Case Study: Driving GORE-TEX and Patagonia Sales with Digital Advertising

A multichannel digital advertising campaign to drive awareness and conversions of Patagonia’s new GORE-TEX ePE outerwear

Patagonia’s key product campaign for Autumn/Winter 2023 (AW23) was the launch of their new range of waterproof shells made with GORE-TEX ePE membrane. This waterproof membrane is the result of a nearly decade-long collaboration between Patagonia and the GORE-TEX brand, the goal of which was to remove perfluorinated chemicals from the waterproof fabrics in Patagonia’s outerwear.

For those not in the know, perfluorinated chemicals (or PFCs) are some pretty unpleasant man-made chemicals that are highly effective at making materials waterproof. Unfortunately, they can be harmful both to the environment and to human health, which is why Patagonia have been keen to remove them from their waterproof products for years.

The GORE-TEX ePE membrane is a revolutionary new waterproof/breathable material that’s light, strong and made without PFCs, setting the standard for technical storm protection.

As Patagonia Europe’s Digital Marketing agency, we were approached to work with them on the digital strategy for the campaign. Like the Patagonia Micro Puff launch and the Patagonia NetPlus Product Launch, our first objective was to generate awareness for the GORE-TEX ePE collection. That meant reaching new outdoor-inclined audiences who hadn’t previously engaged with the brand as well as engaging and educating current Patagonia customers and fans about this revolutionary product. Our final objective was to drive sales of this new range of waterproof outerwear. 

Driving Engagement for an In-Person & Live-Streamed Launch Event

We began this campaign with the promotion of a live event in Munich, in which Matt Dwyer (Head of Product Impact and Innovation at Patagonia) and Lara Wittman (Global Strategic Marketing Lead at W.L. Gore and Associates) discussed the history of the collaboration between the two brands as well as the technical specifications of the ePE membrane.

We’ve worked with Patagonia Europe previously on plenty of event promotion – including packed store events at Patagonia Innsbruck and Patagonia Manchester – so we knew we’d have no problems drumming up attendance. The event wasn’t limited to the physical realm. Like we did with Patagonia’s Stories That Inspire Campaign, which promoted online film screenings during the pandemic, we promoted a live streaming of the event to the wider European audience with ads on Google Discovery, Linkedin, Reddit, and Youtube.

We followed up the event promotion with a product-focused 3-phase funnel which included awareness, traffic and conversion phases. We retargeted existing Patagonia customers, followers of the brand, and those who engaged with the event promotion, as well as prospecting new outdoor audiences.

Multi-Phase Campaign Across Eight Digital Advertising Channels

Using a similar approach to the Patagonia Shell Yeah Campaign, we focused primarily on two audience groups: “alpine” climbing-focused audiences and “snow” skiing and snowboarding-focused audiences. For each phase we used creative that was tailored to each of these two segments. In terms of revenue attributed to the campaign and ROAS, we found that the snow-focused segment outperformed the alpine-focused segment. Though running the campaign as essentially two separate campaigns targeting these two audiences was a big lift in terms of the build, it enabled us to see that snow audiences were slightly more inclined to engage with and buy this product, as well as giving us valuable audience data that will enable us to target both groups in the future.

Overall for the GORE-TEX campaign, we utilised 8 different placements for the creative: Snapchat, Pinterest, Google Discovery, Google Display, Reddit, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Connected TV (ads that are delivered via a streaming service during a viewer’s movie, TV show, or other video content).

Delivering The Highest ROAS

The results of this campaign far exceeded our expectations and our targets. We surpassed our attributed revenue target by nearly 2x, and our ROAS far exceeded our standard target for product campaigns. We attributed the success of this campaign to several factors:

1. The hype around the launch moment and the educational aspect of the event promotion which enabled us to engage audiences who are both highly active and environmentally switched on.

2. Our finely tuned targeting strategy and channel mix, honed over the years of working with Patagonia on product campaigns to ensure optimal results.

3. Additional marketing budget allocation from GORE-TEX which enabled us to engage a wider audience with the collaboration.

4. High quality creative assets, thoughtfully placed according to funnel phase objectives.

Both the nativve and Patagonia teams were delighted with the results which achieved the highest attributed revenue and ROAS of all the Patagonia AW23 product campaigns in Europe.

Take a look at more of our work for Patagonia.

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