REI Co-op: Compilation of Brand Work
Making meaning, with more voices, around our mission
Role: Sr. Brand and Impact Strategist
Brand: REI Co-op
Inside the everyday of an outdoor industry strategist
While much of my upstream strategy work is NDA-ed behind Figmas, memos, and presos and can’t be shared here, I’m fortunate to have been embedded across many teams and play a part in transforming multi-year biz plans into real customer and employee-facing programs.
Below is a sampling of projects that have moved us closer to our north star of Opt Outside while pushing the culture of the outdoors forward. 👇
Experiential + Partnerships
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Experiential + Partnerships 〰️
a. Outside Festival and Summit 2025 Presented by REI Co-op and Capital One: Opting outside and onto Festival Grounds
Source: Outside/@roboaerial
Task: I was the lead brand strategist for REI and its presence at Outside Festival (now known as Outside Days) in Denver, Colorado. We set out to thread together the best of (1) REI Co-op, (2) the benefits of the REI x Capital One Mastercard, and (3) reach/scale of Outside Media into a cohesive, repeatable, and scalable brand experience for our member community and outdoor culture.
Strategy + Solution: Enter Camp Co-op at Outside Festival -- a branded festival property and groundswell for inspiration and impact that mirrors the mood of first day of camp. The launch of this activation coincided with our summer destinations camp campaign, and lit up our entire brand ecosystem with on-site recruitment, co-operative action, podcast recordings, and more.
Results: Increased brand awareness (+2.5 bn impressions); highest brand recall at 89% at the festival; and deep engagement with our impact agenda (+2000 postcards mailed to congress in defense of public lands).
Core Team:
Marketing Managers: Jancy Quinn, Claire Anderson, Floyd Anderson
Creative Director: Jason Sutherland
Sr. Copywriter: Taylor Rebhan
Agency Partner: Groundswell Experiential
Employee / Internal Programming
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Employee / Internal Programming 〰️
b. Cultural Milestones & Notable Moments: Co-creating what it means to get outside with communities we serve
Task: Led by our workforce team and supported by brand strategy and creative, our goal is to bring in outside perspectives to support cultural sense of belonging priorities across the enterprise.
Strategy + Solution: We weaved together a tapestry of voices across our inclusion networks, our customers, our employees, and more to give voice to REI’s outside community voices series. Existing in the space between lived outdoor experiences and artist-led commissioned artworks, we set out to spark dialogue around what it means to come as you are, and be outside. Taken together, they form a mosaic of the outdoors that re-centers its meaning around the plurality of experiences that are had out there.
Results: 10 artist commissions per year across Martin Luther King Jr. National Day of Service, Black History Month, Women's History Month, Asian American & Pacific Islander Heritage Month, Disability Pride, LGBTQ+ Pride Month, Juneteenth, Hispanic Heritage Month, Native American Heritage Month, Veterans Day.
Core Team
REDI: Liv Lyons, Tania Elahee, Nani Vishwanath, Nicole Lacasse
Creative: Julia Ondich, Taylor Rebhan, Sam Ricca, Bradlee Thielen, Aaron Bloom
PM: Kathryn Sansfeld
Seasonal Activity Campaigns
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Seasonal Activity Campaigns 〰️
c. SS‘25 (Destination) Camp Campaign: “Gear To Get You Anywhere”
Task: Drive profitable demand to seasonal activities, with a focus on (dispersed) camping in summer 2025.
Strategy + Solution: We launched Gear To Get You Anywhere, inspiring both new and lifelong campers to re-imagine the way they camp during the summer season. Fancy a paddle on the water followed by a mock/cocktail bar at camp? We’ve got a paddleboard for that. A tent that turns into a planetarium for two? We’ve got you covered. REI is your summertime gateway for gear to get you anywhere in your camp story.
Results: Lift in sales across priority merch products with a halo in brand awareness and consideration.
Core Team:
Marketing Integration: Moriah Potena
Creative: Jonathan Springer, Amy Boyd
Brand Strategy: Warren Seuradge
Paid/Brand Advertising: Alyssa Trisler, Nicole Luna
Editorial: Phuong Le
Social: Lauren Belfor, Taylor Hartman
PM: Amy Krebs, Lydia M.
Social Media & Community
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Social Media & Community 〰️
d. Brand Persona and Content Refresh: Social as your way outside
Task: I was a brand and cultural strategist on a cross-functional team of community moderators, social creatives, social managers, creatives, and comms managers in the development of a refreshed social persona across all our organic social platforms and in terms of inbound/outbound community management.
Strategy + Solution: We revamped all content pillars, channel tactics, and verbal/visual expression to lean into the friendly, approachable expertise — with a dose of whimsy — that is synonyous with green vests, but adapted for channel best practices. This means less polish and more pull into the sometimes unspoken truths around our core/adjacent activities and outdoor culture that makes REI the go to source and escape for the outdoors.
Results: YoY increase in engagement & brand health (sentiment).
Core Team:
Social: Taylor Hartman, Ale Castillo, Lauren Belfor, Christina Miller, Carolyn Wright
Brand Strategy: Warren Seurage, Kaveri Gautam
PM: Katie Metzler
Creative: Julia Ondich, Bradlee Thielen, Amy Boyd
Impact Storytelling
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Impact Storytelling 〰️
e. Outside in 5: Towards a world where everyone has close-to-home green space
Task: Bring awareness and action to the systemic inequities that hold back certain communities from access to the outdoors.
Strategy + Solution: We created a multi-year campaign called Outside In 5, with the goal of moving us closer to a world where everyone in the U.S. can reap the emotional, physical, and social benefits of close-to-home green space within 5 minutes of home. To bring this to life, we partnered / co-created stories with outdoor equity nonprofits like Friends of Anacostia Park and Greening Youth Foundation to (1) make it possible for everyone to Opt Outside close to home & (2) call on policymakers to pass the Outdoors for All act. We even created a community policy playbook to closing the nature gap.
Results: Our efforts to close the nature gap helped to push our grassroots cooperative action network past the 1,000,000 action milestone across local, state, and national representatives. This help to support and unlock $1 billion in state parks funding, over 246 million acres of public lands protected, $45 million in funding for multi-use trails, and so much more
Core Team:
Marketing Integration: Moriah Potena
Creative: Jonathan Springer, Todd Durkee, Taylor Rebhan.
Content + Film: Hanna Boyd + Wondercamp
Brand Strategy: Danielle Vasan, Warren Seuradge, Kristen Mooney
Comms: Josh Petri
Editorial: Ever Meister, Phuong Le
Paid/Brand Advertising: Alyssa Trisler, Nicole Luna
RCAN: Alicia Harvie, Sam Egraphe
Public / Gov’t Affairs: Tom Bugert
Local Marketing: John Harmon
PM: Amy Krebs, Katie Metzler
Annual Impact Report
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Annual Impact Report 〰️
f. Annual Impact Report
Task: Transform the way the co-op communicates its impact agenda to customers, employees, and external/societal stakeholders.
Strategy + Solution: Impact reports can feel self-congratulatory, backwards looking, and detached from the pressing problems that permeate organizations in the present. In the spirit of co-operative design, we decided to shift our annual impact report from numbers and a list of corporatized highlights to a library of impact stories that blend outcomes with the humans that pushed for it. In 2024, our annual impact report was dubbed “All that’s cooperatively possible,” leaning respectively into the themes of what could be and collective action across the pillars of a healthy planet, an inclusive outdoors, and access to the outdoors.
Read it here.
Core Team:
Brand Strategy: Danielle Vasan, Warren Seuradge
Creative: Jason Sutherland, Taylor Rebhan
Comms: Josh Petri
PM: Heather Curalla
+ so many more
Inclusion & Partnerships
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Inclusion & Partnerships 〰️
g. Outside with Pride
Task: Continue to deepen trust and affect positive social outcomes with and for the LGBTQ+ community in and beyond the outdoor industry.
Strategy + Solution: Pride through the years has been complicated, to say the least. Some brands are performatively loud when the policy/regulatory environment is favorable (mostly only in June), and others are quietly divesting or silencing their stance altogether. The reality for REI is that its support for and with the community is larger than a marketing campaign, but spans across (1) inclusive design policy/practices & (2) policy/regulatory support through the co-operative action network that calls on congress to pass the Equality Act. To bridge together our words and many actions, we slanted our annual Outside with Pride campaign to honor all the ways Pride exists across the community, all year round.
Results: 7,610 advocates sent 22,598 messages to Congress in support of the Equality Act; Pride capsule collection drove +32% YoY increase in sales; LGBTQ+-identfying vendor partners experience a 385% YoY lift during Pride Month, outperforming prior growth by 85%.
Core Team:
REDI: Nani Vishwanath, Nicole Lacasse, Michelle Palermino
Creative: Jason Sutherland, Taylor Rebhan
Editorial: Ever Meister
Brand Strategy: Warren Seuradge
Marketing Strategy: Ashley Germain
Capsule Collection ‘25 featured Artist: Lisa Congdon
Impact: Alicia Harvie
Social: Taylor Hartman, Lauren Belfor, Ale Castillo
PM: Katie Metzler