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MULTI-VENUE EVENT |
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Company: Keen Inc.
Event: Keen HybridStand Campaign
Objective: Enhance brand awareness among college-aged students, communicate Keen Inc.’s commitment to sustainability, and drive traffic to the company’s Web site.
Strategy: A student-led event series, complemented by a PR campaign and an online sustainability contest.
Tactics: Find a passionate student brand ambassador at each of 46 schools, and task him or her with hosting an on-campus event.
Results: Attracted 3,105 students (an average of 68 students per event); generated 74,000 Web-site views during the event campaign along with 1,300 mentions in blogs, forums, and newsletters; and received 691 submissions to the HybridStand competition.
Creative Agency: Henry V Events, www.henryvevents.com; Forty Forty, www.4040exp.com; and Jam Public Relations, www.jampr.net
Production Agency: Henry V Events, www.henryvevents.com
Budget: $325,800
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 hen the Asian tsunami ravaged the Indian Ocean coastline on Dec. 26, 2004, killing almost 230,000 people, Keen Inc. could have done what most companies did at the time: make a donation, issue a press release to announce its largesse, and quickly return to business as usual.
Instead, the Portland, OR, shoe, sock, and bag manufacturer took an arguably big risk for a small company.
In the spring of 2005, when the company was just two years old, Keen released a one-page ad informing customers that they wouldn’t be hearing from the company for the rest of the year because half of Keen’s nearly $1 million advertising budget was being given to assist in the relief and rehabilitation of tsunami-affected countries in South Asia. The other half of the budget would be set aside to establish The Keen Footwear Foundation (now called Hybrid Care), a charitable organization dedicated to assisting social and environmental nonprofits.
“The amazing thing about Keen is that even though it was still in its infancy at this time, it was willing to sacrifice its marketing budget and establish its Hybrid Care giving philosophy,” says Keen president James Curleigh. “Usually, businesses do this after they have established themselves financially, not when they are just starting out.”
Inspired by the impact it had in the wake of the tsunami, Keen didn’t stop there. Next up, it issued an internal challenge to become as sustainable an organization as possible.
Keen immediately began looking for sustainability opportunities. On the company’s factory floors, team members found aluminum molds, rubber trimming, even soda cans, and saw more than scraps. They tore them up, melted them down, and put them to use as something new. When the company relocated to Portland in 2006, it developed a showroom built with those leftover materials. Keen also took steps to make its product line more sustainable with the rollout of recycled packaging and several hybrid products, including 100-percent vegan shoes and a bag line featuring recycled aluminum and rubber reclaimed from the company’s factories.
Within a few short years, Keen became known to its customers not only as a manufacturer of cool, comfortable outdoor gear, but as a cause-based organization committed to sustainability.
By following these values, Keen
serendipitously stumbled upon a way
to differentiate itself from competitors.
“The biggest challenge we face as a company is the fact that there are several entrenched brands that have been in the outdoor arena for years,” says Keen vice president of marketing Bobbie Parisi. “For us, the question was, ‘How do we break through with consumers who are used to a certain grouping of brands and introduce a new brand into that arena?’” Aside from promoting its “patented toe-protection technology,” branding the company’s sustainability values became the answer to that question.
MARKETING TO MILLENNIALS
Mix Keen’s earth-friendly message with the funk factor of its shoe line, where chunky soles and bright hues of flamingo orange, jester red, and freedom blue evoke a decidedly youthful, hip vibe, and Keen products would seem a natural fit for young, outdoor-oriented college students.
Despite the fact that Keen has great market traction in eco-friendly cities such as Portland, Seattle, and San Francisco, brand recognition among young outdoor enthusiasts nationwide is low. “We’re only a five-year-old brand,” Parisi explains, “and our first retail accounts were with companies like REI and Nordstrom. Those accounts have greatly influenced our current consumer profile — people who are somewhat older, highly educated, outdoors-oriented, and relatively affluent.”
Broadening Keen’s customer base to encompass the under-30 set became an all-out marketing mission. Through research, Keen knew that its sustainability values would resonate with the Millennials it wanted to target. It had the right products. Now, it just needed to find an effective way to reach its target.
Doing so wouldn’t be easy. “These kids have a lot of brands targeting them and are pretty jaded when it comes to traditional advertising,” Parisi says. “But they talk to each other, and they make a lot of buying decisions based on what their peers are wearing. We had to find a way to connect with them on a level that was more emotional. The only way to do that, we figured, was to get in front of them with a face-to-face event and communicate our values around sustainability in a way that would resonate with them — not from a commercial aspect, but through a voice-of-brand approach built around a subject that they care about.”
TAKE A STAND
The resulting campaign, called HybridStand, urged college students to “stand up, out, and for sustainability” using a three-prong approach.
First, Keen set aside $150,000 to give away to the general public and announced that it would award a $25,000 grand prize to three individuals who submitted the best sustainability idea in each of three categories — Stand Up (ideas using creative outlets), Stand Out (ideas using outdoors athletes), and Stand For (ideas benefitting nonprofit organizations or initiatives) — as well as 15, $5,000 runner-up prizes. Then, through a traditional print and PR campaign, it drove traffic to a custom-built microsite where a full description of the campaign, sample sustainability ideas, a discussion forum, and application guidelines and forms were housed. Finally, it planned a series of live on-campus events designed to bring its message directly to students.
On the events side, Keen’s initial goal was to visit 100 campuses, with an average attendance of 500 students per event. The team handpicked schools with interest groups and academic programs that were in line with Keen’s brand identity. But as Keen readied for the campaign launch, it made a couple of potentially crippling discoveries. Sticker shock was the first. With a budget of slightly more than $325,000, the team quickly realized that the resources required to produce 100 events nationwide far exceeded Keen’s available budget, time, and manpower.
Obtaining permission to do events on college campuses was another. “We began reaching out to the schools on our lists, and we weren’t getting anywhere,” says Katja Asaro, managing director of sales at Henry V Events, the Portland event company hired to produce the events. Many of the campuses Keen wanted to visit placed severe restrictions on sponsored events, she explains. Some, for example, charged hefty fees for corporate access to their campus. Others issued a flat-out “no,” saying that they wouldn’t allow brands on campus. “Even when we did find colleges that would allow us to come in, there were severe restrictions on what we could do,” Parisi says. “We could talk about the company, but we couldn’t talk about, sell, or display our actual product, and we had to do an event around a subject that was of genuine interest to the students.”
Instead of being deterred, Keen got creative. To cut costs, it winnowed its list of 100 schools to 46, and shrunk its target audience size from 500 students at each event to 50 to 100 people per event. Then, to comply with university regulations, it decided to take an inside-out approach. Instead of hosting the event, it would partner with on-campus student groups and associations and offer to help them build their own events to generate awareness around sustainability. Keen’s overall brand presence at these events would be minimal — amounting to little more than a drawing for a free bag and a free pair of shoes, a few logos, and a brief presentation from a company representative. At each event, Keen would also award $1,000 to the student group that presented the best sustainability idea for positively impacting its campus.
Ultimately, Keen realized that this fallback strategy was the best possible solution of all. “Even if our budget had allowed us to buy our way into campuses with a sponsored event, it wouldn’t have guaranteed anything,” Asaro says. “Instead of assuming that a bunch of 30 somethings sitting in an office know how students want to be communicated to, our alternative strategy added credibility to the program and allowed students to generate their own content. Had we come at them with a Keen event, we’d have been just another shoe company telling them what to do. There wouldn’t have been any skin in the game for the students.”
CHOOSING BRAND CHAMPIONS
Crucial to Keen’s execution of this strategy were student ambassadors — one at each of the 46 schools — who served as the on-site producers of each on-campus event.
“In recruiting ambassadors, we looked for highly motivated people who were either involved in sustainability studies or associations, or who were interested in marketing and PR, as well as sustainability,” Asaro says. Those who applied for the unpaid positions, which Keen marketed by placing ads in campus newspapers and networking with professors and student associations, were required to fill out an application, submit a résumé, and complete several essay questions detailing their commitment to sustainability.
Once selected, each ambassador was provided with Internet- and phone-based training and received an “Event in a Box” that included promotional materials and giveaways, suggested talking points, a marketing-plan template, and other materials.
Keen also provided its ambassadors with an outline of what the event might entail, including:
 A welcome and introduction from the student ambassador.
Presentation of Keen’s “Stand” documentary, a short, 30-minute film featuring nine national artists, adventurers, and activists who embody the HybridStand ethic.
Comments from a guest speaker (often one featured in the film).
Thank-you gifts and drawings for a free Keen bag and pair of shoes.
A five-minute presentation from
a Keen host, and a call to submit ideas
to the HybridStand contest online.
An invitation to sign a section of Keen’s massive “Stand” mosaic, pieces of which traveled to each event location and were subsequently assembled and put to use as a backdrop at Keen’s Stand Festival, held in Portland in July 2007.
Every other event-planning task — such as finding a guest speaker, securing a venue, adding unique content to the agenda, and crafting a marketing plan — was left to each student brand ambassador to figure out.
Admittedly, trusting the ambassadors to get the job done required a big leap of faith for Keen. “We knew it would be a huge challenge and require a lot of communication to keep a bunch of unpaid volunteers in check and ensure that the message of the campaign and the overall brand vision remained intact,” Asaro says. “There was also a part of me that worried we’d have to pull people out of bed every morning to get them to do anything.”
Parisi shared her concerns. “We were putting our brand in the hands of students that we didn’t know and trusting that they understood the overall project and had the creative marketing skills to be able to execute the program. We didn’t know what we were going to get.”
A PLEASANT SURPRISE
As it turns out, Keen needn’t have worried. Take West Virginia University (WVU) marketing major Carie M. Behe, for example. When Behe heard that Keen was looking for brand ambassadors, she jumped at the chance to put her marketing education to use, share her love of the outdoors with others, and bring a great shoe to a wider audience.
Taking a gamble that she could blow the roof off of Keen’s attendance goal of 50 to 100 students per event, Behe reserved a 343-seat lecture hall, then dug in and put her marketing muscle to work.
She sent out e-mails and put up posters urging students to attend; aired spots on WVU’s campus radio station; personally spoke to several on-campus environmental groups, sororities, and fraternities, urging them to get involved; and enlisted her vast network of friends and acquaintances to help her spread the word. Behe also approached several professors and convinced them to offer students extra credit for attending the presentation.
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Finally, worried that she wouldn’t come close to meeting her attendance goal, Behe armed herself with a box of chalk the night before the event and began scrawling “STAND” in huge block letters, as well as the date, time, and location of the event, on sidewalks all over campus. Halfway through her work, she looked up to find a fellow student following her around. “He asked what I was doing, and I explained,” Behe says. “As it turns out, he was a writer for the student newspaper and ended up writing a story about the event that appeared in the paper on the day the presentation took place. It was a huge help.”
In the end, Behe says she was shocked by the turnout. “There was a line out the door of the building. There were more than 350 people, and many had to stand in the back of the room because there weren’t enough seats.” Keen was floored by the turnout, too. The company’s marketing team members were so impressed with Behe’s creativity and commitment that they offered her a paid summer internship at the company’s corporate headquarters in Portland.
GOING VIRAL
According to Asaro, ambassadors like Behe were the norm, rather than the exception. “Because we tapped into a topic that was really important to them, these students were engaged and selfless in the way they immersed themselves in the project.”
All of Keen’s ambassadors put their own unique stamp on the event. One design major held a fashion show featuring garments made of 100-percent recyclable materials. Some chose creative off-site venues, such as an interactive space featuring a sustainability art exhibit. Others found ways to integrate the event into sustainability activities and festivals already taking place on campus. And still others tapped into their MySpace address books to launch viral campaigns that generated a huge amount of awareness and attendance, according to Asaro. Some also collaborated with student ad federations to spread the word, and many, like Behe, talked their professors into offering extra credit to students for attending.
“The whole campaign became so grassroots and so authentic because we allowed them to talk to each other in the ways they’re comfortable with,” Asaro says. “As a result, they thought of things we never would have come up with on our own. We had the inside track because we gave them the freedom to say, ‘No, running a radio spot on that campus station won’t work. No one listens to it. Instead, do a spot on this Web radio channel at this time when this DJ is on because everyone listens then.’”
FINAL TALLY
Corporate EVENT Awards judges were impressed on many levels. One judge complimented the ingenuity of Keen’s hands-off integrated approach, which gave students guidance, “but leeway within it on how to execute.” Another judge commended the company for having the insight and agility to recalibrate its metrics after learning early on that its initial expectations were unrealistic. And yet another judge applauded Keen for using its marketing efforts to do the right thing. “College campuses and universities are learning environments,” the judge said. “Marketers are increasingly trying to sell to our students. Keen didn’t go in there attempting to entertain them, but to educate them to be our next generation of business leaders.”
The numbers are yet another testament to the effectiveness of Keen’s inside-out approach. In addition to nurturing 46 student brand ambassadors who are now active, passionate, continued supporters of Keen and its mission, HybridStand events had a direct impact on 3,105 college students (an average of 68 students per event) and indirectly placed the Keen brand before an audience of more than 1 million university students.
“In many ways, that secondary audience was most crucial,” Asaro says. “At each campus, 100 people or fewer might have shown up physically for the event, but thousands more were touched indirectly through Facebook and MySpace, hearing Internet radio spots, and all of the grassroots networking done by the ambassadors.”
Keen’s best evidence of the campaign’s viral impact was found on the company’s Web site. In the five months prior, during, and following the events, the company tallied approximately 74,000 site views; 1,300 mentions in blogs, forums, and newsletters; and 691 complete submissions to its HybridStand competition. Approximately 68 percent of its Web traffic during these months, Asaro says, was attributable to HybridStand event-related outreach. And a full 70 percent of contest submissions came from students who didn’t necessarily attend an event, but who attend one of the schools Keen visited during the campaign.
Most important, HybridStand allowed Keen to create an ongoing conversation with college students. “The key objective was to create a community of people talking to one another,” Asaro says. “And now there are communities on the site from the campuses we visited that are experiencing tremendous traffic.” The discussions taking place in these forums, Parisi says, have “opened Keen’s eyes to the talent and enthusiasm out there” — not to mention “a lot of fresh thinking on sustainability.” e
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