Marc Bock (00:00):

Sometimes the best marketing projects are just being born because someone has jumped on opportunities. And sometimes that's really great of course. But in times of limited investments and really the urge of being more effective with your Marketing dollars, you really have to be precise in your reasoning why you are doing and the way you're doing it. And at the end, it's about return on investment, right?

Cole Heilborn (00:27):

Welcome to the Backcountry Marketing Podcast. I'm your host Cole Heilborn. On this podcast, you'll hear from leaders in the outdoor marketing industry discuss the gritty details of their work, as well as the latest challenges and lessons they're learning along the way. If you want to hone your craft and become a stronger Marceter, then this podcast is for you. This podcast is produced by Portside Productions, an outdoor film production company based in the Pacific Northwest. If you work at a brand or agency in the outdoor industry that needs help bringing in video project to life, head over to portside pro.com and send us an email we'd love to help.

Cole Heilborn (01:00):

Welcome to the Backcountry Marketing podcast. Today I'm sitting down with Marc Bock he's the global content leader at the Gore-Tex brand. Joining us from Bavaria, Marc, welcome to the show.

Marc Bock (01:10):

Hi, Cole, nice to meet you, and many thanks for having me.

Cole Heilborn (01:14):

Yeah, thanks for taking the time to join us. I'm excited to bring you on the show today. We're going to have a fun conversation all about marketing content, stories, developing series making relevant content, distributing that content, and then lastly, talking about how the Gore-Tex brand justifies the ROI of some of the storytelling projects that you've been embarking on lately. So this is a timely conversation. We've been having a few conversations about this idea. And Marc, when you and I connected over our intro call a few weeks ago, you just had some amazing insight into kind of the behind the scenes workings of how the Gore-Tex brand approaches these types of projects. And I was like, oh, we've got to bring Marc to the show. I think he could bring some excellent insight to other folks who are trying to wade through this mess of media and content. And the eternal question of, as a brand, how do I show up? What sort of content do I produce and how do I do it strategically? Yeah. Is this something you're passionate about or is this just something that comes with the job description that you get to do?

Marc Bock (02:24):

Well, I'm in the unique position of really having fun in my job. I think without having fun, I would not do that. Well, yes, I would say I have a passion for content and communication. I've done that all of my life. So my whole professional career was lettering around Marketing communications and creating content and distributing content. Even before when I was in school, I just created copied fan scenes for punk rock bands and stuff like that. So it was since ever that I was engaged with making content. So yeah, I would say that's definitely a passionate, of course that helps in the job.

Cole Heilborn (03:10):

So I want to start with a question and then we'll kind of reel it in and back up and provide a little context to your job. But do you think distinguish a difference between marketing and storytelling, or are they one and the same or do you see them as two separate, slightly different entities?

Marc Bock (03:26):

I would see these as different entities. So my interpretation and the interpretation of the Gore-Tex brand is that storytelling is for us just a tactic to support our Marketing objectives. So the world is full of content and full of good stories, and everybody loves good stories, but sometimes there are other tactics needed then telling a good story to support your Marketing objectives. And so right now we are investing a lot in storytelling because right now it's the right tactic to have in place to support our Marketing objectives, but we have also other tactics like pure technology, explanation or other tactics. But of course, storytelling is really a really nice tactic and everybody has fun doing that.

Cole Heilborn (04:24):

So I want to pull on that thread a little bit more, but can you provide a little context to your role with the brand and what you oversee and what you get to work on?

Marc Bock (04:33):

Yeah, so my title says Global content leader, and that pretty much nails it. So I'm taking care of all global content, so that includes content strategy. So really defining what is the right content for the right target audience, for the right channels to the right time with the right purpose. Then I'm responsible for all the global content productions, so video productions, photo shoots, but also a lot of agency work with creating animations, creating infographics, creating copy projects, all of that. And you can just understand it like I'm sitting in the middle of all the different marketing functions and I'm trying to use as many synergies between these functions as possible. So whenever we are running a production, we make sure that every channel, that every function can contribute and can leverage the content that we are producing.

Cole Heilborn (05:35):

How does that work internally? Do different departments give you briefs and then it's your job to produce those or what's the relationship look like between you and the internal stakeholders?

Marc Bock (05:47):

So we have a content process. So we have processes for taking in content requests, so everybody from all regions in the world and also from all channels and from all global functions, they can send me content requests. And we have a setup with different content meetings where we are discussing these requests and where we identify synergies and possible opportunities also for other channels and functions. And so it's just important to centralize these requests and bring it together on the table and discuss that together so that everybody's aware that something is happening. And sometimes one function or one channel champion is raising his finger and saying, Hey, that's a great opportunity. I will jump in. And so we bring everything together and discuss that centrally, and that's more or less the process.

Cole Heilborn (06:49):

So yeah. I want to jump back to a comment you made. You said storytelling is a tactic and for the Gore-Tex brand, investing in storytelling right now seems to be a good use of that tactic or it's a good tactic to meet the needs that you have. Why is that? Why is this the right time? And maybe you could provide a little background on some of the storytelling efforts that you are working on. You guys have a series going on, I think it's called Breaking Trails. Can you kind of elaborate on what's cooking and why now?

Marc Bock (07:20):

I think storytelling is quite a heavy bus word floating around in the world of Marketing right now. And probably if you are asking 10 people, you would get 12 different opinions on what storytelling is. Our interpretation is that storytelling has an emotional appeal that's in the nature of a good story, I'm convinced. And for us, storytelling is something that we use to emotionalize our brand to really tell a story where people would like to listen to or would like to watch a film about a certain aspect of our Gortex brand. And some other Marketeers may interpret that in a different form. Maybe someone would say, okay, if we just describe our product in an entertaining way, that's also storytelling could be, that's not entirely our interpretation. When we speak about storytelling, we mean always an emotional approach and the right time to do that well.

(08:33):

So for us, this is a pure strategic approach. So we are not storytelling because we love good stories. That's a nice side effect of course. But we are using storytelling because it's really the right tactic to support our marketing objectives. And when I say storytelling has an emotional touch and aspect for us, it means that we have seen in different Marcet researches that emotionalizing the brand is for us in our position right now, a goal that we want to achieve. For some other brands, this could look totally different of course, but for our findings, for our Marcet research and for our definition of the marketing objectives, storytelling is right now the right tactic.

Cole Heilborn (09:27):

So talk to me more about this research that you've been doing or you have found that is leading you to the conclusion that storytelling is the right tactic because this is something that I think maybe doesn't get talked about as much. I think as you said, storytelling is kind of this fun buzzword and some people get really excited. Other people kind of roll their eyes when you talk about storytelling, and I think sometimes it feels like storytelling isn't rooted in fact or in strategy. And I think sometimes when brands produce storytelling pieces and they aren't rooted in facts or logical business objectives, windows pieces maybe don't work or they aren't aligned with the business objectives when they go out into the world, they don't perform as well. And so I'm curious if you can kind of break down what does your process look like internally to decide, okay, we want to actually invest in something like this, and then we could talk about actually how you go about finding a story and producing this story, but how much work happens before you even get to that point?

Marc Bock (10:31):

So it's a pretty solid process. And so I think every company that is looking into its future should invest a little bit in Marcet research to just better understand its consumers. And that's a basic principle of doing marketing and shaping marketing plans and defining marketing objectives. And in our research, we are focusing on younger consumers, which are ideally the bias of tomorrow. So Gore-Tex products have a pretty high price point. So if you are too young, you probably cannot achieve our products. But even more important it is to really understand their desires, their needs, their expectations and their behaviors and their convictions.

(11:32):

And we found that they have an understanding of the Gore-Tex brand, which can be optimized, and one tactic to achieve that is telling great stories with an emotional appeal. And this is a finding for Marcet research. And when you also take a look on the current media landscape, you take a look on what is working, what is not working. And our data also shows that long form really works well, that something emotional really works well, that authentic athlete content in the outdoors work well. And if you have all these building blocks together, you end up with the storytelling approach. So it's really strategic, but I'm not saying that other brands who have maybe another approach without so much Marcet research are not doing great stuff. So sometimes the best marketing projects are just being born because someone has jumped on opportunities. And sometimes that's really great. Of course, sometimes the best ideas you can get out of that. But in times of limited investments and really the urge of being more effective with your marketing dollars, you really have to be precise in your reasoning why you are doing and the way you're doing it. And at the end it's about return on investment, right?

Cole Heilborn (13:19):

So yeah, talk to me more about the younger generation. What specifically did you see in the research?

Marc Bock (13:27):

Well, I don't want to bore you with all the nitty gritty details to be sure maybe our Marcet research colleague would be the better person to speak about that in depth. But we have seen, of course, the younger the consumers get, the less they are familiar with the Gore-Tex brand and its products and its benefits. The younger you are, the more irrelevant it is because you can just not afford it. But still it's important to really think about how to reach these people, these younger consumers with our topics. And we think that emotional storytelling or human led storytelling is the right way to attract these audiences. They just have consumed a piece of content from us and they have seen a logo here, a logo there, add a nice jacket, add a nice shoe, and if you are able to repeat that this logo visibility or just this exposure of the brand to them, then you are building something in their mind.

Cole Heilborn (14:41):

So talk to me about the next step in your process, the process that you follow, or you said there's three building blocks to building relevant content. And when you kind of broke this down, I thought this really, really insightful. Can you share with us what that is? So let's say we're in the process of, we've decided that yeah, storytelling is something that we want to do. Our objectives align with storytelling as a tactic. What's the next step in order to make sure that your endeavor is successful? What are the right ingredients?

Marc Bock (15:10):

Yeah, the right ingredients. So you've just mentioned these three building blocks and these three building blocks for us in the strategy are how can we bring together our corporate needs with the target audience needs and the channel needs, so to say, the media channel needs. And only if you have a big overlap of these three bubbles, so to say, you can create relevant content because if you're just focusing on your corporate needs with ignoring the target audience needs so your content won't be seen and would be ignored and it's just not relevant. And if you meet corporate needs and target audience needs, but you cannot package it in the right way to place it and distribute it on the right media channels that it's not working, it's not reaching the audience. So it's always a balance between these three bubbles, corporate needs, target audience needs, and media channel needs. And of course, we are aiming for the sweet spot in the middle where you have ideally the biggest overlap of all these three aspects.

Cole Heilborn (16:28):

So if I were to fill in the blanks just to understand what goes in those bubbles, so corporate needs would be the Gore-Tex brand needs to create more awareness with the younger generation audience needs, help me out there, what would that be?

Marc Bock (16:44):

Well, corporate needs could also something else. It could be something from our research and development pipeline, and it could be a new product, a new technology or another business topic, and ideally what is in the pipeline of our products. Ideally there's a Marcet research behind that, and that also matches with the target audience needs, sometimes more, sometimes less. And we really have to try to identify the right topics that we can match with the target audience needs and for the target audience needs. It's of course absolutely crucial to have a good working Marcet research to really identify what are the target audience needs. And in our case, the target audience includes also customers. So we are in constant contact of course with our customers, and we are not selling products to the end consumer. We are selling our products to the customers. So target audience means for us also our customers.

(17:52):

And at the end, the media channels, of course, you have to package the content in the right way for each channel, and it's getting more complicated every year. Just take a look at Instagram. It started as a photo community, and now if you would like to cover Instagram, you have to create 3, 4, 5 different formats, real stories, images, carousels. So the optimization of the media landscape is really a big challenge for everybody out there who wants to reach his target audience in the most effective way. And to juggle all these balls is quite an effort and quite a challenge.

Cole Heilborn (18:40):

So using the Breaking Trail series as an example, can you share what the corporate needs were and the audience needs were for that project in particular?

Marc Bock (18:49):

Yeah, sure. So for Breaking Trails, which is a global film series that we have kicked off, I think one and a half years ago, the corporate needs was defined in the marketing objectives. So there was no need for communicating a certain product technology or for communicating a certain product benefit. So it was purely born out of the marketing objectives. And the marketing objectives were based on the Marcet research. We have talked about that. And so the goal of the Breaking Trails film series is really to attract younger consumers with the help of storytelling, ideally with a very human led emotional touch. And right now we have published four episodes so far. You can find all of them on our YouTube channel. If you search for Gore-Tex, and the target audience needs, these are our findings from Marcet research that they would be interested in emotional stories about talents, about adventures in the outdoors, about the right approach, regarding DE and I, which is also a very important aspect for the younger consumers.

(20:23):

And it should be an important aspect for all of us of course. And on top of that, you have the different channel needs. So if you identify the right target audience, then you should also have a good understanding of the media behavior. And if you have a good understanding of the media behavior, okay, I have to cover this and this channel and this channel and this channel, and then it's easy to create the right deliverables for all of these channels. But again, it's a big jigsaw puzzle you have to put together. And at the end we are aiming for the sweet spot to create the most relevant content to reach these target audiences.

Cole Heilborn (21:08):

And when you're looking for those stories, what are you looking for either in the mechanics of the story or the personality, the person in the story?

Marc Bock (21:19):

Well, I would say it's both, but the concept of breaking trails is saying that we are opening up the outdoors for everyone and we are telling the right stories to really support this ambition and with a strong aspect on emotional storytelling. And we can achieve these emotions by telling extraordinary stories of the talents. We are really looking for stories where people have overcome certain challenges or barriers. And we have done now four episodes and we have told so far a lot of stories of people who are not the most successful sportsman and sportswomen in their discipline, but they have overcome certain challenges and barriers. And sometimes it's more interesting to tell a story about overcoming barriers and challenges instead of just telling how someone has won the biggest race in his career.

Cole Heilborn (22:37):

Well, I think that's what makes stories good, definitely that's why we love them, is when you can relate to the person on screen and when you can empathize for them and when they are struggling through something, if you can feel that as the audience, then that's a great story. And the Storytell has done a good job. I think your first episode, I don't remember his name, but was with a blind ice climber and it was following him and his climbing partner was a woman. I don't remember her name either. I'm bad with names, but it was a really, I left watching that piece feeling like, oh my gosh, how is it possible that someone, it was incredible to watch someone who's blind ice climb and getting to know a little bit about their backstory and their relationship to their climbing partner. It was really well done.

Marc Bock (23:28):

Yeah, thank you very much. So it's Jesse Dufton, that's the name of the blind climber from the uk. And what he's doing is really amazing. So if you look what he's doing in rock climbing is unbelievable. Doing that blind is pretty special and deserves a lot of respect. And we brought him together with Tamara Luga, which is a worldwide known mountaineer, and when we told her, Hey, let's go ice climbing with Jesse, and he's blind and he will lead, she was just rolling her eyes and say, Hey, really seriously. But when they met, they had so much fun and it was such a trustful, trustful experience for both of them. That was really great. And that's exactly the kind of stories we are looking for, just go ice climbing with a blind climber and also telling the story of Jesse, what his experience is doing the sports blind and what the challenges are and what the barriers are, but also in the same way how positive everybody is reacting on that, not only because of respect that he's doing that on a certain level, no, he's really doing amazing things and really difficult stuff, and that's a great story definitely.

(24:59):

And people should know about this guy and should be motivated and excited to go out to the outdoors and not thinking about challenges or barriers.

Cole Heilborn (25:15):

Do you guys have a problem finding really good stories? Because this is something that I've heard from other brands. Everyone has a story, but only certain stories are really good to be captured in a film medium and to be presented on a screen. And I've heard from brands that they're like, we're really struggling to find the next story to tell, in part because they've told so many. And also because there's kind of this increasing bar of what makes a good story today that's going to stand out in the world of the congested media landscape. So I'm curious, when it goes to actually finding stories, are you looking purely within the Gore-Tex community athletes or ambassadors? Are you looking outside and how much work went into finding these people and are you thinking in the back of your mind, gosh, are we going to run out of stories? Are we going to have to work even harder to find stories in the future?

Marc Bock (26:16):

So the stories are out there, you just have to find them. You have to dig deep subtype to find the right ones that are matching all of the objectives and that are fit into the guardrails. But the stories are out there definitely, and you have to invest in searching for these stories, definitely. And we have a wonderful relationship with our creative agency taking this part of the job, and they're investing a lot into that. But again, the stories are out there and of course there's always a better story just around the corner, but at one point in time you have to stop and say, okay, we are going for this, and then the next story is for the next episode. And sometimes you just have to sit together with the talent and speak about what you have researched. And sometimes the conversation ends up with a totally different story. And because a lot of people are doing Instagram and YouTube and stuff like that, but they're only telling a part of the story. So it's really important to sit together with these people, reach out to them and having a conversation and really checking what is in there, what is the hidden piece that he's not showing on Instagram.

Cole Heilborn (27:57):

So I want to segue a little bit and talk about the ROI and how you justify the ROI, because I feel like this is often another big question and another complicated answer. And I'd love if you could kind of explain what you explained to me earlier, how you all the types of content and formats that you create from these projects and how that gets disseminated and then how that justifies the ROI, what your equation is for that.

Marc Bock (28:25):

Yeah, ROI is really a difficult topic sometimes for a project like a global film series. Let me start with the explanation, how we approach our content projects or marketing communication projects. So we have two different approaches. So we have short-term approaches that are very product and sellout oriented where we would create campaigns together with our customers to promote their Pinnacle Vortex product, and we would just link to an e-commerce platform with the pure objective of selling out this product. This is an extreme. And on the other side, we have long-term projects with totally different objectives, not sellout oriented, but brand building oriented. And if you take for example, a classic consumer campaign that you would see on TV or on a streaming service, it is very unlikely that these big brand campaigns from automotive or from whomever would really let around sellout. And that's exactly the same with our campaigns and with a global film series like Breaking trays.

(29:59):

So if you would ask me, okay, that's a nice film, great story, really emotional, but how many jackets do you sell with this episode of Breaking Trails? I could not answer that because it's not optimized for that. It's not the objective. It should work for the brand in the long term. It should build the brand in an emotional way, it should attract younger consumers, hopefully evolving them into the buyers of tomorrow. So these are the different approaches that we have short term for set out, long term for brand building. And coming back to your question, sorry for the long introduction, coming back to your question, return on investment, it's not that easy to just say Return on investment is for the global film series, the aspect of brand building, because how can you measure brand building? Of course you can have Marcet research and you can have different check-ins with focus groups and all of that and try to measure that in the long term.

(31:06):

And we try to do that in the best way, of course. But at the end, we justify the investments for such a film series because it uses so many synergies. So every global marketing function can benefit from the content and from the talent and from the footage and from the images that we produce there. And when we produce something like that, we always take a look on the user rights so that we are ideally completely independent to use the footage and the imagery as broad as possible and also as long as possible. So ideally for five years globally, all channels without any restrictions. And that gives us a lot of freedom and flexibility to work with this content, not only for this film series, but you could also see, for example, the images in some retail displays or social banners or on trade shows without any connection to the film series. We just use it as a content production opportunity to just produce content for all marketing functions. The combination of all of that using synergies, providing content for all channels and using this content in the long term, this justifies our investment.

Cole Heilborn (32:40):

Are you saying that outside of the actual story piece, the 10 minute long form version that you create, all of the other content and photos that you get from the shoot that you can use in a hundred different ways, that alone justifies the cost and then the storytelling piece on top of that is kind of like a cherry on top?

Marc Bock (33:03):

Well, the cherry on the top is maybe the wrong picture

Cole Heilborn (33:09):

Because

Marc Bock (33:11):

That's the first reason why we are doing it.

Cole Heilborn (33:14):

Sure.

Marc Bock (33:15):

And all the other aspects are the best possible side effects. So at the beginning when we created this film series, it was just a standalone film series and it was totally fine to do that, but we pretty soon saw the opportunities for including the other marketing channels for creating content that can be used beyond the film series. So it grew organically somehow.

Cole Heilborn (33:48):

Can you elaborate on what are all the other ways that this content gets used through all the other marketing channels? If you could just give us a laundry list of things that come to mind.

Marc Bock (33:58):

Well, it's a lot. So we have an internal talents program where we manage our talents and we are choosing the talents for breaking trades in close collaboration with our own talents program. So that's a first synergy. Then we can use a lot of these films in different event screenings. It could be in retail stores, it could be on trade shows, it could be on festivals. Wherever there's an opportunity to have a big screen, we can come and say, Hey, we have produced some really amazing films, we can show them to your audience. So that's great. And we are using the footage and the imagery also for retail, retail displays, for example, shopping windows, something like that. And we also upload all of the content and the images to our digital asset management, their agencies, and also my colleagues, our download, searching and downloading the content for any purpose.

(35:10):

So if someone would create a customer sales presentation and he just needs some good images from tray running or free ride snowboarding or ice climbing, he can go to the dam, search fries climbing, and then he would see some nice images and he couldn't download that, use these images without even knowing, oh, okay, that was from bragging trades. So it's not important anymore. So we can just use that as a content production opportunity and lower the costs overall because there's no need to do an additional shoot for trail running or any other activity because we have already done that for breaking credits.

Cole Heilborn (35:57):

That's awesome. What an efficient way to go about gathering content. You see a lot of brands doing content trips where they'll go out and capture a bunch of photos and maybe they're bringing in different brands and kind of doing a lifestyle thing. And I've always wondered why not turn that into more of a storytelling effort and then create all the other pieces of content that are created from those content trips?

Marc Bock (36:21):

Yeah, well, a lot of brands are doing that. And I have to admit honestly, it's not a pure revolution what we are doing there, but I think we are collecting the dots pretty well between our global functions and the regions and the channels definitely that. But the big difference to our customers, to all the brands out there that Patagonias are TerraX and you name it, they have to sell products every season, new products. And we are a so-called Ingredient brand. We don't sell products to the end consumers. So when those brands are doing these big productions, very often the objective is to highlight the seasonal highlight products and we have the unique opportunity of doing something more timeless. And a lot of these big brands are also doing timeless storytelling, amazing stuff. YouTube is full of that definitely. But still they have the need to communicate their seasonal product highlights.

Cole Heilborn (37:36):

Yeah, that makes sense. What have you seen, now that you've got four episodes out, I think you said you have another one coming out either late this winter, early in the new year, what's the reception been like? Has it been better than you expected? Are you seeing all of the foundational work paying off? Was the research correct? I know I just threw you three or four questions, but I guess to sum it all up, how's it going now that they're out in the wild?

Marc Bock (38:05):

We are super happy with the outcome so far. We have now launched four episodes. The fifth episode will celebrate its premier at Kendall Mountain Film Festival in November in uk. Sixth episode will be produced in December in Hoka in Japan. And so far the four released episodes, they perform really well. So we are super happy with that. For each of the episodes, we have a dedicated paid social media campaign, and the forecast was quite ambitious, but the actual numbers that we got really exceeded these forecasts. And that's also a good sign that your paid social media campaign performs really well and that the content is really consumed by the audience. And at the end we've got for every episode really good results. And that's of course a good reason to continue these film series.

Cole Heilborn (39:09):

So as you look at the outdoor media landscape in general, I'm curious, what do you see and what opportunities do you see amidst everything that's happening and is being produced?

Marc Bock (39:23):

Well, I think the big opportunity, especially for the Gore-Tex brand is to bring together the industry and also to influence the industry. So in total, we are working together with around 600 different customers all over the globe and more or less, everybody you can imagine is in there. This brings also a lot of responsibility and we have to be responsible with this unique position we have in the marketing. Speaking about sustainability and speaking about product development, speaking about the right approach to de and I, we have a unique position in the Marcet and we can try to influence the industry in a certain way. We are totally aware of this responsibility and we would like to work closely together with our customers to really bring the industry forward into the right direction. And we're doing a lot together with our customers, collaborate on marketing projects, collaborate on sustainability projects, collaborate on DEI projects, and this is the great opportunity. So for me personally, of course, because I can deal with different customers every week, that's fantastic. But also this is a great opportunity for the Gortex brand going further, really working closely together with these big brands and generating more impact to the end consumers with different topics.

Cole Heilborn (41:13):

Do you feel like the media world in general, congested, is there a lot of noise out there?

Marc Bock (41:22):

Well, we live in a noisy world, definitely. We definitely, and so I think content is all over the place. All over, and a lot of people are really rejecting new channels or just refusing and selling new apps, and they try to turn down the noise a little bit. And I'm now 45 years old and sometimes it's also really hard for me to really dive into some new up and coming apps and I think, oh my God, not another app. Oh my God. So it's really noisy out there, definitely. But somehow as a company which would like to communicate with target audiences, you have to indulge yourself into the media landscape, definitely. And you have to know all the nitty details about media behavior and media channels. That's part of the job. And if you don't have a passion for that, that's a tough challenge. And it's getting more complicated.

(42:35):

Definitely it's more effort to have on the radar what is the relevant channels, what are the relevant formats, what is working, what is not working? Just I mentioned Instagram back then it was so easy. Now it's super complicated. And that's just one example. And now also this shift to the streaming world. So it's a totally, totally new ecosystem there with all the streaming services, services and create content for the streaming services and also what we are doing here, podcast. So you can say, Hey, it's like radio, not exactly. So it's different and it evolves. Media landscape evolves and it's getting more atomized, and that means more effort, more challenges and more investments needed.

Cole Heilborn (43:29):

I guess the way I think about it, and maybe this is way too simplistic, but if the digital world is only going to get noisier because more and more people are contributing to it, the ability to produce content gets easier and easier, especially with ai, I guess I feel like there's two options. Either you get louder and as a brand you get louder and you produce more, so volume, or maybe there's another route which would be a more quality approach. Do you see only two routes forwards? And maybe there's somewhere in the middle. I know there's a route in the middle where you can move forwards, but is there a third option to how brands can be thinking about how to navigate this world into the future?

Marc Bock (44:21):

Well, I think it's really crucial to have a good understanding of your target audience. And if you have a good understanding of your target audience, you can be specific and you can be precise. And if you really know these are the relevant media channels, you can focus on these without being too loud and just creating relevant content, knowing your target audience needs, knowing the media behavior, this is the basis and everything else comes on top,

(44:59):

But really producing something relevant, you don't have to be super loud with that. You just have to be aware, okay, this is the right content for the right target audience on the right channel. And then that's how it goes. You have to spend a few marketing dollars in the promotion of that. That's part of the deal. But there are other tactics, other marketing strategies, being loud, being spectacular, and all of that has a good reason. So if you have a strategy saying that it's okay to do that, for us, it's a different approach. We try to just understand our target audience and be precise and specific with our content offerings because at the end, you cannot do everything out there. You cannot be present on all the channels. So you can, but if you would give me two zeros at the end of my marketing budget, then maybe it would be possible. But it's a challenge. It's a challenge. And in these types, you really have to be effective as possible.

Cole Heilborn (46:08):

So if you had to sum up our entire conversation, it sounds like what you're suggesting is know your audience,

Marc Bock (46:17):

Know your audience, and have fun. So I think it's so important to be passionate about your job and really loving what you're doing and I'm so thankful for my job. And yeah, and that would be my advice. Do what you love and of course understanding your target audience if you would like to. I'm a marketing recommendation, then it would be that. Yes.

Cole Heilborn (46:45):

Well, Marc, thank you for taking the time. I really appreciate this conversation and the insight that you've kind of peeled back the layers on to share with the audience. Is there anything else you want to leave them with before we sign off?

Marc Bock (46:58):

Well, I think I just said it right?

Cole Heilborn (47:02):

I think you said it well,

Marc Bock (47:03):

Yeah.

Cole Heilborn (47:04):

Marc, if folks want to follow along with you, if they want to connect with you, where can people find you?

Marc Bock (47:10):

Well, the easiest way is definitely LinkedIn, so just search for Marc Bock and just send me a message. I'm always happy to chat, jump on a call, see what's possible, and just having conversations like that. Yeah,

Cole Heilborn (47:26):

Amazing. Marc, thanks again for your time. I'm looking to seeing episode five coming out. What month will that be live? Do you know? When should we check in?

Marc Bock (47:36):

The festival is end of November, so I think it will hit YouTube early December then.

Cole Heilborn (47:42):

Okay, amazing. Alright, have a great rest of your day.

Marc Bock (47:45):

Thanks. bye-Bye bye.

Cole Heilborn (47:47):

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Backcountry marketing Podcast. Please share it with a friend or leave us a review on Apple.

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