Welcome back to the Brand Marketing Spotlight, where we analyze the ad campaigns and techniques of the world’s most successful companies. Today, we’ll explore The North Face’s “humanity in branding” strategy that established its brand voice — and helped it survive an unexpected PR crisis.
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The North Face Brand History and Strategies
The North Face is an American outdoor recreation product company that produces clothing, footwear, and outdoor equipment. Established in San Francisco in 1966, it quickly expanded and now serves a global market through its international offices. The North Face is valued for expertise in technical clothing designs, which has led to the treatment of its products as status symbols in many regions.
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In terms of marketing, The North Face’s goal is to cultivate an emotional connection with customers that drives long-term sales. As described by Global Head of Strategy, Dan Goldman, this approach isn’t a new technique — it’s a resurgence of human-level marketing:
“If you go back really far when it was a bunch of mom and pop small stores, there was a really strong human connection because often you knew the person running the business and they knew the community. They might not have been creating the best product, but there was a strong human connection with the store or with the brand. Then came the rise of chains, which they had a clear scale advantage. And then the super chain with really big efficiencies and you could drive down prices. And you saw the mom and pop bookstores get taken out by the Borders and the Barnes and Nobles.
“But the challenge with those brands is then Amazon came along. They were even more superhero, if you will, and the challenge of being a superhero brand is it’s just a matter of time until there’s another superhero that’s bigger and stronger than you. Whereas on the human side it’s much harder to copy driving a really strong emotional connection with your consumer in a way that’s really authentic and really unique.”
Today, brands across all industries — both niche and mainstream — find the greatest success when they offer human-to-brand connections at scale. Direct-to-consumer markets are particularly suited to this approach: They can establish relationships with personalized deals and messaging while delivering products to an international audience.
To Goldman, a brand connection requires three core components:
- Create a competitive moat: Your brand needs a unique element that cannot be replicated, insulating you against the competition. In 2020, human traits are the hardest to replicate, making it an ideal moat.
- Be consumer-obsessed: More commonly referred to as customer-centric, customer obsession is a strategy of making your audience needs a priority, both at the macro and micro levels.
- Manage your marketplace: Brands must optimize their digital storefronts for customer-facing traits like accessibility, convenience, reasonable pricing, and quality service.
The North Face’s Brand Values
As you likely noticed, each component described above prioritizes human connectivity to drive a relationship with your chosen audience. For this strategy to be truly effective, however, it must consider brand voice and values. Or to put it another way – if your brand is in a relationship, what human traits does it stand for?
Sustainability
As an outdoor recreation brand, The North Face certainly has an incentive to protect our environment and wildlife. That’s why the brand has made sustainability its “north star” by:
- Encouraging exploration and the “thrill of the unknown”
- Protecting where people live, work, and play
- Building environmental performance and social responsibility into its supply chain
The North Face backs up these goals with action. Last year, the company launched its The North Face Renewed collection that repurposes existing products for resale. By implementing these practices, the company is helping to reduce the volume of unused textiles and clothing that ends up in landfills.
And that’s just the most recent sustainability initiative. Over the years, The North Face has teamed-up with socially responsible supply partners to reduce its environmental impact and supported over 350 grassroots organizations that serve explorers in sustainably.
Putting athletes over products
Outdoor equipment and apparel are only as effective as the athlete using them — so why not highlight the athletes? This impetus led to The North Face’s “Our Athletes” campaign, which highlights how individual athletes use branded products. While each example of ad creative depicts The North Face products — complete with purchase links — the emphasis is always on the athlete. The main campaign page is even organized by activity (climbing, skiing, snowboarding, or running) instead of by equipment or apparel categories.
Women-focused initiatives
Women enjoy outdoor activities and exploration as much as men but are rarely acknowledged for it in popular media. That’s why The North Face launched a global initiative in 2018 to change the way it designed and marketed its products. This strategy included:
- Equally representing women in all The North Face advertising, from branded content to social media posts
- Increasing investment in products designed for women
- Creating two new women-focused storefront locations
- Implementing a new ad campaign that highlights female role models in exploration
The North Face and Its Wikipedia “Collaboration”
In May 2019, The North Face found itself embroiled in scandal. It had just revealed a campaign — developed by PR agency Leo Burnett Tailor Made — to maximize brand visibility on Google Image Search. Before the announcement, Leo Burnett quietly replaced images of popular outdoor destinations on Wikipedia with new photographs containing brand products. In short, the campaign boosted The North Face’s visibility by piggybacking on Wikipedia’s domain authority.
Once the news broke, The North Face and Leo Burnett experienced an immediate backlash. Wikipedia publicly criticized the brand on social media. News outlets covered the story as a blow to brand reputation. Fellow marketers admitted the campaign lacked any ethical grounding, even as they acknowledged its subversive cleverness. The North Face apologized and discontinued the campaign, but the social media fallout lingered for weeks.
Here’s where it gets interesting: The North Face’s Wikipedia crisis was a rare negative mark in an otherwise stellar year. The company recently reported a 9% increase in global revenue during 2019, an impressive turn of fortune following a 2% decrease in 2017. These results do not cynically suggest brand reputation doesn’t matter. Quite the opposite — The North Face thrives because of a foundation of authentic marketing that ran long before Leo Burnett took a single photo.
The North Face emerged from its Wikipedia crisis relatively unscathed, but it remains fortunate — not all brands can say the same. Leo Burnett’s campaign was an outlier that stood in contrast to years of authentic marketing initiatives. By ensuring the campaign was an unfortunate outlier, The North Face largely maintained the goodwill of customers.
Outside of this crucial point, there are a few other lessons we can learn from this crisis:
Learn to read the room
The worst part for The North Face wasn’t even the image swapping itself, but how the brand and Leo Burnett portrayed it. The North Face ultimately revealed the event to the world through an awkwardly tone-deaf video, praising itself for a first-of-its-kind “collaboration” with Wikipedia. Of course, Wikipedia was in the dark with everyone else — until it saw the video. The offending images were taken down almost immediately, and the company found itself with egg on its face.
To its credit, The North Face responded to this reveal the right way: It immediately prepared a diplomatic statement that apologized for the campaign, assumed full responsibility, and acknowledged Wikipedia’s core values. Leo Burnett, on the other hand, unapologetically justified its actions while recognizing the campaign’s completion. The latter statement, at best, suggests the brand learned nothing. The former is a promising first step towards restoring broken trust.
Transparency
The cruel irony is that Wikipedia was willing to work with The North Face if it first proposed a collaboration. Wikimedia fellow Liam Wyatt noted that if The North Face had donated cameras and equipment for Wikipedia to produce outdoor photographs internally, they would have praised the collaboration.
In fact, Wikipedia contacted The North Face competitor Patagonia about donating photos for its database. If The North Face had been upfront with Wikipedia instead of hiring Leo Burnett to be clever, its outdoor pictures would likely still be on the website.
How to survive a marketing misstep
A few months after the Wikipedia scandal, Dan Goldman emphasized the importance of humanity in branding. Whether intentionally or otherwise, his statement summarizes The North Face’s entire marketing, along with how it stumbled and recovered in 2019:
“The humanity of the brand has to shine through. To be a human brand, it’s okay to have flaws, but people want brands that have the personalities that stand for something. It’s better to [be] for something even if it alienates some consumers, than stand for nothing and be generic, because then essentially all you are is a product.”
All brands are capable of making mistakes, but it is possible to survive them. What’s necessary is for leaders and marketers to be responsible, transparent, and present consistent values. By doing so, customers will remember the positive traits used to establish a brand instead of missteps made along the way.