Cole Heilborn (00:00)
Sometimes I feel like a broken record. I haven't done one of these solo episodes in some time because honestly, Portide has been incredibly busy since really the start of the new year. Well, actually December have been the busiest month that we've had in the last 11 years of running our business. We've had shoots up and down the West Coast. We've been in post-production trying to finish up a 35-minute film.

We're prepping for a 25 minute documentary campaign about some conservation stories in Florida. We leave for that on Saturday. We've been producing the podcast and ideas have been coming to me like night and day about new services that we could be offering, new things we could be solving for brands in this outdoor industry. But I wanted to take a quick moment and tell you why I feel like I'm still a broken record. You've heard me say this on the podcast a lot, but I want to say it again.

Your audience does not care. They do not care about you as a brand, about the products that you produce, about the content that you create. And the moment that you start assuming that they do care, you've already lost. Now I say that and it sounds really harsh and part of me wants it to sound harsh and like shake everyone's shoulders who are listening and be like, no one cares about your brand campaign. No one cares about your branded entertainment piece or your latest social post.

Here's the kicker. The same is true for this podcast, right? So as I'm saying this to you, in the back of my mind, I'm thinking, am I creating value for the people who are listening right now? Because that's the only way that I can get you to care. ⁓ Now, hopefully we have done our job of building trust over time. We've earned a reputation over time with you. And so we come when I come out with an episode like this and sounds like to me, it feels like I'm standing on the pulpit shaking my fist. I hope that you hear what I'm saying and I hope that it means something and I hope that it's valuable and I hope that you do care.

I was chatting with a former podcast guest last week and we were looking at a brand campaign that a running shoe company came out with. And it was beautiful. It was a beautifully shot. It was a one shot, like four minute ⁓ piece. And I was talking with this former podcast guest and we were trying to dissect it. it's again, I'll say this upfront. It's really easy to be a critic and we have to be careful not to be critics, right? If we're going to be critical, that means we have to be willing to step into the arena ourselves and put up our best work.

So I acknowledge that, but at the same time watching this piece, I didn't care. I was like, why, why would I click on this? Why does this produce or create value for me watching it? It was beautiful, but I didn't feel like it gave me anything. Now it's entirely possible that I was not the intended audience. And there's a different population of runners out there that this thing spoke to and resonated with. I don't know who this was designed for. So that's entirely possible.

But it got me thinking, I was like, how much money was spent on this brand campaign? Hundreds of thousands of dollars, just in the production alone, I'm assuming. Imagine what could be done with that. Imagine what could be done, the sort of content that you could create that was actually entertaining or educational, something that made your audience feel seen and heard. We can't seem to wrap our heads around the fact that social media today and YouTube, they're designed...

around relevance. What is relevant to your audience is what drives clicks. Now, relevance leads to consideration that leads to purchase, but brands are still producing these 30 second commercial spots every six months that aren't, they're they're not good. I love a good 30 second spot. I'm not hating on the format. There is a time and a place for those 30 second, 60 second brand campaign, you know, spots that roll out every six months.

But if you're gonna do them, they have to be so freaking good that they strike a nerve with your audience, right? If you're gonna interrupt them while you're watching YouTube, it's gotta be so good that it's worth the interruption because in my opinion, otherwise you're just doing damage. You're not building a relationship with your customer, with your audience. I was having a conversation yesterday with a potential client and he was telling me about the world is crazy.

And ever since COVID, it feels like everyone's been waiting for the new normal to settle in, but it hasn't because it's been one thing after the other, right? It's been the pandemic and then it was tariffs and then it was the boom and bust of the outdoor industry. And then it was, you know, global conflicts. Who knows what's next? And so resilience is the key to success as a business moving forward. And that always has been, that's not like a new thought, but...

I see a lot of brands really struggling right now. I was talking with another brand leader. He's like, you know, we're eating these costs. Now the gas prices have been raised and we're just trying to hang in there. And I feel for these brands who are really struggling just to limp by. To build a resilient brand, it means that you've built an audience. You've built a loyal fan base. There's a lot of ways to do that, but a really efficient way to do that

is to start by creating content that's of value to your audience. And if you do that over time, you build an audience, you build a fan base, you build trust, you build integrity, you build that ride or die crew who will be with you thick or thin. So it's frustrating to me when I see brands struggling and I empathize with them. I do, I feel for them. Like I'm a small business owner myself, but then my question is, well,

If that's the case, then why aren't you producing content that is of value to your audience? Why are you producing the same old commercial content spots that are flat, they're dry, no one cares, there's no reason to click into them, right? They don't say anything that's profound or even with nuance. just, I don't understand. Okay, here's the thing. I understand, but I also want to acknowledge that

While I'm on this soapbox and I have this podcast as a platform, I also don't know everything. don't understand. I'm not in house at these brands. don't understand everything that's happening behind the scenes. But what I do understand and what I can see, and it's pretty obvious if you just look at the world and the way content is consumed, the audience and people are consuming content in a very different way than brands are producing it. So while I don't necessarily know what's happening behind the scenes of every single brand,

I see the mismatch between how brands are producing content and how the audience is consuming it. That's the opportunity. Brands should be thinking more like creators. If a creator created a 30 second spot and uploaded it to their YouTube channel and expected an audience to be built, like that's insane. It doesn't work like that. You can't just shout into the void and tell people who you are over and over. You have to meet them where they're at. You have to provide value.

I see huge opportunity for outdoor brands here. Like the opportunity is deep and it's wide and it's plentiful, but it takes a number of ingredients to pull this off. And I just sometimes question, brands out there have these ingredients? Do they have the patience? Do they have the ability to humble themselves and realize that their audience doesn't care? Can they ask themselves the hard questions about the content that they're producing and see the ways in which they need to make changes? I think the answer is yes.

The outdoor industry, guys, we are, we're smart. What other industry is as scrappy and as intuitive and as creative as our industry? What other industry knows their audience as well as we do because we live the same lifestyle? We're out there every single day doing the same things. Not a lot of other marketing departments have board meetings out on the surf. I have so much hope for the outdoor industry.

I feel like we need to make some changes here. you're gonna, whatever you're gonna produce, don't care what sort of content it is. Just please ask yourself, why should anyone care about this? And if you could answer that question, awesome. Like you've done a great job. When I ask myself that question about the projects that we produce, I feel it. You can feel it in your bones when you know why someone should care.

And usually that's driven, that is every single time that is driven by a deep understanding of who you're talking to, the human insight that you're building this piece of content around. And then once you see the piece of content in its finished form, you look back and you say, yes, it speaks to this audience. Yes, it's built on this insight. And then the creative and the execution actually pulls it all together and you feel it and it feels right.

I know that's a scary signal to trust your gut feeling in this world of data where we've been taught to analyze everything and we should be. not saying don't, but I'm saying you've got to trust your gut. Hopefully your gut's in tune. You know, I mentioned those couple projects that we're working on. We're wrapping up a 35 minute film right now. And after this recording, I'm going to go and review the final export. We've spent a lot of time producing this thing.

You know, it's been almost a year. But I'd say the first two or three months we spent longer than that, honestly. It's actually been about a year and a half of working on this thing. And the first six months we spent just trying to understand who we were talking to, what would resonate with them, and then finding a story that worked, that fit those constraints that we had identified. And as I'm going to go into reviewing the film now,

I'm going to be asking myself, does this speak to our intended audience? Is it built and does it reinforce the insights that we uncovered before we started producing this film? Now, hopefully we've done our job because if it doesn't answer those questions at this point in the game, it's a little late. But you get my point. This documentary campaign, we leave on Saturday for this expedition through Florida doing a conservation storytelling project. We've been asking ourselves the same question. Who is our target audience?

Why do we want them to care about this story? How do we design this story and this campaign to motivate our intended audience to actually watch this film? What's in it for them? What is the carrot that we're dangling? And again, we've spent a lot of time talking about that and uncovering those insights and then building that into the story. And obviously things are going to change, but we have to keep that as our guiding light. I'm talking with another brand later today. It's a new brand.

They're trying to enter this crazy world of the outdoor industry. Their first question to me was, how do we get people to pay attention to us? How do we build an audience? Again, it comes back to that question of why should people care about you? So I feel like a broken record because I've been saying this for a long time. Maybe I'm just oblivious. Maybe I'm just living under a rock, but the opportunities are immense and endless. I want to leave you guys with this. You're doing a good job. It's difficult out there.

But I also think we need to rise to a higher occasion. I believe that we are capable of more than we think that we are. We just have to be willing to put in the hard work. So here's me encouraging you to put in the hard work. Go for it. You can do this. Your audience will thank you.