Cole Heilborn (00:00)

Is creative valuable? Everyone would say yes, but how do you quantify it? Well I sat down with Mike Peck, the VP of Creative at Brooks Running, and asked him that question.

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Mike Peck (00:10)

I don't know if you're

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If you're a creative leader and you think you know what's going on, you probably don't. You're definitely lying to yourself.

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Cole Heilborn (00:22)

Brand awareness might not be the metric that we ought to be tracking. Just because you're aware of something doesn't mean that you're inherently aware of it when it's time to buy. Would you agree with that?

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Mike Peck (00:31)

I would agree with that a hundred percent.

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Cole Heilborn (00:33)

How do you try and quantify the impact of the creative that you guys are doing?

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Mike Peck (00:37)

So I don't generally care about numbers to to be honest. The two that matter for me the most are net promoter score and unaided awareness. I think net promoter score is essentially how likely are you to recommend rooks to a fragile. That means your message is sticky enough that it's going from you to one other person to another person. And that matters to me because that means that our story is worth telling. I think unaided awareness to me is stronger than aided, particularly when you're looking at sort of the mental

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Am I thinking about running while I'm not running? Do I recognize that brand? Am I thinking about Brooks?

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Cole Heilborn (01:11)

How do you think about differentiation or distinction in this case?

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Mike Peck (01:15)

I

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will choose distinctiveness, I think, over differentiation any time. I wanna be distinctive enough that they recognize that's a brook shoe and I wanna be a part of that brand.

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Cole Heilborn (01:26)

In your opinion, is that the role of creative to build that preference?

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Mike Peck (01:29)

Absolutely, because my job is to get you to think about Brooks off the run. You're gonna think about Brooks on the run because you're wearing the product. Not my job. We as creatives can only do so much. And our job as creatives is to make sure that we're in the conversation.

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Cole Heilborn (01:47)

Mike, it's good to see ya. Good to see you. Thank you for being here. That's great. This is like episode number four in person, maybe six. So I don't know what that means, but here we are.

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Mike Peck (01:57)

You've graduated from

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a trade show floor. So say here.

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Cole Heilborn (02:00)

Um, there's so much I want to talk to you about. Uh you've been with Perks Running now for nine years now, is that right?

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Mike Peck (02:07)

Nine years in Sitar.

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Cole Heilborn (02:08)

What's the biggest thing you've seen change in your role as a VP of creative over those nine years? Um, how has the creative landscape changed?

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Mike Peck (02:17)

Oh, that's a whole load of that's a lot of question to right off the bat. this is good. Um well for starters, I I wasn't the VP of creator when I started. And so uh we've grown our team significantly to kind of meet the needs of the business. Brooks is more, I mean, almost tripled. Uh I do have a fine art degree, not a math degree, but we've almost tripled in the nine years. So um the running landscape has completely changed in that time. You know, the pandemic had such a huge impact on running.

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People's needs to be outdoors, to be part of the community. Uh, Brooks was at a really great position at that time. The idea of run happy, which had been our tagline for 20 plus years. Um, we walked away from it since, but in the moment of you're stuck inside your house and you really don't have fitness goals, uh, all you really want to do is go out and just run. We were the brand positioned for just Julie, not

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Some of the competitors that are more focused on, well, you got to go out and w you you run only for the workout. And you know, you got to keep running until you feel like you're gonna die and then run another mile. That's a real run. It's like, I don't know, go run around the block. That's all I need to do. And Brooks was positioned well at that time. So for us, there's kind of, or at least in my time here, there's been the before and the after and the massive growth that came with that. But also globally, what have it is ignited forerunning.

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And the growth that we're seeing across the whole world, whether it's the organic growth in the US, growth in in Europe through trail or in China, just the president says we all need to be healthy in China. And people go out and they run and they do uh uh Tai Chi and they do all the things that are are there to to be healthy and be outdoors. So um the the market itself is in a really good position, I think.

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Cole Heilborn (04:12)

How has that changed how you think about creative?

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Mike Peck (04:16)

Uh we've made a significant shift, I think, just in how Brooks has shown up in over the last nine years. When I first started here, uh, this is an interesting fact, the uh adrenaline, one of our key franchises, had higher brand recognition than Brooks as the parent brand. That is kind of both alarming uh in a positive way, do you like wow, that adrenaline is real popular. Um, that's bad as a as a for Brooks.

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And so when I started, we were all we were marketing was ki was product. Uh new launch of the transcend or the levitate, and that was the exciting news. And we didn't do brand campaigns until about four years ago. Really? So it's relat yeah, it's relatively new. Huh. The only brand piece that was done prior to me, at least in the modern day of modern age of Brooks, was a zombie commercial. Uh that was probably 15 years ago. Okay. And

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I mean, there's great premise that's, you know, I forget the line. It was something about like run to feel alive or something like that. our CEO at the time was in the spot. That was one of the things uh they were working with a Chicago based agency. Uh, Leo Burnett did the whole thing. Brooks had no money to put media against like a 60 second full fledged zombie production. It was the

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It was ridiculous. it kind of went nowhere except the YouTube channels. Please look it up. It's totally worth it. Um but we were mostly marketing a product. And then we had the what the pandemic kind of helped us do is just gave us enough momentum to say people are out there running. They're choosing Brooks. We should tell pe more people about what book stands for. And that allowed us to kind of go out and tell some different stories.

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And really get ahead of just product to product kind of launches. Interesting. Is the strategic way you should do things.

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Cole Heilborn (06:21)

Yeah. Is there is there one challenge that feels like the most ambitious thing that you've got to try to figure out?

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Mike Peck (06:28)

Uh I like paying attention to what the competitors are doing. I think in my early days. Uh you know, I was at Starbucks for nine years and uh it was funny what what you defined as competitors. Different people defined McDonald's or Dunkin' Delnuts as a key competitor, Costa coffee in in in international markets. And then a a different group would define um blue bottle and intelligentsia and some of the like the new the niche small upstart coffees.

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That that's the the competition. Because the more of those that are out there, the more you want to uh people are going to opt into those smaller markets or smaller smaller brands. And I think running isn't too dissimilar. You know, when you think about uh your competitors, the the bigger ones and like what they're doing, are they going to focus on run this year? Are they gonna do basketball? Who knows? Um, but then there's some some upstarts and you wanna kinda keep ahead of it because the running industry is especially in the US, is evolving.

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quite a bit. And you want to maintain that position of authenticity. And uh I love that word because we talk about that word all the time here, authenticity.

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Cole Heilborn (07:37)

Even though it's such a cliche.

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Mike Peck (07:38)

It is um because you can't define it. You can't tell people you are authentic. Other people have to choose to define you as authentic. Sure. So whenever we write our brand guidelines, we want to we always want to put the up be the authentic running brand. And you

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Can't do that. Yeah. You have to be honest with who you are. You have to be genuine. Um, you have to be real with the runners that you're trying to reach. They will define you as authentic. And I hope they do. Um, as a marketer or as a creative, God help me if I'm using it in the work, because it is such a cliche. But I really do hope that runners are saying, Yeah, Brooks is an authentic running brand.

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Cole Heilborn (08:23)

Do

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you think customers actually think about brands that way? Um like do we do we just sit around in marketing departments and in, you know, conference rooms like this and talk about these buzzwords and we're like, ah gee, I hope we I hope we're authentic this year. But in reality, does the customer they even think about that?

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Mike Peck (08:41)

I like to think enough of them do. There's a huge population that just looks at the shoe on the shelf and says, Does it look good? Does it feel good? Can I afford it? There there's like a basic thing they sh

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Cole Heilborn (08:53)

I those the light buyers, right?

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Mike Peck (08:54)

Yeah. And even look, even if you're dedicated to a certain y you you like a certain brand, you might like them because you they feel more authentic to you. You might think that they're uh, well, I don't want to go for that like big corporate one. I'm gonna go for the

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the smaller brand, because I believe more in what they're doing. You still want to feel good wearing the product. Um, you could have your favorite brand that come out with two seasons of just ugly uh apparel. You're not going to want to wear that. You don't want to because you want to feel good, especially when you go out for a run. It has to both feel good under your foot, feel good at the garment has to feel good on you, but you want to have some level of confidence running around that you don't look like an idiot. So uh I think that that's

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That's a big part of it. But I think people do they'll they might gravitate towards a brand less because they're authentic. I believe they stay with a brand more because they view them as authentic. Um people do have a relationship with brands. Um, not that I agree with like no brands aren't people. Um, but they do we we are loyal to to certain brands, whether it's the coffee shop down the street because they know your name.

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the restaurant because you like a certain dish, um, or a car. I like the way I you know, I I owned a Volkswagen then, I'm gonna own a Volkswagen now. Um people are loyal to brands and I think they believe that there's something in it for them and and they want that authenticity, I think. Especially from a you're gonna do something hard. You know, running is not easy, uh at whatever level you're doing it. It can suck at times. You want to

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Like at least be part of something that you can believe in a little bit. Yeah.

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Cole Heilborn (10:40)

Um, tell me more about how you view the competitive landscape and and the challenges and the opportunities that you see for Brooks within that. yeah, how do you how do you where do you stack up against the other running brands that exist out there?

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Mike Peck (10:56)

Not to name names, but for quite a few. I mean, our our technology is in most cases far superior to our our competition. And I I've been lucky in my career that I've been able to work for brands that make great product or serp Starbucks. You don't have to like the roast, but I can tell you they are buying some of the world's best coffee beans. I know that. Um I don't drink the coffee, it's too dark. I just it doesn't taste good to me anymore.

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Um it tasted great when it's free. Uh but I I do know that they are buying some of the best beats. Brooks is our technology, our research. The amount of PhDs we have one in the building, I know that they are developing superior phones. They're doing the biomechanical research. And so from a competitive standpoint, from a from a creative standpoint, we just want to tell people how good the product is. Um but damn, that's hard sometimes.

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When you're like nuance of the tuned foam and you want this one because soft in the heel and it's got more springy tail off. People are like, I just wanna make sure it feels good. Yeah. So it you know, it's good to be a couple years ahead of your competition in in technology. And a lot of them have not advanced a bit. a lot of them look really good. They look technical. Doesn't mean they're comfortable or or are technical. So it's nice to have that edge. We just have to get

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runners to try. You know, the ones that aren't using BROC, we want to get them to try it. The ones that are hooked on a ghost, you can't screw up the next version. It's something our our product teams work really hard at to make sure the current users of the Ghosts eighteen, seventeen don't get angry at you with the eighteen and nineteen. because you don't want to lose people along the way. Uh but you also want to offer them some new, new choices. You know, you want to go for

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Different kind of run, you want a longer run, you can you can move in the in the system. I think there's also going back to the idea that we we marketed product versus brand, we know that in most, especially specialty running stores, the associate's gonna bring out three options for you. It's pretty easy to carry three boxes. Four gets to be too much, two, you wanna make sure that there's enough options. If someone comes in and asks for a ghost, they're gonna bring you a ghost, but then they're probably gonna bring you a competitor on either side.

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It feels like it goes, but here's one from Mikey, here's one from up. If they go in and ask for a Brooks, a pair of Brooks shoes, they're probably gonna bring you at least two or three. So it increases our odds of making that final that final uh transaction and getting them getting it into Brooks. I see. So we want people going into the stores and asking for Brooks. Uh and in order to do that, you can't just talk about the product. You have to talk about what we stand for.

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community, the sense of joy you can get on the run, the emotional journey of it, um, your pro athletes, all that kind of stuff, you want them to understand that we're invested fully in the run versus some of our competition.

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Cole Heilborn (14:05)

How do you think about I I know I don't know where I land on this. There's the debate about distinction versus differentiation. And you know, depending on who you ask, they have a different opinion on what is the correct way to approach brand building. Are you is it true differentiation or does distinction matter enough? Either way though, how do you think about differentiation or distinction in this case? And how do you think about the communication of that in a way that's relevant for your customer?

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Mike Peck (14:35)

I think people probably could use those two words interchangeably quite a bit. Um the thing I don't want is people deselecting to Brooks. In essence, I don't well, I don't want to go with those guys, I'll just choose this brand over here. I want to be distinctive enough that they recognize, oh, that's a Brooks shoe and that's a or or that's a Brooks jacket and I want to be a part of that brand. Um so

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I will choose distinctiveness, I think, over differentiation any time because I don't want to I don't want to be as much like I would consider differentiation you're you're choosing between two or three brands. We do know that most at least in running, uh if you're not in the top three, you're not there's like a ten percent chance of you're making the final sale. Ninety percent of those choices are top three brand. Um but

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I I'd love to just be number one going in. Like I'm there to go get that thing. And so I in that mode of thinking I would choose distinction every time.

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Cole Heilborn (15:42)

And is that in your opinion, is that the role of creative to to communicate and and build that preference?

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Mike Peck (15:48)

Absolutely. Absolutely. Because uh my job is to get you to think about Brooks um off the run. Our product team is there, you're gonna think about Brooks on the run because you're wearing the product. Not my job. My job is to get you to think about Brooks off the run. And that's not easy. Uh our team here has done some crazy studies on this idea of like.

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psychoanalyzing when people think about different products and how they think about them. The way you think about Coke when you're at a restaurant versus a a a movie theater. And how much you're willing to consume and does it, you know, is a straw involved? All these things. Yeah. People tend to think about their running gear when they run. And they don't tend to think about it off the run, which is where lifestyle product comes into play. And sort of off the run, post run gear.

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making recovery sandals because you want to wear them when you the as soon as you take your shoes off. All of that kind of extends the lifestyle the the life cycle of your thought process on run. And our job as creatives is to make sure that we're in the conversation. Um it doesn't have to be like a net promoter score or some kind of like tangible recommendation, but just hey, I I think I should go running more. Um maybe I I should go check out Brooks because I saw

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something the other day that reminded me of that.

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Cole Heilborn (17:17)

How how do you try and quantify the impact of the creative that you guys are doing? I mean, obviously there's a whole bunch of different things that you could track and you probably do track, but if you're thinking about this from a mental availability perspective, um, how do you try and understand, are we making a difference year over year?

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Mike Peck (17:38)

Um we are. They keep telling me numbers that go up. We have a whole media team and a whole uh insights. They're the run sites. Okay. Because we're a running brand. I love that. Um we do have uh two that I care about. So I don't generally care about numbers to to be honest. Um but I do have a team and work to do and we have to we do have to main maintain for our finance team like we're we're delivering on what we promised we're gonna do.

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the two that matter for me the most are net promoter score and uneeded awareness. So um I think net promoter score is essentially how likely are you to recommend Brooks to a frankie? Sure. And those numbers go up. So that means your your your message is sticky enough that it's going from you to one other person to another person. Uh and that matters to me because that means that our story is worth telling.

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Uh I think unaid awareness to me is stronger than aided, particularly when you're looking at sort of the mental, am I thinking about running while I'm not running? Um, do I recognize that brand? Uh am I thinking about Brooks? Especially in a crowded like there are other running companies that have logos that look a little bit close to ours. Not legally. We're differentiated enough. I've written some of that in there, but

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Um they're running logos actually s have sort of the functional purpose for years. So they tend to have similar shapes. So uh you know, recognizing Brooks as like, that's a brand I know and I speak about them as Brooks, not the brand with the little thing on the shoe. Um, it's path, so we call it, but uh then they don't they're not gonna recognize that uh off the bat.

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Cole Heilborn (19:34)

What is unaideded awareness?

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Mike Peck (19:36)

Is uh unaided versus aided. So aided awareness is have you heard of the brand Brooks? Mm-hmm. that would be aided because I'm using the word Brooks. Unaided would be um name three running brands for me. I see. And they give you Brooks as one of those three. Gotcha. Th so that means that they're when you say the word running, they think Brooks. I see.

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Cole Heilborn (19:59)

Gotcha. I was interviewing a researcher named Jenny Romanuk. She wrote this book, How Brands Grow. She talks about mental availability and category entry points. And really the thing that drives brand growth in addition to being physically available is mental availability. And she brought up an interesting point. And I don't I I don't I don't have any opinion on this because I don't know it well enough, but she was saying that brand awareness

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might not be the metric that we ought to be tracking because it doesn't necess just because you're aware of something doesn't mean that you're inherently aware of it when it's time to buy.

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Mike Peck (20:31)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

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Cole Heilborn (20:32)

Would you agree with that?

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Mike Peck (20:33)

I would agree with that 100%. Um, and that's why you need a good media team to make sure that you're aware of it when time comes to buy. I think technology has gotten us, we as creatives can only do so much. Tell a relevant story, make sure it is top of mind when you're not ready to buy. Our media team needs to make sure that when you are ready to buy, that that idea of upper funnel, you know, just who is Brooks? What do we stand for top level?

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But as you go down that funnel, how are we serving up just reminders to you to make sure that the you're you're triggering that mental model so that the idea that you you know you smell a waffle cone. We all know the smell of a waffle cone. God, it's so good. And you're like, I think I want ice cream. I haven't had ice cream in two months. The other day we were walking through uh Ballard down the street, and I was like, I don't know, I smell waffle cone. And next thing you know, there were there we were salt and stronger and having some random

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thing of ice cream that I did not need. Um because I just that smell triggered it for me. And I think how you work with your creative to trigger those sort of initiation points of like, Yeah, I I'm gonna go into that running store because I promised myself I was gonna get a new pair of running shoes. And I'm definitely gonna ask for Brooks because I I don't know what they've shown me three things. Yeah. Recently.

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Cole Heilborn (21:51)

How do you think about distinction when it comes to the actual creative itself? As I've been walking around your office today, I saw some photography from a campaign, and it was gorgeous photography, you know, shot on a ridgeline, blue hour, epic. However, I've seen it before. Yes. How do you think about and/or how important is it for brand assets, brand photography, uh, in this particular example? Like, how do you think about distinction and like how much emphasis do we place on trying to make sure that our

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Our assets are distinct.

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Mike Peck (22:23)

Uh we I think oftentimes as creatives we try to put all of our eggs in one basket on one element of your expression to be distinctive. Okay. Um take blue, for instance. Blue is our brand color. Uh slightly darker blue than us is ASICs. Slightly lighter lighter, warmer blue than us is Hoka. Blue is not distinctive in our space. It's not. How you use it can be.

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As part of the equation. Um, photography, how you treat photography, can be recognizable in a sense that I think uh Track Smith has a very recognizable photography style. They have one photographer they work primarily with. Beautiful, amazing photography. Could we go out and replicate it? Sure. Um, is it gonna be distinctive for either one of us? I don't know. It's the whole package that.

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that you have to have. You have to have distinctive brand marks. You have to have a color that you can use well that pairs with the photography. A point of view on voice and how you speak to runners or or whatever your, you know, end consumer is customer. Um, you have to speak to them in a way that is genuine and not over the top verbose. That's not who we are. So there are things brands at scale

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Can create distinctiveness with individual pieces. I don't think it's the right thing to do. And I don't think and most brands can. Why is that? They just don't have the reach. Um Nike's demand generation budget, their media budget is, I think, bigger than our whole revenue. You know, they're they're huge. Um, they can create reach. Uh as a as a smaller brand, you don't have that luxury. Your your creative has to work harder.

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Uh and so you have to think about the whole package of thinking there. Are you

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Cole Heilborn (24:21)

making

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the are you suggesting that there's a uh well tell me what tell me more what you're trying to say. Tell me understand it. So you're saying that no

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Mike Peck (24:28)

That that picture on the ridgeline uh is not necessarily distinctive. Um how we treat it, how we apply language to it, the story we tell around that, um, the fact that that ridgeline was probably in the cascades here, um, which my friends in Europe tell me is nothing like the Alps. I know it's not exactly like the Alps, but our Cascades are pretty damn cool. I gotta say, um

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The enchantments are like that's that is w I think they're out at actually near Mount Baker up in up in your neck of the woods. And yeah, it it can be local, but that alone is not gonna do it. You know, you gotta tell the whole story. You have to be ingrained in the trail running community. it's a very niche community. they can smell the BS from a long laser led. Um and I think we're we're proud of the product we've had for

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a couple of decades on the trail. So there's there's that aspect of it that no, photography alone is not gonna cut it for you.

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Cole Heilborn (25:34)

Yeah, what are those elements though? Like what are the elements of the equation that you feel like are the most important to add together to create distinctiveness?

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Mike Peck (25:42)

Uh well l let's talk about trail for a little bit. I think you've got one, um, it starts with our heritage in the in the space. So Scott Jurik, who um set tons of records on the trail and at Western states, and is still to this day a legend. You like you can't walk through the streets of Shamani around UTMB when Scott's in town because people like you can't make it three blocks in an hour.

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Everyone wants to talk to him because he means so much to that sport. And he's been with Brooks his entire career. You have to start with that baseline of like, okay, we've been doing this for a long time. We've supported athletes. Uh that helps you when you might have slipped on one of your Cascadias and it's not exactly what everyone likes. You can come back a year or two later because you have that base of like, okay, well, Brooks has been doing this for a long time. Um then you want to tell good stories.

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And you want to have good athletes that are out there on podiums in in competitive trail races. Because that does matter now for the space. Where it might not have years ago. It might have just been an FKT here and there that that that kind of boosted you up. But the trail circuit is growing and we have an incredible trail team over in Europe. And the the podium and the products kind of are elevating themselves. So now we can go and and tell those stories. Um

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whether they're just targeted for that audience or photography that just reminds you that running is not always around the block. Running can be for for Americans, that's not really how we view running. You for trails are for hiking. They're not for running. If you haven't done a trail run, it is one of the most fulfilling runs that you can possibly have. Like I have been near tears on the trail run.

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Just because of the emotional value that it brings you. Um, and so that picture of four people standing on a ridgeline may to some just be four people standing on a ridgeline, but to others they understand the accomplishment that they had to go through and what you feel when you hit the crest. Cause it's not easy to get up there. and it might not be easy going down, but it's so nice being there. It really is. Yeah. So to capture that moment, to tell talk about that moment.

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To help runners remind themselves why that moment matters. We talk a lot about type two fun and trail. Uh type two fun being I hate this now, I hate it, I hate it, I hate it. And then a week later, that was so good. God, I need I need to go back out there and go trail running. And running in general is kind of type two fun. No one's out there like, God, this is I'm loving this run, but everyone feels better after a run.

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And so I think for for it's that combination of all of the things that make it work. Gotcha. And if you don't have the full suite, you're not telling a rich story. Uh any one sided story is gonna be a boring story.

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Cole Heilborn (28:53)

When you look at all the ways that a brand can show up through content, it could be overwhelming. It could also you could look at it from an opportunistic standpoint. Um, because never before have there are there been so many ways to show up. What sort of opportunities are you looking at that you're really keen to test and to try and to experiment with?

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Mike Peck (29:13)

Uh I think the number one thing I that is interesting to me is this sort of evolution of what long form content is doing in even YouTube. Um and brands are going back to that to tell stories that are a little bit more interesting. Um they're not doing a 30-second commercial or a 15-second commercial. They're creating a six-minute long track.

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Like a music video in essence. Um, there's a reason why MTV worked because it's interesting. It's a good music track and it's good visuals. And if you can do that, then you can actually gather a lot of attention. Um there's also stories that just deserve to be told over a longer period of time and not just 30 seconds. Or there's serial content. Uh I love this new trend of like short serial content. Yeah.

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Here's a long story of it told in like minute increments. Um we tried to do that with Josh. I I I love the fact that our spots, the our stories that we told around Josh Kerr and his his world record marathon are or world record mile are 222 seconds because that's the time he wanted to he set in his mind. He said, the record is 343, I'm gonna do it in 342. That happens to be 222 seconds.

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Let's do all our content in 222 seconds and tell it and and s and uh space it out. Because you can chunk it in different ways to meet the needs of the audience. I could take that long form and I can grab twenty seconds for a TikTok audience because my 18 year old cannot concentrate for more than twenty seconds on TikTok. Um He will watch a music video though, which really fascinates me. I do think that there's a space for this. ah

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When I think about content, I think about stories worth capturing. And one, it has to be a good story. It has to be a story worth telling. And then it can be a story worth capturing. And then it can be a story worth viewing and experiencing.

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Cole Heilborn (31:21)

I've been asking a lot of people about social shows. What are your thoughts? I think it's quite intriguing. I'm waiting for the brand, a brand to show up who's like, I need help making a social show. Can you guys help me figure it out? Because it's such an intriguing format. And right now it feels like the format itself is unique enough and it's not saturated enough. Um, you know, the long form documentary format that's tried and true. This is something.

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different. And the more we keep talking about it, the more people are gonna start doing it. And then it's no longer, you know, a novelty. However

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Mike Peck (31:58)

Th this is a pretty new space for me, so I probably am not gonna give you the right answer on this.

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Cole Heilborn (32:02)

I don't know there is a right answer.

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Mike Peck (32:03)

I I'm just happy that social media is evolving um to something worth going back to for real content versus uh

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Cole Heilborn (32:16)

It's debatable

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if it's actually doing that, I feel like. Well

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Mike Peck (32:19)

Well,

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uh, you know, I like to see social media evolve somehow. I ideally like to to go away. I think it is that's our brain. But that we sh we do do a lot of marketing on Instagram. You just you have to be there because that's people are. Um, and I think kind of pulling on that one, our job as marketers or creatives is to meet people where they are. And if they are on social media as a primary vehicle for their content, like just viewing.

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Then you wanna be there. And yeah, brands should be a part of this because it might might not last. You might want to take advantage of it right now. The social landscape is constantly evolving. Um I guess Pinterest is a thing again. So yes, it's back. Yeah. Um it

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Cole Heilborn (33:06)

I don't know if it actually d ever disappeared, but

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Mike Peck (33:07)

didn't disappear, but it is definitely you know, becoming more and more relevant. My space is gonna make a return. Uh so it it's

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It it's evolving, I think, the things that you want to pull from the past that worked, but make them modern. Great. I'm all for it.

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Cole Heilborn (33:23)

How do you feel like your role has evolved? I mean, I I know you've only been in this role for the last couple few years, but how do you feel like it has evolved in this amount of time the last four years that you've been in it? Like channels are changing, the way people consume content is changing. Um, you know, the shift from social media to like relevance or interest based media, I feel like is something that's only happened in the last four years. Um, how what do you see changing, both in terms of like,

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what is possible, but then also just in terms of like what's needed to keep up.

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Mike Peck (33:54)

Uh I would say one of the biggest things that's changed for me as a creative leader is I have recognized that I have no idea what's going on in the landscape, in the market. Um and I need to have and luckily I do, a team around me that understands what's happening. Uh if you're a creative leader of at any level and you think you know what's going on, you probably don't.

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You're definitely lying to yourself. You have got to have a smart media team who's understanding the changing, uh, whether it's serial content or social stories or long form, what is it now that we need to be doing? Um, we are just desperately like pushing ourselves out of a standard of, well, it's got to be a 30 second commercial, it has to be out of home campaign. The traditional stuff is good to build a base of a story on.

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But it's not what's gonna resonate with with every audience. And what resonates for a ghost is not what's gonna resonate for a Hyperion, a speech shoot, a trail shoot. No one you there's no media to buy for a trail running campaign, uh, of of like commercials. You know, that's not gonna help you. So it looks good on the website, but it that's kind of where where it stops. So making sure that you have people who understand the community, who understand the runner.

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in in the specific runners that we're trying to reach, because not all runners are the same. That is the thing to me that I've I've learned partly because the team is so good here, but also just as you evolve as a leader, you understand that you don't have the answers.

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Cole Heilborn (35:37)

Yeah. Something that I don't quite understand, and I'm hoping maybe you can share with me is I you bring up, you know, the traditional brand campaigns and you got the fifteen, the thirty, and the sixty. And every conversation I have with folks on this show, the general consensus is that sure, those things can work, but there's kind of this other way that you can approach advertising and it's leading with value and it's figuring out a relevant message and it's telling a story and it's using any of these formats that we've discussed.

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documentary, social show to to get your message out there. Why like why do brands still approach advertising in this traditional format? Uh what's happening internally that, you know, in influences how brands show up through their advertising that isn't commonly known.

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Mike Peck (36:26)

Well, let's go back to what I believe the role of a creative team should be. Okay. Um, I'm a firm believer that you have a responsibility you have a fiscal responsibility to sell prompt. Um that doesn't have to be your whole job, but that should be half your job. Half your other job should be building long-term brand equity, making sure that your brand is as healthy in five years as it is today, or healthier. So you have to build that that brand awareness, that brand arc, but also.

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We do have to sell product. We are a business. there are salaries to to cover. And you you want people to feel good coming home to their family at the end of the day. I worked for an amazing creative director who once told me, you know, design comes in lots of shapes and sizes. He says, wallpaper. Wallpaper design is a very noble career. We are not making wallpaper. You have to connect with the consumer. You have to give them something to believe in, and you have to in the end sell a product.

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Oftentimes I think internally especially we get hung up sometimes on a bad quarter. And I'm going back more to Starbucks or Microsoft or even at agencies where you you're publicly traded. I think working for a publicly traded company is really, really difficult because you have to report quarterly earnings, which means you have to deliver financial results constantly. You cannot have a have a down quarter. So there's this push to try to like, okay, well we have to sell more enough more pumpkin spice lattics.

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We once proposed waiting until after Thanksgiving to launch the peppermint milker or the whole Christmas thing. Let's let's just let Thanksgiving be Thanksgiving. And they came back to us, you're crazy. This is millions of dollars per day. Christmas has to start like before thank before you know Halloween now. Um and

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Cole Heilborn (38:15)

Is that why Christmas shows up before Halloween?

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Mike Peck (38:17)

because there's so much money to be made on these things. And as brand marketers, you're like, I don't want us to be just the peppermint latte.

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Company. And I don't want us to be very one sided. So bringing it back to Brooks. I don't want us to be just the ghost or just the adrenaline. We're more than that. Um, we are a huge part of the running community. And so you want to tell that part of the story, but that's the less measurable. Sure. Going back to our conversation around um, you know, unaided awareness or uh those metrics that that I look for in the net promoter score, those aren't directly related to product. Yeah.

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I can tell you tomorrow, if we push something out to social and more people buy the Hyperion, um, we know that. We know that interest in the Hyperion sales in the Hyperion went up after Josh Kerr broke the world record. Because they're like, okay, that is the thing. He did it in that product. I I n I believe in him. And if he's running that product, it's good enough for me. I can measure that on the product side. But the intangible things that he does for the brand, you can't.

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measure. And so that makes the role of marketing really difficult in those internal conversations. I are we willing to take the risk around something we can't measure. And oftentimes, especially in the outdoor space where you might be a smaller brand, you might suffer from uh I mean ski or or just anything that involves mountains. You're subject to the weather. Yeah. If there are fires and people can't go out hiking,

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Then you're gonna your sales will suffer if there's a drought across the West Coast and people can't go skiing because they either had to wait late in the season. Or, I mean, look what happened in Utah this year. It was sad to look at those trails that are just man-made snow and nothing but gravel on the sides. That will take a toll on your brand if your job is to sell very expensive skis. Yeah. And make your margins on skis. So

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It makes taking risks harder uh and telling bigger brand stories and it makes it a lot harder. And for some brands they don't have to. Um, you know, I think about Patagonia. We all anyone in this industry, we all know what what Patagonia stands for. Do they have to go out and do some bold new campaign? No. Back to the idea of authentic. Patagonia is genuinely authentic. Their biggest

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ad move in the last five years was to donate the company to the earth. Is that a campaign? No, that's just a thing they did. I mean they kind of need a campaign out of it. But it's just a thing they do. And so they don't have to go out there and do some groundbreaking work. Uh I thought Columbia did was really cool. Interesting around a flat earth. yeah. I think that would that was brilliant. Does it say anything about Columbia? No.

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Um it says that they kind of wanna shove that in the face of people who believe that the earth is flat, but it that's a small niche population and none of those people are

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Cole Heilborn (41:35)

You know there's a flat earth cult on Woodby Island?

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Mike Peck (41:38)

Is it really? Yeah.

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Cole Heilborn (41:45)

That's

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Mike Peck (41:44)

See the you can see the curvature.

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Cole Heilborn (41:46)

yeah, there's a documentary that features them and their whole argument is that they can see Seattle from Woodby Island, therefore the earth is flat because they can see the Seattle skyline. I digress.

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Mike Peck (42:00)

could figure it out years ago. I think they can too. Oh, but it honestly it was it was a great campaign, but did it say anything about Columbia in a super strong way? No. Um but they took advantage of a moment in time and they put themselves in the conversation. And so um good on them for taking the risk. And they weren't selling me on a jacket. oh But I do know they're kind of in that upper echelon of of technical products. They at least gotten me interested in in what they're trying to say.

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So, um, I think REI did that with opt out. Yeah. But that didn't tell me anything about their products. It didn't tell me anything about what they have to offer. It talked about the values of their brand. And this sort of anti consumerism proposition that they put forward that flies in the face of Black Friday, uh, got them attention. That was distinctive.

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Cole Heilborn (42:56)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well said. Do you I wondered this. Do you feel like like the the epitome or perfection of brands is that you reach an efficiency with your marketing over time? Like it's an investment you s invest in over time, but it works harder for you down the road than it did five years previously, to the point where maybe you even can spend less on marketing down the road. Is that

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Is that possible? Is that is that naive thinking?

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Mike Peck (43:28)

Um no, that's proven out where you can look at brands that have scale and have longevity, Coke, for example, I think they spend something like four percent. You know, most brands will spend a traditional ten percent of revenue on their media and and creative combined. Coke I think spends four. um They don't have to. Uh I would argue that Patagonia probably spends far less because they don't have to. Um and so there's whether it's an efficiency

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I think efficiency is the the sort of evil of good creative. Um it gets uh I think efficiency leads to stale sure in the work. Sure. Uh efficiency is really great for lower funnel reminding people of of your brand. But trying to tell a story, uh then you that's how you end up with just tropes that you get in insurance. Why are we still looking at a gecko?

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Because the gecko is memorable geco and they have studies that show animals work great. That's why then you have an emu for the other insurance one. And I can't tell the difference between one animal or another. Um, because it's just, well, that's efficient and it works. Does it? Or do you just make dumb ads?

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Cole Heilborn (44:44)

I mean, if we're talking about a distinctive asset, the gecko is quite distinctive.

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Mike Peck (44:47)

quite distinct.

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Cole Heilborn (44:50)

at this point. Well, it's insurance. They're inherently risk adverse. Um, but on that note, I mean on our intro call, you said something to the effect of I just wish we could have more fun as an industry. Tell me more about what do you mean by that and how does that influence how you think about content and how Brooks can show up down the road?

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Mike Peck (45:08)

I think fun and just take the pressure off. I think this is an industry that is for years been so serious. Mm-hmm. Um, there's an idea that we we have data from runners who run miles a week on a treadmill. And if you ask them if they're a runner, they will say no. Um, they're just doing cardio at the gym. Uh they're not even getting credit for being a thing that they do.

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Uh to them a runner is someone who runs outside. I think all runners who run outside will cur will critique themselves against other runners. and I've heard this from our professionals. Running is so much fun. It just feels good. And we don't talk about that enough, I think, as a as brands in the running space. We're either pushing this idea of running as a workout and the only true workout. Or

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We're getting served so much content on injury prevention and now I'm nervous about running. Or you're trying to sell me a two hundred and fifty dollar pair of shorts that I don't need. Yeah, let's just go out and run.

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Cole Heilborn (46:19)

I mean, maybe it's just because I don't live and breathe the run category like you, but I don't see a lot of running brands that are just leaning into we're just here to have fun. There's a lot of emphasis placed on community and running hard as a community and you know, pushing oneself with friends, which kind of bleeds into having fun. But there's something to that that emotional reaction of

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I'm just here for to have fun. I'm just here to get outside.

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Mike Peck (46:52)

And I think more uh an easier story to tell is joy. Okay. Not fun. Okay. To be to be sort of nuanced in that. Because fun can be hard for people to understand and wrap their head around. Because in order to have fun, like there has to be a lot of other factors. Um where I I need the people around me to be uplifting. Uh someone's probably gotta be funny, the you know, yeah in the word fun.

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Joy is something I can feel on my own. Joy is something I can deliver for myself. As far as Brooks is concerned, just go out the door, go for a run around the block. You are a runner. We're we're not going to question that at all. And you shouldn't either. And so making it that easy, giving people an entry point into the category, into the sport, into something that's going to make their lives better, that just makes me feel better when I go home at the end of the day.

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Cole Heilborn (47:48)

Well, and it's not just it's not just a feel good. There's there's the feel good element and there's also this is a has a large business impact on on the future of the company if you can pull it off.

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Mike Peck (48:00)

It does and and yes, we are not all completely altruistic, you know.

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Cole Heilborn (48:05)

But

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if you can get business but if you can get people off social media and go for a run, then then you've you've done your job.

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Mike Peck (48:12)

I've succeeded. At some point they're gonna like develop some sort of tread note where people can still scroll on the on a giant screen so they can be fucked in while they run.

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Cole Heilborn (48:22)

But imagine imagine I mean, I'm not maybe you guys have already do are doing this, but imagine if you could do that. Imagine if you could create content that was so strong that captured that joy. And as soon as someone saw it, they were like, Well, I'm gonna throw my phone on the table here and leave and go put on my running shoes and and get out the door.

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Mike Peck (48:41)

I'll I'll give you a real simple one. Um, we partner, we we support the a run cast, a running podcast. Okay. It's developed by a local radio station here at KEXP. It's a nonprofit radio, um, publicly funded. And their morning DJ, who knows a ton about music, I trust him implicitly, also is a big runner. Um, and so he creates these playlists that are an hour long, and at the end of the summer, early fall, he makes a marathon version.

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He makes content where he brings you new music, t tells you stories, they're uplifting. He'll do a podcast on like the stupid signs he sees in a marathon. And there you are at like mile seven of your run, like laughing or giggling. No one has any idea what you're doing. But you it's in your your headphones and it just it's content, like it's that kind of joy that he's bringing to to the run through music that I think we can all do.

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In a sense that no, do you if you're watching a video while running on a trail, you're gonna trip and hurt yourself. It's gonna happen. I can guarantee it. But you can listen to something. Yeah. Certainly while you run on the street. Music while you trail run is a bad idea. Keep focused on it.

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Cole Heilborn (49:56)

Yeah, that's cool. That's really cool. Um, so as you look at the next five years and as you look at what your tasks and where your initiatives lie, like what are you what are you trying to work towards? What are you trying to bring to fruition?

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Mike Peck (50:13)

Um I think for us the stories that are interesting to tell is more on that uh benefit of the holistic run. Okay. I think that to me is is an interesting story to tell. I think it's not unique, it's not differentiating. Um other brands can tell it. I think we can tell it better. Um I I know we can. So that to me is interesting

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We have the best crop of athletes as a brand that we've ever had. And I think they have some interesting stories to tell. Certainly going into LA in twenty twenty eight. Uh, and they are working closer with the product teams than ever before. I mean that's that's fascinating to me. I think we've always had product and pro athletes. They are now working hand in hand, um, in things that are bigger than just the product, testing salt levels. Um

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Susanna Sullivan, who's a world she would represented the the US and the and the world championships in Tokyo for the marathon. She was able to take a couple minutes off her marathon time because one of our scientists here figured out that her salt intake was wrong. That has nothing to do with the the shoes. It's just that what is what Brooks does when they're partnering with their athletes. I'm making a blog for Susanna now and our in our science team. But that to me is a story worth telling. Um

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And I think we have a lot more of those on the horizon than we do in the past. And so for us, it's just a matter of editing and trying to tell bigger stories for a longer period of time than to tell short bursts of stories um with a product here and there. I think the product is great, the product will follow.

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Cole Heilborn (52:00)

What's something that you guys struggle at that you need to get better at?

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Mike Peck (52:05)

Putting our pencils down. ah I think that's the one of the hardest parts of being, uh particularly for graphic designers. I'm a I have a degree in graphic design. I was a painter for years in Brookline. The hard hardest part for a designer or a fine artist is to put the pencil down, put the paintbrush down. We're done. We don't have to do anything more. we joke around here about the the old adage, Coco Chanel.

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Take one thing off before you go out the door. Cause oftentimes we want to just you put way too many things in there. And that one thing could be just another graphic element in the layout. It could be another story you're telling this year. Do do people even care about yet one more thing you want to tell? They probably don't. Tell the good the the meaningful stuff well. Um that's what we have to focus more on because you just wanna talk about all of it and it's gonna fall on deaf ears.

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Yeah.

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Cole Heilborn (53:05)

What's something that you feel like most VPs of Creative are struggling with across the outdoor industry right now?

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Mike Peck (53:13)

I don't know a lot of them, so I can't speak direct for them, but uh I think that there's opportunities in these brands to tell to tell more breakthrough stories. Um and a lot of brands in the opera industry are they do have internal creative teams. They're not working with big agencies. Uh the hardest thing about some of the the

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niche parts of this industry or these industries is that they are very nuanced. There are just a handful of brands in this space that have the kind of budgets that can go out and and do um the huge campaigns. That doesn't mean they're doing good campaigns. It means they're doing big ones. Yeah. And I think we in the outdoor industry, we can do more breakthrough work. It doesn't have to be big. It doesn't have to be a big budget. It can be smaller.

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Cole Heilborn (54:09)

I just two days ago did an interview with um the CMO at Mammut and he the whole the whole concept was good versus great. The outdoor industry does good work all around. Yeah. That that marginal difference between good and great though is so hard to nail and is so hard to to get it right. And it might only be a difference of fifteen percent, but it's that fifteen percent that stands out. Yeah. Um

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to the point that I think you're making right now.

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Mike Peck (54:41)

And we all like we should show up every day and want to do brave. And we should give up on s like the demands to do five good things so that we can do one great thing. At the end of the day, I know every single creative upstairs would rather work until ten o'clock at night to put something on the uh on air or or out into the world that they're immensely proud of than leaving every day at five having done good work.

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Uh when my CNO tells me that's good enough, I cringe. And she knows it's and she's apologized for say she knows that that's the one trigger. Well, that'll work. Or that that'll w w w we can get by with that. And I'm like, Oh, that is like the biggest insult you could possibly give me.

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Cole Heilborn (55:32)

My last question for you. Um, if you could wave a magic wand and fix something or anything within the brand or the creative, what would you want to fix?

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Mike Peck (55:45)

I would instantly get rid of all six second as they're useless. I hate six seconds.

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Cole Heilborn (55:50)

From a creative integrity standpoint or from an effectiveness standpoint?

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Mike Peck (55:54)

I've been told they're effective. I hate making them every time I look at them and they what what are you telling people? That's a runner running with a Brooks logo. That's all you can do back. I guess they work in YouTube, pre-roll, bumper. I don't know. There's so many different things. I do my kids would tell me I'm an old head or unk or whatever the new term is, but I just yearn for the days of like, yeah, a sixty second commercial and a crispy bread.

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Cole Heilborn (56:18)

It'd be a lot simpler, huh?

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Mike Peck (56:19)

A lot simpler.

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Radio spots, my God, they were so good back in the day. They're terrible now. If I could wave a magic wand, I would just want to do something that is very old school. And I would want to get away from everything in in social media and everything in in the modern media landscape. And if I could send the product team at Brooks to every trailhead across the world to just talk to trail runners.

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And nerd out for a second. Man, how fun that would be. How effective that would be. There's not enough of them. It's just Ryan and the team. But you can. You'll see them up at you know Tiger Mount and everything. Um, you'll see them out there. But like getting to talk to everyone at Brooks about how much they care about the product and how passionate they are, that to me would be if I could wave any magic wand, it's like you're a runner, you just call a hotline.

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You could talk to Carson, our head of product, and he'll tell you about the phone if that's what you want to talk about. You wanna talk to Josh Kurt? Yeah, we'll we'll put him on the line. He's cool, so he'll tell what he's doing today. Um They're just great people to talk to. And so yeah, I'd love it if everyone could could hear their stores.

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Cole Heilborn (57:37)

Rise of analogue.

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Mike Peck (57:39)

why not? Yeah.

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Cole Heilborn (57:41)

I'm super curious to see where it goes. You know, does it become does it become a a thing that has enough momentum behind it that we start paying attention to it or or is it just kind of remain a small insular portion of the demographic that that adopts more analog approaches things?

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Mike Peck (57:58)

I think as a parent of an eighteen and twenty year old, two young men who crave to be off their social media, um, I believe there's hope for it. Uh these are two kids that went through homeschool in the pandemic, watching mostly YouTube, not their teachers. They know the value of social media to them, to themselves. They don't want it. Um uh I'll make a plug for the brick. We have a couple of them at home.

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little box, you put it on your refrigerator, it's a magnet, and you have to tap it in order to turn on or off your uh apps. So I have no access to Instagram today. Not until I get back to my house and I tap my phone to the refrigerator and that will turn Instagram back on. I've never heard of this. It's a phenomenal product. I'll be an ambassador if they ask. Uh yeah, great product. And people like they're making these, you know, you brick your phone. Um

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The old brick phone kind of thing. Yeah. It's a teenagers want the jitterbug or whatever, like a geriatric phone is 'cause it

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Cole Heilborn (59:05)

Ha ha.

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Mike Peck (59:05)

I it rings and I can get text messages. What more do I want? Yeah.

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Cole Heilborn (59:09)

Interesting. Mike, any other last words you wanna sign off with?

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Mike Peck (59:13)

No, I appreciate it. This has been a really great conversation. And it it I think it's unique, you know, when we were first introduced, like just marketing for the outdoor industry. Crazy, right? That is such a niche. How do you do more than 200 podcasts on this thing? Because there are stories to tell. Yeah. And there are challenges that are unique to every brand and unique to every space. And there are challenges that are shared by everybody. I appreciate it.

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Cole Heilborn (59:40)

Yeah, I I thank you for taking the time. I'm always amazed at how simultaneously progressive yet also archaic the world of marketing exists in the outdoor industry, I feel like. It's like in some ways it's like, wow, like did you did you see that? That was ow, we've never seen that before. And in other ways it's like, boy, we're we're we got twenty or thirty years of catch up to do here. So I question, you know, how long does this show go every single time I do an episode? Not because of the quality of the conversation, but because I'm like, Well, what else what is there more to talk about? But

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Mike Peck (1:00:09)

Tell you AI is not gonna create video of someone running up a hill. They're not.

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Cole Heilborn (1:00:16)

It will. It's a matter of what does it look like and Thank you. How authentic is it?

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Mike Peck (1:00:22)

So there is still gonna be an analog part of this business. There's still gonna be an innovative part of this business. Um that's what makes it work.

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Cole Heilborn (1:00:29)

Yeah. Mike, thanks for the time. Um thank you for sharing your thoughts and giving us a little preview into what it's like here at Brooks Ryan. All right.

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Mike Peck (1:00:36)

Yeah, thanks for coming by.

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Cole Heilborn (1:00:38)

Have a good day. You too.

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