Tough Shots

Objective:

Feradyne Outdoors is the parent company of several archery brands — all ranging in product category and notoriety. When we first met together, the plan was to just refresh some existing content, injecting some messaging around new marketing campaigns and swapping in some new products. Simple in and out.

During that meeting, however, a couple of things stood out to me. First, our contact mentioned that one key problem they had was that while some of the company’s brands had significant market share and name recognition, others were struggling to gain footing. The other thing that caught my attention were the words he used to describe their audience: entrenched, stubborn, “hard to market to.”

They were two big challenges that didn’t need to be confronted (by me, at least), but I knew that our audience held the uniquely powerful potential to address both.

Strategy: 

I knew that to increase the reputation and name recognition of the smaller brands, I would need to somehow piggyback on the name and audience of the larger brands. For example, I wanted someone that came to interact with Rage Broadheads — a well-known mechanical broadhead company — to see, and be impressed by, products from a smaller brand like Nockturnal.

Secondly, I found in my research that our contact was right — bowhunters are stubborn, especially when it comes to gear they need to rely on during a hunt. It was going to take a whole lot more than flashing lights and panning product glamour shots to earn credibility and inspire members of our audience to recommend something new to their customers, friends and family members.

To do that, I knew we’d need to go full-authentic; put the products to the test in several real-world scenarios to see how they’d do.

The concept we pitched was a filmed meet-up between a Feradyne insider and several real bowhunters. We’d capture the hunters testing several of the brands’ newest products in field situations and get their reactions and feedback in real-time. Time would be given to highlight each product in detail, showing off key design features and technologies.

Feradyne ultimately signed off the concept, believing in the vision and the potential outcome. The company trusted their products to perform and us to capture it in a compelling way.

Execution: 

Pulling this off would be quite a feat, and it ended up being the most ambitious project of my career. The overall vision would be this — one single “feature” video that would serve as the anchor for the entire experience, and several brand-specific “extra” videos to provide additional clarity and deeper engagement through behind-the-scenes-style content.

This was a two-day shoot in Morgan, Utah. The crew was 20 strong, all working to capture the back-and-forth dialogue and reactions with as little direction or reshooting as possible. They were two long days, but the videos turned out amazing.

Time will still tell how effective the campaign will be to truly change bowhunters’ minds and behavior, but as for the primary objective, to increase our audience’s exposure to some of the smaller niche brands, the results have been very positive. More hunters are engaging with those brands’ content and purchasing products of their own — hopefully leading to recommendations within their circles.