Outdoor Gear Manufacturing and Adventure Travel Industries Get Creative, Drive Results in Cross-Industry Promotions

12 May 2008
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Finding ways to better connect the adventure travel industry with the outdoor (human-powered) gear and manufacturing industry has been a pet project of the Adventure Travel Trade Association for years.  Like many good projects that come to fruition, a dose of patience, a solid vision, seeing the connective tissue an idea, a genuine investment in relationships and persistence in seeing a project through is required.

Two recent projects that showcase the potential of collaboration between the related industries - the shared objectives are to drive more consumer/traveler interest in both product and destinations simultaneously.

  • The first example connects notable outdoor gear brands with destination marketing organizations around the world.  What might these two types of organizations have in common? Gear manufacturers' FAM trips brings destination to core groups of outdoors-people. In this example, an ATTA-facilitated familiarization trip helps a destination achieve 7.5 million "touches" in North America. Read more>>
  • In this second example, ATTA Sponsor W.L. Gore & Associates, a leading manufacturer of advanced technology products including the GORE-TEX® brand, named the Top 10 GORE-TEX® Footwear Summer Travel Destinations for 2008 as part of a consumer marketing campaign challenges U.S. travelers to uncover a hidden GORE-TEX® brand logo (the GORE-TEX® logo is diamond shaped) in the participating destinations. For the overseas destination, the project is expected to help raise awareness among North American travelers of the destinations featured in the program. Results from the program are expected to be released later this fall. For now, GORE-TEX has pulled out all of the stops in developing its Web site presence and it's viral email marketing (see example) also are quite sophisticated and make clear connections between outdoor/travel footwear and travel.  Access the press release announcing the campaign>>
For organizations representing either industry seeking to connect with the other and/or explore creative promotional ideas, contact ATTA Vice President of Business Development Chris Chesak at [email protected].

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