't thought about that. If I were to shoot from the hip, I would say yeah, the outdoor industry definitely over-indexes on brand marketing and you see it come to life in social channels and brand campaigns and the ever present super big volume of film tours. Don't get me wrong, I love them, but there's so many of them. And a lot of brands and brand marketing teams are out there vying for the next best photo, the next best emotive brand marketing video campaign. And they're great and they're awesome, but it still doesn't do the actual product and sell through justice. So yeah, I would say absolutely it over-indexes in the outdoor industry.

Cole Heilborn (10:22):

So it's really interesting having this conversation with you because just the two episodes ago that we published, or three now when your episode comes out, we did an episode with Shelby from Oakley. She works for their ... She's a global brand manager for helmets and goggles, and she was talking about how Oakley brought their surf helmet to life. And the whole thesis behind her episode was brand should be involved from day one of product dev because if it isn't, you miss out on those consumer pain points and the journey of developing and innovation.

Alex Maier (10:58):

Exactly.

Cole Heilborn (10:59):

And then when you actually get to the handoff where product passes it to marketing, marketing is that much more equipped to actually then go out and do their job well. And I realized in Shelby's episode, and I realized in this episode that so much of what we talk about on this podcast is brand, but I've always been operating under the assumption that ... And I guess I'm assuming that the audience understands this as well, is that if your product isn't great, then brand doesn't matter. And I think this conversation of what you're advocating for is emphasize product and then add brand on top. Is that how you would approach it?

Alex Maier (11:38):

I'm going to backstep or talk differently or be devil's advocate to the only thing that I'm promoting, which is it depends. It really depends because it depends upon how you approach things. There's a lot of what I'm talking about with product marketing is directly applicable to products that are created that provide utility versus products that are created that have subjective value. So case in point, let's take a look at the Northface. I think they're easy one to pick on. So the Northface has, what is it? Their Summit series, I think it is. And there's a lot of the backend of that is a lot of that is rooted in climbing Mount Everest and having extreme conditions and needing the best of the best and truly focusing on innovation. And that's great. But if you look at where that company has gone over the last, slowly over the last decade or so, is they've moved from a staunch focus on utility and objective-based value to subjective based value, which is, does it have the right fashion trend, colorway, pattern?

(12:57):

How is it being envisioned in an urban environment? And I'm not here to say that that's wrong or that's bad, but the more that you do float over into that world, the less in my mind, product marketing, as we've described it so far, matters and brand absolutely then takes the cake. Now we could probably have a whole nother podcast on what does product marketing look like in a subjective based valued world. It's going to be probably something completely different. Not prepared for that because I'm sure there's a lot of like if ands or buts on that. But as we look at this, I think a good definition going back to your one of your original questions is, was product marketing. Product marketing is definitely there for supporting products that have a objective based value, meaning like, is the rubber sticky? Are the handlebars solid? Does the shock go up and down smooth?

(14:01):

Is the weighing jacket keeping me dry? Those things and those value points.

Cole Heilborn (14:08):

Gotcha. So you're talking about from utility to subjective value, and it almost seems like though a lot of outdoor brands as they grow, that's the natural progression that they take. Totally.

Alex Maier (14:19):

Yeah, it totally is. I think they trade one for the other. And I do believe that that is a big miss. As you look at even like a company, I'm going to pick on Nike for a second, like the original premise of where the company started that the story has been told many times is unique tread on the bottom of a running shoe to make you run faster. Bill Bauerman and the whole University of Oregon history and legacy there. It was based upon innovation and utility. And then what came of that was this idea of irreverence and challenging the norms and supporting the underdog and where the brand has evolved to now to where when you see and you ask people, why do you wear Nike? It's because it identifies with their cultural values, the trends, whatever that next thing is. And again, I'm not saying that that's bad, but what I define, has Nike lost shelf space with specialty retail run shops?

(15:26):

Absolutely, because they've completely abandoned that world and that world. And it's not to say that they're not innovating. It's not to say that their product doesn't provide utility, but when you think about what they had to do to scale their business, yeah, you have to appeal to the masses. You have to get away from the core. You have to do those things. I do believe though that there's definitely a world to where you can have the best of both. You can still do both things. And what happens is as a lot of brands continue to grow and as you move away from, say, founder-led decisions on how you go to market and you bring in marketing teams and they look at the competition, right? They look at the competition and say, "Oh wow, I'm a small startup. I want to be like North Face. I need to run big brand campaigns like this.

(16:11):

" And it's this big flywheel of just FOMO almost that you get into being like, "I have to do this. I have to do it like them." And you start to lose the essence of like, "Well, why did you even start this company? Why do you even build the products that you do?

Cole Heilborn (16:27):

" And so in that situation, your suggestion would be to ignore brand or focus on product marketing, focus on product innovation, and then grow from there?

Alex Maier (16:40):

What I would do, I mean, if this was one of the takeaways from our conversation today is to say, if I'm a marketing leader in the outdoor industry, how much of my team's focus is put on supporting product adoption and sell through? And I'm not talking just e-commerce and having PDP imagery, but how much of it is focused on truly collecting those consumer insights, understanding the stories to tell and telling those stories and have an equal voice at the table. Do you have a product marketing director and a brand marketing director and are they of equal status at both informing each other's work? That would be amazing. If you don't, if you're brand marketing heavy, then you likely product marketing in your mind, just by matter of how you set up, is going to be an afterthought and you're naturally going to be driving the company in that direction.

(17:30):

And what'll happen is you'll start to sense some friction within your organization where merchandising teams, retail buyers, your sales team, they're going, "Oh man, struggles with products, struggle with sale through. Things are having to get put on discount and clearance." Your product creation teams are going, "Man, we keep leaving all this innovation on the cutting room floor. Why is that? Why can't we sell on this awesome new fabrics that we have? " It's because just because you build it, just because you have the product doesn't mean you understand how to bring it to market. And a big thing we talk about in SaaS is product market fit. You don't talk a lot about that. And then product market fit in the outdoor space is usually put on product creation teams to own. And if the product doesn't receive adoption, it falls back on the product team.

(18:25):

Marketing teams rarely are the ones that get the finger pointed at them because they're over here creating brand campaigns saying we're building an affinity for the brand and there's no owners put on them there. Whereas in tech, on our team, we have a dedicated product marketing manager and this person is tied directly to our product creation and engineering teams. They understand the pain point that they're solving. They understand how that problem was solved with our products solutions and then they go to market with it and they inform, "Hey, social teams, brand teams, community teams, we need to talk about these solutions. Here's how we would talk about these solutions. Can you guys help us here?" But you have someone who's actually advocating for that, for the product marketing.

Cole Heilborn (19:10):

So you got me wondering about this concept of innovation when it comes to product. And now I know for most brands, they have brand drivers and volume drivers when it comes to particular products. Most outdoor brands are going to produce a puffy. Is it that innovative? Not really, but they've got brand driver products like the Summit series that should drive that innovation. But something we talk about on the podcast is this idea of so many brands produce lookalike products and there's very little differentiation between them. And so one of the things to consider is invest in brand because that's one way to differentiate. I'm curious how you'd respond to that. Do you feel like the suggestion there would be to double down on innovation? Is it to invest more into brand? I feel like we're getting into kind of the business fundamentals here of what makes a good business and what do you value and prioritize as the leadership team?

Alex Maier (20:12):

Yeah, absolutely. I would love to unpack the recent Columbia ad because you and I talked about that because this is a great case study for that. Generally, it goes back to this idea of how much utility is your product bringing and what's the reason for being for that product. If it is just general mass market, everyone needs a puffy, so therefore we want to make volume with that. There's nothing wrong with it and brand marketing is absolutely the best driver for it. Now, that being said, everything that you're creating and producing is for mass market and general consumability. I'm going to put you in the camp that your products are more in the subjective category in terms of utility, which means that I'm going to look at you more as ... I'm going to use Columbia Sportswear brand as an example. I'm going to look at you more as a fashion company and put you in that box.

(21:17):

And so therefore, yes, brand marketing is arguably where you should put more of your eggs. But I will say that even a company like that, we're all pulled from automotive as well. We're all familiar with, let's just say, like a Toyota or a Porsche. You see that these automobile manufacturers, they create some of the most badass machines out there that are seen in ... I'm spacing on what it is, but the most high profile racing events that exist out there, like the LMP2 cars that are created by Porsche and Audi, Mercedes, and et cetera, to where they're racing the race of the 24 hours of Lama and it's a 24-hour endurance race where these cars just don't stop and they have to be the most technically savvy and sound. I liken that too, let's just say the summit series with Northface, right? It's that pinnacle product that is definitely there for driving innovation and that should, that technology and that product marketing should trickle down and resonate to the rest of your product line.

(22:32):

Oftentimes when SKU planning's happening and line plans are built, a lot of that is actually not fully thought through. Good companies do a good job of that, of trickling that innovation down so that everything cascades. But to your question of like, does the generic company that makes generic puffies need product marketing? No, you don't. Can you be successful without it? Yes, you can. What's the risk? I think the risk is that you're no different than anyone else and your brand marketing messaging isn't unique IP.

(23:08):

Anybody can do it. I think you've talked a lot on your show before where if you're to remove the logo off of a brand marketing campaign and you're to ask, "What company is this for? " And if you can't answer or you can name 10 or 20 different companies, that's the risk that you have. And so it goes back down to this idea of, I mean, even for product marketing, maybe this is the bigger story to talk about here is, are you listening to your customer base?

Cole Heilborn (23:36):

Yeah. Well, yeah. So let's dig into that because I think that's the risk that what you're describing is a risk of when brands and product marketing don't align, or rather the consumer's experience with the product and the brand that they're being communicated with don't align. Yeah. Expand on this campaign from Columbia, because I would agree with you. My understanding of the product does not align with the campaign that they released.

Alex Maier (24:03):

Right, right. Yeah. So two things. If the goal for a campaign like that was to change the perception of a brand and more specifically a brand's product offering, the starting point needs to be that the brand or the marketing team is tied to the hip for a year or two, at least a handful of seasons of creation to understand, "Hey, why do you build the product the way you build it? What are the inputs?" If they came back and they said, "Well, the inputs is that REI demands that they have so many SKUs from us that meet so many different price points with certain technologies and certain colors and that Academy and da, da, da, da, all the different wholesale partners that they sell to demand all these things, the marketing team would say, okay, great.

(25:07):

This campaign that we want to run to change people's opinions of our product won't work because what we're doing and what we're creating is not rooted in true customer feedback and that's okay, right? That's okay. Could they have created a campaign way more along the lines of, let's just say, a Land's End or an Eddie Bauer? I would've been like, yeah, that's believable. That's absolutely believable. Hey, outdoors person, you're looking to buy your parents something that are pseudo outdoorsy people, but you want to buy them something nice for the holidays. Well, guess what? You trust what Columbia builds in this realm for say Mountain Hardware, Columbia's this other brand, if you want them to have good quality stuff as well, but not to the technical prowess, this is great for you, right? Whatever smarter brands than mine would come up with for a brand campaign there, that'd be believable, right?

(26:03):

And be like, "Cool, you're owning who you are and you're leaning into that. " I could go on and on about this example just because Columbia has the benefit of having several different amazing brands in their portfolio, be it Prana, Mountain Hardware, Sorell, and they are able to hit so many different segments and demographics, but they consistently try to make this idea that Columbia sportswear is the big dog in the room. And the reality is that it's acting like it just doesn't know its place and they could be doing way more for the other brands. I mean, I think I've heard on the Rock Fight this year of the brands that are dead or the zombie brands versus the ones that are killing it. And it's ironic that you have mountain hardware that supposedly has had one of the best years as the comeback kid this year, whereas your Columbia brand is one of those ones where it's like, "Is it a zombie brand?

(27:03):

Is it teetering in that direction?" So anyways, you got me on a soapbox.

Cole Heilborn (27:10):

Yeah. If the true goal was to change the perception of the brand, then I feel like you got to tell a story ... Well, one, you actually have to start listening to your customer and changing your product, changing how it's designed and created. And then if you were to come along and tell a story about that journey, I think that would feel more appropriate of like, "Hey, this is who you thought we were, but we want to be something different. This is how we're changing. This is how we've retooled our entire business model, blah, blah, blah, blah." I would listen to that and I wouldn't walk away from the spot being like, "Eh, that doesn't check out. That doesn't add up." You know what

Alex Maier (27:57):

Would've made that spot actually work for Columbia is if they'd started within the first 10 seconds and they said, "You might know us for this type of product." And it would have a very Eddie Bauer land's end vibe of being like, "This is your typical grandpa's jacket or your typical person who thinks they're outdoorsy that are not really, and they kind of wear this thing. You've known us for this record screech, we're flipping the script now. We're changing this completely. We knew who we were. We want you to know we're going this direction now

(28:29):

And here's what it's like. " Q stake bite. Yeah, exactly. Q snake bite. That would be amazing, but then you'd also need to see many other things within that marketing campaign come out. You would need to see the change and the shift in the product line. You would need to see the introduction of maybe a new subline of Columbia. They've got titanium, right? Maybe it's a whole new product line with a new brand imagery and they say, "This is why it's different. New fits, new technologies, new this ... " That would've been believable. That would've been cool. That would've piqued my interest and go, "Oh wow, what are they doing? I know that. That's cool. Ha ha. Tongue in cheek. You guys poke fun at yourself and now you want to come over here." But instead they just said, "Well, this is who we are.

(29:12):

This is who we've always been. We're just now talking to a younger audience." I'm like, "No, that's not

Cole Heilborn (29:18):

True." Yeah. Well, the one thing I will give them credit for is they did something creatively different.

Alex Maier (29:24):

Yes.

Cole Heilborn (29:25):

They thought outside the box there, but it misses the most important piece, which is the credibility component. So we're talking about product marketing. And as you said at the beginning of this, most people think of product marketing as features and benefits. Tell me about the difference between features and benefits and value proposition when it comes to product marketing.

Alex Maier (29:43):

Yeah. So feature and benefit is, this is always something that's like, even it's difficult for me even to this day because it takes a lot of listening to your consumers to understand what a good value prop is Position is. A feature is going to be its waterproof up to a certain level. The benefit is we're going to keep you dry when it's raining hard outside. The value proposition goes deeper into the use case and the problem to solve. And this is where having an ear to your customers and your customer's problems is huge. The value proposition is, and I'm going to say just an example, because my wife, she's complained about this before and we've got two young kids and they're kind of gravitating towards doing soccer. And if anyone knows about anything about soccer in the Pacific Northwest is that it's generally cold, wet and nasty and parents who have much rather their children have chosen a sport like basketball indoors.

(30:51):

But nevertheless, we just got her an awesome Arterix jacket because we're going in that direction and we're going to do this. But the value proposition here is saying you want to be able to focus on your kids' first goal while watching their first soccer game and you know it's wet. This jacket's not going to let you down. This jacket's going to allow that moment to happen without you being miserable.

(31:21):

In way too many words, if I had more time, I could give you less words as the famous saying goes. But that there is a value proposition. You're speaking to a specific cohort of user, a persona. You're resonating with the struggles they have, the fears they have, and then you're providing the solution without having to say what the benefits are.

Cole Heilborn (31:44):

So in that example though, that's emotion. You're selling emotion. Totally.

Alex Maier (31:50):

Yeah, totally emotion. Brand marketing and product marketing have to work with each other. They can't be in a silo. Product marketing has to be able to play on emotions, positive emotions, negative emotions, fear, curiosity, all of those things. But the outcome and the solution is this is the product. This is that product that you need. We have that solution for you.

Cole Heilborn (32:18):

Got it. So product marketing isn't absent of emotion.

Alex Maier (32:22):

No. Not at all. I think one of the greatest examples, there's actually two good examples of this. Recently, in recent years, Apple did it and Garmin did it. More recently, Garmin did it. When Apple announced their, I think, what is it they're ... I forget what it is, but they're more outdoor focused Apple Watch that had the SOS and some of the satellite messaging and capabilities. There's this great piece that you could bring up where this guy swimming in an open ocean and you're hearing just the audio of his 911 call that he was able to do from his watch because it was connected to, I guess, cell phone, not satellite, but cell phone at the time. And the beautiful thing there is that that ad campaign highlighted the problem. You're by yourself. You don't have connectivity. Historically, you wouldn't have connectivity. You're in trouble.

(33:17):

You're stuck in the middle of the water. I think it was a sharks, maybe it was in sharks. And this product is now coming in as the solution. And it didn't talk about the range of connectivity. It didn't talk about the features, the UI. It was simply that this product made this person safe. This product saved this person's life. Garmin just recently launched one. I'm forgetting one of their Phoenix line watches, but it has now the SATCOM capability and the piece was definitely chock full of emotion. This guy, he's running up a mountain. I think he slips and falls, hurts himself, maybe breaks his leg. You probably seen the spot. And there was the highlight of the product where he was able to go blink, blink. And then I think it was an SOS ping and the search and rescue team comes in with a helicopter and saves them.

(34:10):

That is the epitome of product marketing. And some might be like, "Oh, that's brand marketing." No, the brand is present. People know what the brand is and it's definitely supporting the brand. But this is driving somebody to go straight to the website. I want to see this watch. How much is it?

(34:30):

Whereas a brand marketing is going to go, "Wow, that's cool.This guy just skied this epic line down this epic mountain face. It was a first descent or first descent and you're getting placements of the jacket and the pants and the skis and the poles and the helmet and whatever." But it's not driving the person to go, "I want to know more about this

Cole Heilborn (34:51):

Product." Yeah, gotcha. I'm pretty sure the spot from Garmin was produced by a guest of the show, Kyle, who's one of the producers over at Garvin.

Alex Maier (34:59):

Oh yeah.

Cole Heilborn (34:59):

So Kyle, if that was you, shout out. Nice job. So in this example, it feels like product and brand marketing are coming very close. Where are they touching in this example of the Garmin example?

Alex Maier (35:15):

Yeah. So tone of voice is a big part. Ensuring that the way that you're talking about your product upholds the brand's mission, vision, values, beliefs. When you think about treatments, when you think about the types of people that you're portraying, all those things are definitely driven more so by brand. And so there has to be an intersection of both because if you don't have the brand component, then what you're left is you start drifting more into this stuffy blase vanilla world of SaaS marketing, of product marketing, where you go to any SaaS products out there that you may use in your day-to-day and you go to their website and it says, "We will increase your efficiency by X percent. We'll change your sales by 300%." And they just tout all those things. So there definitely has to be an intersection of both. You have to have both.

(36:17):

And that's why I said if any marketing or creative leaders are watching this right now, would it make sense for you guys to have a product marketing director and a brand marketing director? I would say one wouldn't be greater than the other. I definitely think you need both.

Cole Heilborn (36:33):

So hypothetically, if an outdoor brand just completely decided to ignore brands and double down on product marketing, I know it's probably an answer where you'd say it depends and most things depend, but where would that trajectory take them? Yeah,

Alex Maier (36:50):

That's a good question. My belief is that they would have a more predictable business that is less likely to be rocked by changing consumer opinion, trend, economic thing because it forces a company to, again, at the end of the day, it just forces a company and the people in the company to listen to the consumers and the people making the purchasing decision, period. In tough economic times, and there's a lot of conversation recently about the tariffs and what's been going on with trade in the last couple of years, when people have buying power and they're the ones that get to make the decision on, do I buy this or do I not, when it comes down to, "Hey, I want to buy more quality product. I want to buy product that is going to last a long time, that meets my needs, that really solves my problems." People become more utilitarian in their thinking, whereas in times of great economics, things are easy, people will go and shift their purchasing behavior to be a bit more of the nice to haves, the subjectives.

(38:14):

"I think this looks good on me. I'm going to buy five of them because it makes me feel nice, feel good. "And again, this is where, yeah, it depends on are you more subjective or objective based in terms of the products you create? But either way, if you're not listening to your customers, if you're not listening to your consumers, if you're not solving problems for them, and if you're not speaking to them in their language, you risk being a zombie brand, as Colin Truist put it.

(38:45):

You risk those things and you're just like everyone else. If a company were to, a general outdoor company were to say," Hey, we're going to stop all brand marketing for one year. We're going to focus on product marketing, "I think they'd do great. I don't think there would be any issues there. If a company were to say," Hey, we're going to do the opposite, you're going to have a lot of what you have today where it's a lot of people clamoring for the same aesthetic, the same message, the next best cliche saying that's out there for a brand marketing campaign and you're all vying for the campaign of the year award versus actual what's supporting the company itself. "And I think a lot of times I've run into this before where I've seen it where your marketing teams are more interested in the fun creative than they are actually supporting what the business needs out of them.

Cole Heilborn (39:39):

Yeah, I would agree with that. The amount of times that I chat with folks and there isn't a clear business problem that we're trying to solve and it's just ... I'm all for the emotion. I'm all for the fluffy and the ethereal, but it has to be solving a problem. And if it isn't solving a problem, then I question why are we doing it? Yeah.

Alex Maier (40:00):

When it comes down to it, there's a few pillars to this. We talked about listening to your customers and how do you do that? Not only is it marketing and creative teams tying themselves at the hip to the product creation teams, but it's also sit with your customer support team. Read the warranty feedback, the return feedback, read all the reviews from your e-comm site, from your retail partners websites. Go jump into Reddit threads and lose yourself to the trolls on there. But lose yourself in all of those different things. Put in your competitor's keywords. Put in different use cases. Read about what people are complaining about, what they love. Attend events in real life. If you're a marketer in this space, be a steward of the product at the same time.

(40:58):

If you're a brand marketer, go to a running event, let's say a trail running event and go talk to people and be like, " Why do you like these shoes? What do you hate about them? What scares you about running? What excites you about running? "Go ask those questions. Actually get with them. That's one of the things that we do in our company is we actually have a dedicated person that manages customer support as well as they are the owner of the voice of a customer. And they interview, they go to events, they talk and they say," Hey, here's what it is. "Because oftentimes a lot of these teams don't even go talk. They don't even go talk to their customers or they have this elitist idea of what it needs because they've talked to athletes and they say," Athlete feedback says this or X, Y, Z million dollar a year salary athlete that does all this cool stuff says they want the product to do this.

(41:50):

"I'm like, " Well, that's great, but is that going to sell in? That's going to serve your top, top, top, top, top core here, and that's cool. Are you translating that down in your product? Are you translating that down in your marketing?

Cole Heilborn (42:01):

"So if you had to kind of land the plane here a little bit and summarize some of the big ideas, what would you want to leave folks with? I

Alex Maier (42:10):

Think there would be a challenge that says," The tactical thing is look at your team. Who owns product marketing on your team today and how is that success measured? "Are we asking the question how disapppointed would you be if you can no longer have said jacket, said brand, said product line, whatever it was? I think those are two general takeaways. The big one that's more of a mindset shift is how often are you talking to your customers? How often are you listening? Are you doing it daily? Are you shrugging off their feedback? How often is your product creation team listening to that feedback? How often are you providing that customer feedback and intel to your product creation teams, being that marketing teams and creative teams are generally interfacing with a broader swath of them on a daily basis than anything. How are you partnering with your retail and wholesale partners to be able to get more of that information and that feedback?

(43:14):

When you're doing your creative, and I think you've talked about this a few times, Goal, when you're doing your creative, what problem are we trying to highlight? What solution are we trying to highlight? How does this drive demand for the product? How does this increase product adoption, product usage?

(43:35):

A lot of product marketing isn't just about the attraction step, but it's about what we call as retention, but subsequent usages. Do you have product that live in your garage right now that you've maybe used once? Why? Why have you only used it once? You spent $300 on that thing. Why have you only used it once? You have a problem with product adoption, that's a product marketing issue. So landing the plane here is like, are you listening to your customers? And it sounds cliche, but are you truly listening and how are you actioning that? How is marketing actioning that? How is product creation actioning that? If you're looking at your product calendars for 2026, are your marketing calendars for 2026 right now? How many little things in your Gantt chart are product marketing initiatives? Where are you slating that in?

Cole Heilborn (44:25):

So the thing that I feel like I talk a lot about on this show is this idea that the audience doesn't care and you kind of have to overcome that disinterest if you're producing branded content. It feels like though it's still applicable in product marketing. I mean, that's kind of like assuming your customer will care about the product that you're designing is a critical mistake. And I guess it doesn't matter if it's product marketing or brand marketing, that assumption can be costly. Oh, totally. Actually, ironically,

Alex Maier (44:59):

Took a screenshot you posted about this day. You said, if you assume the posture, they don't care from the beginning, it encourages marketing and creative teams to focus on the audience and creating exceptional value. November 25th, Cole Heilborn.

Cole Heilborn (45:14):

I think that was literally like what, four hours ago.

Alex Maier (45:16):

It was. I was like, oh, that's so good. But no, it's so true. And I think that is a great way to approach this is that marketing teams need to look at this and say, nobody cares about our jackets. Nobody cares about this product. Nobody cares about this innovation. Change my mind. And that's how we need to approach this stuff. I think maybe the trap here and a big takeaway is we fall back on brand marketing and say, we've done our job. People know what our brand is. Therefore, they will come. They will buy our product. But we don't ask, "Do you care about our brand?" "Yeah, we care about your brand, but do you care about the products, the innovations, the things that we have? ""Well, no. I like wearing it because I like the logo." I identify with the brand, but none of the products I actually use on a daily basis that I'm doing repeat purchases on are for that brand.

(46:15):

Why?

Cole Heilborn (46:17):

Yeah. Good stuff. What do you hope comes out of this? Is your goal for brands to completely reimagine their SKUs and innovate product?

Alex Maier (46:29):

In a perfect world, just being the minimalist that I am, I would love to see the outdoor industry create less, but create better. I would love for the outdoor industry to focus more on creating product that solves true problems. There are so many user groups out there that, I mean, I don't know how many of you guys pay attention, probably a lot to the Outdoor Industry Association's participation reports, but you see this crazy number of people that are new entrants into the market every year, into the outdoors. And you see a crazy number of people leave. Why is that? When you look at some of the surveying that's done, it's simple things that these companies could have a hand at solving, right? I don't like to be cold. I don't like to be wet, but yet what do we see? We see retailers demanding product that is subpar and innovation left on the cutting room floor that never makes it to market.

(47:26):

Can we change that? Can we actually give more weight to the voice of the customers and consumers out there to be able to create, to give permission to product creation teams to make a better product? Arguably, you would think that you're going to be selling more, you're going to be building brand, you're going to be building trust and companies that don't do this, those zombie brands just can essentially just finally die. Sorry, there's a lot of saturation. We need a little bit of consolidation for the betterment of the planet too. I forget what podcast I was listening to, but we have an oversupply of apparel that will last us for the next 40 years if we stop producing today.

Cole Heilborn (48:08):

Geez.

Alex Maier (48:08):

Or some crazy stuff like that, 40 years, 30 years, something like that. For an entire planet? Yeah, there's too much. Wow. There's too much that already exists out there. So it's like, does everyone, do we need a bunch of generic puffies? I don't mean, yeah, we need to make sure that product and gear is accessible from a, can I find it standpoint? Can I afford it standpoint? All of those things, yeah, we need to consider those things. But I do think that if what I would love to see as a change is companies coming out and not launching campaigns like the Columbia one, but seeing more companies thrive and do well and show that when you solve problems for people, you're making the world a better place in so many different ways, right? So many different ways. You're getting more people excited and having good experiences in the outdoors.

(49:00):

You're not filling the landfills and everything else that goes along with that. Well,

Cole Heilborn (49:05):

And arguably that's why businesses exist is to solve a problem.

Alex Maier (49:09):

Yeah. Yeah. But oftentimes, and I'm all for capitalism and the free market economy and growing and doing things, but you can always do those things in an ethical and more, and I say sustainable, a more sustainable way that is doing more good than harm. And that's what I love to see at the end of the day, right? There's already enough, and even on the creative side, we talk a lot about creative on this podcast. Even from a creative standpoint, there's enough creative out there to view for the next 40 years if we stop creating today. It's the same problem. There's just so much out there and we're aiding to the noise. I would much rather be presented with more creative and marketing that selfishly I give a darn about. There's so much out there where I'm like, "Okay, this has been rinsed and repeated because you've copied what everyone else has done and it's a bunch of sea of sameness." It's one reason why I'm two years sober on social media now.

(50:14):

I've taken it off my phone because it's just a sea of sameness, right? There's nothing that's unique or valuable to me anymore. And I have one life to live and I don't want to get sucked down that road. So hopefully brands are also them producing content and creative that is worth paying attention to.

Cole Heilborn (50:30):

Yeah. Well, that seems like a good place to wrap it up. It's

Alex Maier (50:35):

A good conversation.

Cole Heilborn (50:37):

Yeah. Thanks for the time. Thanks for the thoughts. If people want to find you and if you want people to find you, where can they find you?

Alex Maier (50:46):

Probably finding my social media's going to be a little harder, but LinkedIn is always a great place. Love it, hate it. It's a great place. You can find me just Alex Maier and would happy to connect, chat with anyone about these ideas and thoughts. There's a lot of tools that we use that I would love to just tell people about that you could play with that helps get you there closer.

Cole Heilborn (51:06):

Okay. Well, Alex, thanks again. I hope you have a great rest of your day and I'm sure I'll see you out on the water.

Alex Maier (51:11):

I'll see you on the water, Cole.

Cole Heilborn (51:13):

See you. Thank you for listening to this episode. If you enjoyed it, please consider sharing it with a friend or leaving us a review on Apple. And remember, as you're working on that next piece of creative, the difference between creative that works and doesn't work often comes down to the hard questions that you ask while you're shaping it.

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