Outdoor Retailer - Summer 2020 - 12

THE PULSE
RARE SIGHT?
Will the outdoors
continue to be a
popular retreat
post-pandemic?

to slow down or even temporarily become
unavailable."

Now What?

The pandemic has achieved what the outdoor industry has
been trying to do for decades-it's gotten more people outside.
But is it a true behavioral shift? by Mike Geraci
IN THE MIDST OF TTHE COVID-19 LOCKDOWN
in early May, with 10 feet of snow stubbornly
frozen to the middle elevations of Wyoming
and the annual spring camping trip to the
Utah desert on permanent hold, my wife and
I planned an excursion to an unmapped trail
on the eastern border of Grand Teton National
Park for a relatively low-altitude, potentially
snow-free day hike.
When we mentioned our plan to a friend
who works for the park, he cautioned, "Yeah, I
don't know ... the grizzlies are out up there." To
which my wife responded, "Whatever."
Her flippant-and uncharacteristic-dismissal of known recent bear activity in the
exact spot we were purposely headed was
a shocking manifestation of the desperate
new world of escape everyone is struggling
to navigate.
As COVID-19 shut down America's favorite
indoor places to take a break (bars, theaters,
coffee shops, work...), throngs of cooped-up
masses have headed into previously unex-

12 OUTDOOR RETAILER

/ Summer 2020

plored territories, specifically that Great
American Outdoors thing they've heard and
seen so much about for so long. It's beautiful,
relaxing, good for you, and coronavirus-free.
Perfect!
Or not.
Brand-level marketing creates awareness
and affinity when people aren't actively shopping for your category, product, or service so
that when they are actually in need, you are top
of mind and differentiated. For decades, the
outdoor industry has been promoting more
people in the Great Outdoors. Those years of
advocacy paid off when COVID-19 hit and
Americans went shopping for a new salve for
cabin fever. And they went big.
This new embrace has turned into the outdoor industry's version of what the tech industry calls the "Slashdot effect" or a Reddit "Hug
of Death," which, according to Wikipedia, is
when "... a popular website links to a smaller
website, causing a massive increase in traffic.
This overloads the smaller site, causing it

-Mike Geraci is the Geraci part of Geraci
& Co., a brand strategy and communications
group, based in Jackson, Wyoming.

Andrew Kornylak

MARKETING

APPROPRIATELY, IN RESPONSE TO OUR BEcareful-what-you-wish-for moment, the outdoor world has taken a page out of tech's playbook. The Great Outdoors is getting overrun,
and our land managers' strategy is to reboot
the system with hopes we'll be able to handle
the traffic when we're all back online.
The National Park Service is in the midst
of staged reopenings after totally closing national parks. In Colorado, the City of
Boulder closed Boulder Creek and the surrounding park land due to overuse, only to
reopen after an uproar. In California, Los
Padres National Forest closed some popular trails for two weeks, and San Bernardino
National Forest closed Deep Creek for a year
in order to get a handle on the crowds. In
New York's Hamptons, locals put up barricades to limit beach parking and used police
officers to ticket outsiders. Not to be outdone, Gunnison County, Colorado, sealed
off its borders from tourists and nonresident homeowners seeking solace and spring
snow, and penalized them with a $5,000 fine
or 18 month in jail.
COVID-19 has accelerated emerging
trends across society, including overcrowding in sensitive outdoor areas and overtourism in remote destinations. For an industry
so focused on getting more people outdoors
for so long, which now has now has a tangible
view of what success looks like, the question
becomes: Now what?
We've created the demand; now we need to
manage the supply. The success or failure of
that quest will determine whether this newfound interest is just a flash-in-the-pan trend
or the long-term sustainable behavioral shift
for which we've long advocated.
Just like the impacts of spring runoff, for the
outdoor industry, COVID-19 will create new
channels and paths to explore. And, apparently, there will be bears. O.R.

Outdoor Retailer - Summer 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Outdoor Retailer - Summer 2020