sophia, strategist
Camping should be really hard. Said no one ever.
I met my future-co-founder John in the winter of 2018 and we bonded over an unforgettable weekend camping trip. Afterwards, I wondered how to recreate the experience on my own with my limited outdoor knowledge and realized there was a niche for teaching inexperienced campers how to camp and explaining which gear to use and how to use it.
With his two-plus decades of camping experience and my marketing skills we banded together to create a service that would provide all three in a digitally-native way.
Enter OutWhere. To convince newbie campers and seasoned adventurers looking for a new experience that we weren’t another run-of-the-mill review site plus online store the startup needed a brand experience that was authentic, inviting, and interestingly educational.
I developed the OutWhere brand from scratch, grounding it in authenticity and fun, with a personality equal parts helpful and humorous.
brand strategy
naming
brand identity
brand messaging
art direction
MVP testing
Blake Rogers
Trevor McCarthy
Danielle Freeman
With a bootstrap budget, my task was to create a site that embodied our vision to make the outdoors easier with an intuitive design that was just as straightforward and enjoyable as our content.
To do this, I researched the existing camping and outdoor recreation market to discover what the unspoken standards were for aesthetics, imagery, copy, voice, and tone.
Then I researched best-in-class and comparable e-commerce, recommendation, and information sites across industries to find overlaps and gaps with the outdoor equipment industry.
Once I discovered our niche and strategized our positioning, I created our brand identity and personality, visual standards, and copy guidelines, drafted our marketing plan, and then built the brand’s website and collateral.
After listening to camping pain points, we developed a quiz that filters gear and guides to give you exactly what you need, no matter where you’re going in the United States or what your budget and experience level are. So far the response from Carolina campers to Pacific Northwest backpackers is why the heck no one had built this before.
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We’ll see you outside.
see more workdo you have a
- company idea
- startup
- small business
- fluffy dog?
let's get coffee and talk about your brand!
(please bring the dog)
