May at Backbone is bringing lots of change as well. Joining the media team are Page Kelley, who comes to us from Mindshare in Chicago, and Amanda Boyle from a little company called Google. Katie Wolitarsky is migrating from our Jackson office to our Denver locale at Battery 621 and Erik Wardell joins us full-time in Carbondale.

New clients joining the Backbone roster include RiverRestoration, Opedix, Yeti Coolers and Sperry Top-Sider–all of which are off to strong starts.

For example, we kicked off our work with RiverRestoration by piggybacking a White House-embargoed release about a new Urban Waters designation for Grand Rapids, Michigan. We timed our own release to post on the wire just as the White House news hit and as a result we landed coverage for our client in outlets ranging from CNBC, to Yahoo Finance, Bloomberg Business and the Washington Post.

Backbone also has been active on an unbranded content experiment with Camp 4 Collective called “Pause.” What started as a conversation over breakfast with Nate, Greg, Anson and Renan has has taken shape over the last two months.

Loosely defined, Pause is a reaction to social platforms that have seemingly been overrun by branded content. Collectively, we wondered if there was still a place and demand for agnostic, beautiful imagery and video? We launched the project anonymously at first, to test its organic virality. Only just recently did Adventure Journal out us (because Cas was working on an almost identical program). Over time we plan to push Pause with targeted paid promotion, to compare results. For us, Pause is a fun, creative project, that will help us continue to explore and learn what drives people to view content.

Lastly, the month of May means sales meetings and lots of travel (click the map above to see where we’ve been). From NYC, to Santa Barbara, London, Salt Lake City, Grand Rapids, Portland, Telluride, Estes Park, Austin, Lexington, and Fresno, our team is on the road.

See you out there-or maybe just in Concourse B.

Full house at Steve’s Guitars

With so many heavy hitters in Carbondale for the 6th Annual 5 Point Film Fest, Backbone once again hosted a POV event; inviting a mix of filmmakers, artists, editors, creatives, brand marketers, CEOs and dirtbags to talk about trends in marketing and social platforms.

(former) Striped Mullet curbside with the Lama

Even a Christian knows you have to be Semi-Rad to get the girl

Our panel included Mary Anne Potts from National Geographic, Mark Deming, Marketing Communications for NRS, and Anson Fogel from Camp 4. The audience was stacked with the likes of Fitz Cahall, Travis Rummel, Chris Davenport, David Lama, Kelly Cordes, Michael Kennedy, Jeremy Collins, Malcolm Daly, James Mills, Brendan Leonard, Chris Kalous, Aspen Skiing’s Dave Amirault and Meredith McKee, Black Diamond’s Holly Merriman, Jonathan Thesenga, Brittany Griffith and Ryan Gellert, Christian Folk from Outdoor Research, Amanda Boyle from Google, Len Zanni and Colin Osborn from Big Agnes and Honey Stinger and folks from New Belgium, Comcast, The Timbers, Patagonia, River Restoration, Black Dog Digital, and many more.

Digi Dave and filmmaker Matt Hobbs playing Uncle Sam

Always interesting panelists Anson Fogel from Camp 4 and the elegant Mary Anne Potts

Topics covered the ongoing changes in digital media, the pivot points between social platforms, and branded versus unbranded content. Overall, it was a super fun time in a great local venue – Steve’s Guitars in Carbondale.

Fitz talking fishing

James, MK and Travis, purveyors of pure edit and creativity

Thus, a trip to New York City for our semi-annual media showroom, with the promise of warmer weather, good food and a little urban culture, was a welcome opportunity for the Backbone team.

Twice a year, we host a showroom in NYC. It’s a chance to meet with some of the country’s leading media and share the latest and greatest products and stories from our clients.

This spring, we were in a new, larger event space, with 13 brands participating. During the seven hours of our showroom, we saw 70 writers, editors, freelancers, bloggers, producers and publishers representing titles from the New York Times to SELF, Esquire, Conde Nast Traveler, Oprah and many, many more.

In addition to connecting with the New York media scene, we enjoyed beautiful weather, a great meal at the Spice Market and a healthy dose of city culture before we headed back to the mountains (where thankfully, spring seems to finally have sprung).

Check out some pics from the event below.

Backbone’s Mike Shea with Jeanine Pesce from This is Range and Matt Peterson from Big Shot bikes

Molly from Eddie Bauer with Mary Anne Potts from National Geographic Adventure

Corey from Sperry Top-Sider with Susan Matthews from Popular Science

Molly from SmartWool with Dan Tower of Gifts.com and Mavis

The Newton Running Dream Team: Newton co-founder Danny Abshire, Elinor from Backbone and Kara Henry from Newton

We spent some time digging into the mobile world and identified a few trends that brands, marketers, advertisers, PR pros, and even web designers should be aware of. Check it out:

Three important take-aways:

• Mobile has incredible scale: Nearly 50% of the U.S. population expected to be mobile internet users by 2015
• Speed and convenience are the main drivers of mobile activity. Is your mobile presence optimized to be fast and easily accessible from a phone? Is the user experience seamless and consistent across a desktop, tablet and phone?
• Mobile search is a key part of buyers’ decision making and buying process

Being Colorado based and being that the continental divide is right out our backdoor we started playing with the idea of the using a stylized version of the continental divide – the backbone of the Rocky mountains – as our symbol.

Pretty simple really. Take the state of Colorado and smooth out the edges of the divide – and voila’

Whoever said the nike swoosh was a steal at $35…

Strip to your SmartWool: Inspiring, funny, and sometimes, downright scary.

We’re privileged to work with a number of brands that have large and enthusiastic social media fan bases. When it comes to media planning, orchestrating social campaigns, and even daily posting, an engaged fan base makes everything more fun and interesting. Case in point: SmartWool. With almost 100,000 Facebook fans, SmartWool enjoys an incredibly strong social following. SmartWool fans love engaging with the brand by commenting on posts, sharing their experiences, and submitting photos (which can be inspiring, funny, and sometimes, downright scary. Check out “Strip to Your SmartWool” to see what we mean).

So when SmartWool approached us for help launching its new PhD product line, we were thrilled to take on the challenge. It was an incredible opportunity to leverage its enthusiastic fan base and drive foot traffic to promotions occurring at over 130 retailers across the country (see map below).

In fact, the PhD launch campaign that Backbone/SmartWool ran through Facebook was such a success that Facebook wrote a case study on it. Take a closer look at the awesome work:

A big thanks to SmartWool for making great products and giving us this opportunity!

The New Belgium Abbey

As a nod to the history of New Belgium Brewing and the progressive nature of live streaming and amplifying word-of-mouth content, Backbone and New Belgium worked together to create the BeerStream.

The BeerStream is a live video feed that allows New Belgium’s Facebook fans to engage in real time with New Belgium hosts, Michael Bussmann and Matty Smooth. Monthly BeerStreams feature virtual beer tastings, details on new beers, events, culture and more. BeerStream allows New Belgium to bring the personality of the brewers and the brewery to their fans while encouraging them to take part in the tasting by purchasing a beer and following along – essentially driving an online action (virtual beer tasting) into offline activation (purchasing a beer and following along). The New Belgium BeerStream has gained momentum each month with an increase in viewership and engagement.
Stay tuned for our next BeerStream in February – grab a beer and join in the fun.
Here’s the link: http://bit.ly/nbbstream

In other words – that a great placement will be newsworthy in other media.

Yet with the right story you can see a ripple effect. This has happened recently with a few pieces where Backbone partners have seen feature coverage that has spurred more feature coverage.

The first example is with MIPS.

MIPS is a Swedish manufacturer of multi-directional impact systems – a safeguard in helmets that helps mitigate concussions.

A feature in December’s Popular Science written by Tom Foster, titled Helmet Wars, highlighted this technology and the reticence of major sports leagues (NFL, NHL and Lacrosse) to adopt new technologies which may greatly reduce an athletes exposure to brain injuries.

The Pop Sci feature spurred a hasty retort from Sports Illustrated online which in turn spawned a thoughtful response from the bleacher report a leading national sports blog. From there commentary ensued with the end result being MIPS establishment as a central piece in future helmet innovation discussions.

The second example is less product-centric and more causal. In this case it was concurrent media in Outside Magazine Powder Dreams by Gordy Megroz and a feature in SKI magazine written by Chris Solomon titled Utah’s Big Hook Up, both which discussed the controversial Ski Link, a proposed lift expansion by The Canyons resort that would connect the Park City resort with Big Cottonwood canyon.

Proponents of Ski Link call it a transportation solution. Opponents call it a real estate masquerade that hopes to raid well-used recreational public land for the benefit of a private company.

These pieces in turn brought about a Saturday Night Live Point-Counterpoint style op-ed on Outside Online with Black Diamond Inc. CEO Peter Metcalf and Ski Utah’s Nathan Rafferty facing off.

Again, commentary followed and the media ripple effect led to thought, discourse and social interaction.

Ullr would be pleased

Of course we love to ski and ride deep powder, but equally important is the impact snow (or lack thereof) has on our business partners in the winter sports world. Brands like SmartWool, Polartec , Eddie Bauer, Black Diamond, POC, La Sportiva, and Kastle all thrive when the snow flies.

The same holds true for the destination resorts we collaborate with: Sun Valley, Snowmass, Taos, Bachelor and Telluride. Even our more summer-based brands feel the impact of a bad snow year— in terms of watershed, river flows and outdoor retailers coming off a slow winter season are less likely to submit big orders for the next season.

Protect Our Winters recently released a report in collaboration with the National Resources Defense Council that focused on the economic impact of climate change to resorts and tourism. The results are staggering—an estimated $1 billion loss and up to 27,000 fewer jobs over the last decade because of diminished snow fall patterns and the resulting changes in the outdoor habits of Americans. The story went mainstream with pick up in USA Today, New York Times (three times), Time, ESPN Freeskiing, Outside, TransWorld Business, Adventure Journal and pick up on Al Gore’s blog and twitter feed

Major television and radio coverage ensued including a FOX News Business piece with an interview of the NRDC’s Bob Deans.

Part of Backbone’s charter is to give back to the outdoor industry and our local communities. We proudly work for 1% for the Planet, Big City Mountaineers and Protect Our Winters (POW).

When one of our non-profit partners scores major international news coverage, it’s a win we’re especially excited about. Thanks to the NRDC’s Hastings Group for their exceptional efforts in driving the process and read the NRDC report for yourself here.

Eddie Bauer had two overarching goals: To increase the audience for brand content (via more Facebook fans and email list subscribers) and boost fan engagement with the brand – and by extension, viral and social brand exposure.

To accomplish these goals, Backbone facilitated a partnership between Eddie Bauer and the Sun Valley Resort to create the “Epic Sun Valley Giveaway,” a co-branded Facebook sweepstakes application. Our friends over at Black Dog Digital designed and developed the application, and contest prizes included a head-to-toe ski setup from Eddie Bauer, two 2-day lift tickets and a two night stay in Sun Valley . The app ran from October 15 through November 1, 2012 and was supported with a combination of organic content and several forms of paid Facebook advertising.

The result? In just two weeks, we saw a 47% increase in the Eddie Bauer fan base – over 36,650 new fans. Their email list grew by 6,824 email addresses, and the number of people talking about Eddie Bauer increased to over 46,579 – a 1,236% increase (measured by # of shared stories about the EB page). Larger fan base? More emails? Engagement with the brand? Check, check and check.

Why does this matter? For starters, the Millennial generation typically values social recommendations above all else. In a recent study, 84% said that social opinions influence their purchasing decisions. When fans engage with the brand – liking, sharing and commenting on Eddiue Bauer content – their friends register those implicit social recommendations. With larger fan base, this becomes even more interesting: Eddie Bauer can now connect with the friends of their fans, increasing the total reach of their Facebook page content to over 8.4 million people.

Social media is exciting arena that allows brands to give massive scale to word of mouth marketing. From SmartWool’s Strip to your SmartWool and Fanalog apps, to New Belgium’s Shift campaign, and dozen of others in between, we’re excited about the work we’ve done this year, and can’t wait to see how the medium evolves in 2013.