In recent years, the increased focus on health and wellness has paved the way for new creators to inspire their audience to lead an active lifestyle. Among these are outdoors influencers, that seek to motivate and inspire their followers to go outside and enjoy what nature has to offer. These influencers specifically create content revolving around outdoor destinations, gear, sports, and causes. With this comprehensive approach to content and inspiration, often presented in a visually appealing form, these creators represent excellent sources with which you can grow your brand. Learn how your brand can benefit from working with these high-engagement profiles.

How can outdoor influencers benefit your brand?

Outdoor influencers present a unique combination of qualities that stand out in the media landscape through the unique and varied qualities they offer. These creators use their platform to inspire and motivate their followers to lead an active and healthy lifestyle in multiple ways, whether it be camping, hiking, or skiing. However, the core message lies in inspiring to go outside – D2 Magazine, therefore, coined outdoors influencers as “outfluencers”. Hence, outdoor influencers arguably have an encouraging approach to their content: through sharing their knowledge and experiences, these influencers can make the outdoors more accessible for their followers, inspiring and motivating them to seize the outdoors to a larger extent.

Meet outdoors influencers Stine & Jarlen

Branding through outdoor influencers

Depending on the specific focus of the influencer, one can find numerous areas and setting in which their gear and products can be portrayed. Today, outdoor influencers can inspire their audience to seize nature in numerous ways, whether that be leisurely activities like hiking, skiing, or camping, or extreme sports like mountain biking, climbing, or rafting. There is virtually a community within every area of interest, in which the influencer share inspiration and tips. Through this, the outdoors influencers can create solid communities within their area of interest and expertise, making them trusted sources of knowledge, ultimately translating to high engagement levels. Essentially, these profiles do, through consistent and thorough content manifest as solid sources of knowledge and thereby dependable advocates.

What makes outdoor influencers unique?

Stine & Jarlen tell us that the goal for many hiking and outdoors influencers is to use as “little as possible”, and to use what they have for a long time.

“We enjoy working with brands to find the very best products for different situations so that we can promote and recommend sustainable and well-thought-out products for our followers.”

They continue to tell us that the trust between them and their followers is very strong due to the fact that the products they use and promote are tested in often extreme situations. They need to be able to trust their great, clothes, products, etc. If they can show a setting, scenario, or activity that their followers know they have experience in, and show products that help in the given setting, it is always a success: “a combination of building credibility through stories and showcasing a product in a post is also a good way of showcasing the products” they explain.

The importance of destination

The location and environment of activity play an important part in the content for outdoors influencers. More so, the profiles share specific tips for nature destinations and specific journeys, like skiing treks and hikes to undertake. Thus, the elements of travel and destinations remain a central part of their appeal. Here, you can find outdoors influencers conveying specific journeys for hiking and exploration both in your central area or a destination you desire to visit. By this, the “backdrop” of the outdoors influencers’ content becomes one of its key components. This is emphasized in their content; instead of the specific activity conducted being the main point of focus, for example, a hike in the mountains, the beautiful environment, and the scenery the hike might just be what motivates the audience to go outside and do the same. In that way, outdoors influencers are also comparable to travel influencers, as showing landscape and environment becomes a central part of their content.

Exceptional production quality

Further, outdoors and wildlife influencers stand out in their approach to visual presentation. Many of these creators are professional photographers and video creators, collaborating with camera brands like GoPro. Thus, the emphasis on photography is very strong – the level of visual quality is on a professional level. This is a favorable quality for brand collaborations, as these influencers create a visually outstanding environment for product promotion. Not only can collaborating with wildlife influencers portray the product in use in its intended state, whether that be at a campsite or on a summit but it can also be conveyed in a professional aesthetic.

How should brands partner with outdoor influencers?

Long-term partnerships are a good way to work and are often essential to building trust, according to Stine & Jarlen. A long-term partnership also allows for a larger line of products to be tested, as the value for many of their followers is their ability to recommend something related to their specific situation. They advise brands who partner with outdoors influencers that the creators be given time to actually test the products.

“We value being able to give feedback to the client on their product as well as the brand using our content to use in their own socials, as we also build our own brand further on our partners’ good name and reputation.”

Stine & Jarlen tell us that their followers respond to a combination of posts promoting products, but also showing how to service and repair your gear is a good way of building trust and long-term positive brand awareness in our audience.

Market Landscapes

VOCAST has created curated press lists of prominent outdoors influencers in the following markets: 

Outdoors influencers

VOCAST has gathered the most prominent outdoors lifestyle influencers from select markets. Meet some of them here:

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Meet Birgit & Marianne

How image banks and digital showrooms play a crucial part in the workflow of architects and interior designers

Good content is key. And what better place to find good and accessible content than in digital showrooms? The workflow of interior designers and architects is busy, and any time they can save, they will. If your brand content is too complicated to find, or not specific enough, the architects simply won’t use it. Architects are spending a lot of their time researching content and products already, so if you want to be a considered brand, do your preparations and make the content search as easy as possible for the architects.

“We use image banks and digital showrooms from interior design suppliers to a particularly high degree. Every season we download all relevant documents, such as catalogs and price lists” – Birgit Tarp.

The workflow of an architectural project, and where you need to be present as a brand

To give you a better understanding of the actual workflow on an architectural project, we have outlined it for you in three simple steps;

As Marianne tells us, architects work with content from suppliers throughout all phases from concept to implementation. Visual imagery, drawings, collages, and reference pictures help us set the tone and easily engage with the clients to ensure that we are true to their brand and aspirations. Easy access and configurable content saves time and supports their work in giving clients the best understanding of our design.

“We use both lifestyle images for the look and feel mood boards – and individual specific furniture pieces for presentations.” – Marianne Færch

She explains how cut out packshots allows her to show pieces in different design contents in quick design sprints with the client. During the detailed design phase, architects need access to 2D + 3D files to implement in their drawings.

Digital showrooms can ease the workflow of architects: What content do architects want? And where do they find it?

The architects want the facts, and they preferably want all of them at the same time. To architects, imagery specifications are their way of segmenting if a product is within the budget, lives up to the requested features and at the same time follows the aesthetic of the project. In this way, content is a very practical and necessary tool for architects and a key element of their work process. At the same time content is also an inspiration to the architects. When asked where they go to find content besides image banks and digital showrooms, Pinterest is the number one answer, followed by magazines, Instagram, and fairs.

“I like user-friendly content that gives me a quick overview of color scheme, measurements, prices, and product availability” – Birgit Tarp

Pinterest is an important platform to make sure your content is available on as well. This is a way for your brand to be found by architects that maybe aren’t already familiar with your brand, in a setting where you are showcased in the exact aesthetic they are researching at that point. You can read more about Pinterest, and the importance of pinfluencers right here.

“Furniture producers that have configurators that allow us to change colors and show the furniture without backgrounds are very useful and make it easier for us to show exactly how a specific piece of furniture will look” – Marianne Færch

What makes a brand stand out of the crowd?

Of course, all architects have different parameters on which they evaluate what makes a brand stand out from the crowd. Birgit and Marianne have given us their first-hand thoughts on what makes a brand stand out;

Birgit tells us the brands with an interesting product line or collection that differs from other brands, a strong visual DNA, sustainable production, and aesthetically beautiful products with attractive function or comfort. Marianne says that she seeks inspiration from brands showing an understanding of global work trends, like hybrid working, and collaboration. It can be solutions for the home office or a new type of product for the digital office. In addition, she explains that she always looks for brands with products that stand out which enables her to make solutions that leave an impression. Sustainability is also a key consideration for us when choosing furniture. 

Why it is important to make your brand visible among architects?

Architects have a huge industrial impact, being the ones picking and choosing what brands are showcased where and in what setting. They are determining what aesthetic your brand is being contextualized with, having a great impact on how people are pursuing your brand.

A great architectural project is resulting in a beautiful setting, full of beautiful furniture and accessories. And in these times, we know that a good setting and aesthetic surroundings calls for an Instagram post. Providing good content can in that way result in gaining new content back.

“Architects and Designers are visual people that use images as their primary form of inspiration & communication, and it is therefore crucial for manufactures to provide inspiring and emotive imagery that can help us bring our clients along on the journey.” – Marianne Færch

The architects are able to, directly and indirectly, impact your brand, and if an architect loves your content, loves your level of providing detail, and can find exactly what content they are looking for – they are probably gonna use you again on their next project.

Top tips on what content to include in your image bank

Birgit tells us that, to her, it is crucial that newsletters and press images are highly inspiring in all dimensions – unique products, color specifications, recycle-friendly, etc. Images are the most appetizing way of looking and feeling. She says messages should be idea-enriching and at the same time forward all the necessary and essential details on the products. The process handling is short between interior design development and the final decision on products, so the process gets easier with a unique product level.

References: image: Design Cirus.

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Blue folders don’t align with brand aesthetics

GUBI, like many lifestyle brands, used to have a simple DAM system (Digital Asset Management System) to cater to their B2B content needs, but ease-of-use and aesthetics were missing. Plain and poorly organized folders don’t usually translate well when you are a brand with a plethora of visual content and assets. According to Jesper, 80 to 90% of brand appearance is for the end consumer, so how do you extend that experience equally to B2B partners? And what about the press, retailers, the contract market, interior designers, and architects? Creating content is one thing, but distributing is even more important.

« Rather than having to push content all the time, we wanted the content to be pulled out automatically by our partners. We ultimately decided to go for VOCAST as it was the easiest and smartest solution to distribute content while maintaining our brand aesthetics. »

Jesper Klæbel, ex-Head of Marketing, IT & Business Development at GUBI

How our solution worked for GUBI

Brand Alignment across all channels 

VOCAST offered a content management system that was aligned with the brand’s universe:

“What VOCAST has that a normal DAM system hasn’t is this combination of unique features. It makes perfect sense to have your B2B content, press releases, contacts, and data integrated all together. For what VOCAST delivers, it delivers it excellently.”

Better control

Having control of who sees what, and who has access to certain parts of the digital showroom was also a vital part of GUBI. For internal launchings, areas needed to be restricted while other parts needed to be open with content readily available. Jesper explains:

“VOCAST is able to include login-protected areas for extra control over our valued assets, which was crucial for us.”

How GUBI implemented the platform

Take ownership

Before getting to the point of final implementation and usage it was crucial to initiate a big push when launching the image bank:

“VOCAST is an easy tool, but you have to take ownership if you want it to be good for the customers. It’s more intricate than a DAM system, here you have to think about design, a tagging structure, how to organize your image bank, how to make sure your partners and the press will use it, etc…”

Digital Product Launches  

Speaking of brilliant, Jesper has found an efficient way to communicate on their new digital showroom and push usage during their product launches:

“Beforehand, we would introduce new products during the fairs, people would come, see and feel new furniture. Normally we would never introduce tools during product launches, but it did matter and make sense this time – we had the audience and we decided to take advantage of that. After introducing all these wonderful products we thought our partners would probably ask themselves: hey, where can I get all this  information?”

Digital product launches have become more common because of the pandemic. For GUBI, these new virtual product launches sometimes gathered over 1,100 viewers worldwide at the same time:

“With virtual launches, you need to make sure they have all the information they need, you need to be very focused on your communication and your B2B content needs to be excellent.”

Pointing them to a platform such as VOCAST allows GUBI to maintain control over their brand awareness towards their stakeholders. 

The do’s of implementing a digital showroom:

GUBI is a renowned Danish design house notable for designing elegant collections of furniture and interior objects that resonate across the world. Based in Copenhagen’s docklands, GUBI’s showroom and HQ span 2000 square-meter space, while their 400-square-meter flagship store is located in the heart of Copenhagen’s shopping district. These two locations are the principal visual representation of the brand which sells products in over 180 stores across the world in North America, Europe, and Asia.

Ines is the Research and Marketing Manager at VOCAST.  She previously worked in the beauty industry and is now an expert in social media and digital marketing. Every day she helps design-driven brands navigate digital trends and carry out their marketing and brand strategies effortlessly.

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1. The internet has more control over your brand’s success:

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Meet Mathilde, Emil & Candice

The rise of micro-influencers

We have reached a point where influencers, in general, can give you a higher ROI than traditional forms of digital marketing, and in fact, 49% of consumers say they depend on influencer recommendations when making purchases. However, brands are stuck in the belief that the more followers an influencer has, the better. Some early-adopting brands now focus on having a base of micro-influencers instead of putting their buck on the traditional expensive mega-influencers. According to recent research, 77% of all brand partnerships nowadays are with micro-influencers.

In a world where customers tend to feel reluctant towards targeted ads, and overly obvious “influencer sponsored messages”, and with GDPR issues on the legal side, brands now strive for more personal contact with their customers. With a good match between your brand and the micro-influencers own personal brand, micro-influencers are gold and know how to help you sell indirectly.

Mathilde distinguishes a growing interest in brands working with micro-influencers. The industry of influencer marketing is growing every day, and it is relevant for brands to be aware of the targeting following base that micro-influencers often have. Even if customers want the same product, they come with different preferences that several micro-influencers can reach, compared to one expensive mega-influencer. She explains:

“If you as a brand are not aware of the possibilities and different targeting ways of the micro influencer’s followers, you are overlooking the potential”

Mathilde believes that micro-influencers play a big part in a new strategy of influencing and marketing. Not necessarily a bigger role, but definitely on its way, to having an equally important influence on both branding and collaborations on social media and marketing in general.

Emil also gives us an interesting reflection where he pinpoints the lower risk of failure for brands when collaborating with micro-influencers since the cost of collaboration is usually reflected by the number of followers:

“We see a bigger interest for companies and brands to establish micro-influencer collaborations as the entry barrier is much more risk-free.”

Mathilde similarly argues that they definitely see a growing interest from brands, when it comes to working with micro-influencers. She explains that every day, the marketing and influencer business is growing, moving, changing, and evolving, so it is impossible to predict where we stand in just five years.

Going bigger isn’t always better: Why partner with a micro-influencer?

No doubt, partnering with an influencer who has a huge audience will generate a lot of traction, but that is not always the best option. The success of influencer campaigns is assessed based on engagement rate. Statistics have shown that micro-influencers have the highest engagement rate of any other type of social media creator – due to them having a smaller audience, these influencers can engage with people more personally. This also has a huge effect on trust, as consumers consider them as relatable and trustworthy people they can trust, and recent statistics have shown that 70% of teens trust creator content more than celebrity endorsement. 

Emil stresses the importance of follower engagement and that there is a clear correlation between the number of followers, and engagement in general. The more followers someone has, the weaker the engagement rate gets as it is hard to reach and get interaction with all of the followers when having a bigger follower base. Depending on what the KPIs are for the campaign, the company can decide whether micro-influencers or macro-influencers would be a great fit for the campaign depending if your goal is to increase awareness, attract interest or get conversions. 

Mathilde explains to us that she thinks brands look for diversity, authenticity and how much engagement the influencer has with their followers. Nowadays, she sees a huge escalation of micro-influencers, because they also have a targeted following, even though it doesn’t seem as much if you have 5000 followers compared to an influencer with 300.000 followers. We are all different and find inspiration and information in different places and platforms. She further explains:

“For some brands, it is not always important to activate their brand with just one mega influencer, but to select several micro profiles, to achieve a more frequent frequency for the same budget.”

Micro-influencers are often also more niche than mega-influencers, enabling you to find a much better fit for your brand by picking them carefully to precisely comply with the kind of consumers that you want to engage with your brand. Micro-influencers will give you access to an audience that fully connects and enjoys content in the niche your brand may be looking for.

Candice tells us that although Instagram is a big social media platform, she feels like she evolves in a small and trusted community of “internet friends” with similar content and styles. She further explains that the attractiveness of micro-influencers lies in the fact that they are truly being followed for their styles aside from celebrity endorsement, which we can often perceive with bigger influencers – making the following community in its whole more niche.

A Mindful Approach

By working with micro-influencers, brands simply become associated with a trusted community voice in the industry and have a direct connection to the target audience of the brand. With close relationships with their followers, high commitment, and more credibility than the industry’s bigger names, micro-influencers are often a perfect strategy for brands. And in an industry that will become evermore dominated by Gen Z – authenticity and mindfulness are highly valuable.

Marketing to young generations is all about being more transparent, authentic, and raw with promotions. Gen Z, in particular, are looking for a true voice to influence their purchases and lifestyles. As the modern-day, digital bestie Candice tells us, she considers her social media as her “own personal journal”:

“I want people to relate to myself, I’m not just someone that promotes products on the internet. I consider myself a lifestyle, and I want my lifestyle to influence and inspire people – not just the products that I use.”

Candice explains that she finds it crucial to only promote products that are part of her daily routine – as her followers see her daily routine, they are only occasionally met with affiliate links or promotional codes, as Candice argues it creates a more “natural and organic manner to shop”. 

Consumers nowadays are no longer looking for the “one-size-fits-all influencer” and are on the search for mindful influencers, who support important causes. Candice explains that being a micro-influencer makes her more mindful of sustainability: 

“As an influencer, I try to be more mindful of my own consumption, but I also want to push people to do the same by only engaging in partnerships that I know fully fit myself and my needs”.

Emil similarly explains that it is now much easier for micro-influencers to be taken seriously and speak out loud, which is one of the reasons that they keep receiving more and more credibility and trust in the industry.

A short guide to working with micro influencers

As established throughout this article, micro-influencers can have a lot of potential for your marketing strategies. They do not only have the highest engagement rate, but they also enable your brand to reach a more accurate target group for a smaller budget. This means a more efficient campaign, with fewer potential risks. But partnerships with micro-influencers could feel like being out of your usual brand reach – so, how should you partner with a micro-influencer? And, most importantly – how can both your brand and the influencer make the most out of the partnership?

References: image: Copenhagen Fashion Week image bank Moeez Ali. Shopify Blog, 30+ Influencer Marketing Strategies to Have on Your Radar (2022). 

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