Summer - InsideOutdoor Magazine

Gorp
Outdoor 3.0
by Stuart Craig
AS I WRITE THIS, we’re into the final, frenetic countdown to
Outdoor Retailer Summer Market, as our little industry gears up
yet again for another traveling dog and pony show in Salt Lake
City. And so, as always, I get that little frisson of excitement
that accompanies the Next Show: who’s buying whom? Will
such-and-such show up? Will I see so-and-so? And, of course,
the real question, what’s the next big thing?
On that score, I’m struck much less by what’s going on inside
our industry than what’s happening outside of it, and how such
things will affect us. It is truly a Brave New World out there, a
place where technology seems to make almost incomprehensible
bounds nearly every moment.
In today’s world, swarm theory — the genius to be found in
the no-mindedness of large group actions — is being applied to
everything from running trucking company shipping logistics to
predicting behavior. Americans spend half their free time online.
Starbucks has changed the way we think of coffee, and while
doing so also has revolutionized wireless access, the concept
of work spaces and social interaction.
Of course, it’s also a post 9/11 world, where risk aversion
is a constant thought and where big-ticket news “stories” are
marketed like summer block buster movies.
All of this flows from the very fount of the new tech, the
worldwide network of interrelated digital information (i.e., the
Internet). This totally and inherently (some would say insidiously)
interactive connective tissue has become so dominant that
the world before such connectivity existed is almost impossible
to imagine (or remember).
Today’s overarching metaphor is technology-speak derived
from software version numerology. Techno pundits often refer
to the current connected cyberspace as Web 2.0, delimiting the
“first” Internet—the one of the last century is one way to think
of it — from the current Global Network version and implying
many more upgrades to come.
More specifically it’s where “killer app” symbolizes an ultimate
solution to a problem and where “Web 3.0” represents
the elusive, glimmering future where pie in the sky shows up
on everyone’s table, prepackaged and ready to consume.
And in this world live Brave New Consumers, new beings
whose technological sophistication and accompanying appetite
are almost frighteningly prodigious.
Which leads to the obvious question: how does our industry
sell in today’s fecund mix? Is there a “killer app”? After all, the
outdoors — the bedrock supporting the “industry” part — is …
the outdoors. It is trees and rocks and mountains and rivers and
stuff. And while it doesn’t “do” anything, its presence is underscored
by what it can do.
Its essential power can kill, and it has no regard whatsoever
for any human emotion or perspective (these traits are, of
course, also the source of its magnetic pull on many of us). It is
by nature wholly and intrinsically interactive, yet has no inherent
technological basis. And here we humans are using technology
to understand (and interact with) what is around us. That’s a
tough sell in today’s environment, especially given the state of
our industry.
Our own “software” boasts a bit of a conflict in its architecture.
On the one hand, we’ve moved toward pure lifestyle,
where “expressing” the outdoors is paramount. We celebrate
the slower, more languid movement of time, the health benefits,
and general “well-being-ness” of the outdoors, and we
promote that celebration as who we are.
By looking at consumers with
more rigor, we might find we can
create better strategies and tactics
for marketing our real product—the
outdoors — more successfully.
Yet, simultaneously, we’ve gone aggressively high-tech, with
increasingly expensive materials and intricate technology interwoven
into our products (not to mention an almost rapacious
need to keep upping the technical ante). Here we celebrate the
extreme demands of mountains and rivers and the like, as well
as the joy and importance of proving ourselves to ourselves in
the outdoor arena. And then we promote that celebration as
who we are.
Meanwhile, we see our consumer base aging-cum-changing,
and not unsurprisingly, we start looking for better targets, such
as “youth” and “women’s” markets. So we work at presenting
“the outdoors” in more youth-friendly ways; we create Outdoor
Idols; and we examine gender stereotypes and explore ways to
explode them.
Admirable perhaps, but ultimately given today’s sophisticated,
highly-niched, shifting-sands market, both the “youth” and
“women’s” markets seem, to me, to be far too unwieldy. By
looking at consumers with more rigor, we might find we can
create better strategies and tactics for marketing our real product—the
outdoors — more successfully.
A new book by Ron Rental, founder of Consumer Eyes, a
brand and innovation consultancy, and of BuzzBack Market Research,
an online market research company, does just this by
laying out a fascinating compendium of consumers in a refreshingly
different way.
Karma Queens, Geek Gods & Innerpreneurs: Meet the 9
Consumer Types Shaping Today’s Marketplace eschews direct
demographics (the women’s market, youth consumers, and so
74 | InsideOutdoor | Summer 2007