Fire&Spark™ President, Dale Bertrand, sat down with Chris Da Sie, the Owner of Coastal Wilderness, an outdoor lifestyle brand focused on sustainable apparel while representing the pride of West Coast living. With spreading a message of enjoying nature and spending time with family, Coastal Wilderness is also making an impact with sustainable products and shipping materials. Through partnerships with organizations like 1% For The Planet, the brand has been able to grow visibility while maintaining and leveraging its mission.
During the interview, Chris told the story of how he created Coastal Wilderness and the impact its mission has had on the company’s marketing and sales. Watch the full recording below:
If you’re short on time, here are some takeaways:
Leverage a brand mission in your marketing. Chris took his passion and combined it with the relevant and ongoing conversation of sustainability and the environment to create and market Coastal Wilderness. This brand mission helped differentiate the retailer, pushing it to grow and succeed. By using a message to stand behind, such as making a positive impact on the fashion industry, Coastal Wilderness has discovered and utilized a passionate brand purpose.
People pay attention to brands that do good. Chris explained how promising to donate 1% of every sale to a non-profit has helped the brand stay true to their mission. When partners have noticed this consistency, Coastal Wilderness has been given shoutouts on social media, driving visibility and opening more doors for the company.
Spread awareness for your brand mission. When working with organizations that aligned with the brand’s mission, Chris also used the opportunity to implement them into his marketing. With limited edition collaborations, donating a portion of profits, and tweaking messaging and imagery to reflect the mission behind Coastal Wilderness, more awareness was built around what the brand stands for.
Customers love to know the impact of their purchase. Coastal Wilderness shares the impact that each purchase is making with their customers, helping to build a loyal customer base. People love buying from Coastal Wilderness because they know that every single purchase is actually making a difference, and that they can be a part of that change.
Brand stories resonate with consumers. Chris encourages ecommerce brands to tell their brand story in an authentic way to truly resonate with customers. This is more effective than a traditional approach because consumers actually relate to brand stories. Plus, they prefer this over only being sold to all the time.
Impact-driven partnerships generate brand awareness. Coastal Wilderness noticed an abundance of small and local businesses who shared the same values and mission. These brands also wanted to make an impact, but didn’t necessarily have the manpower to be able to. By working with Coastal Wilderness, not only did they build a valuable relationship, but they were also able to spread their own brand awareness.
Partners should share your brand values. Trying to form partnerships with charities, influencers, and vendors will appear much more genuine if they share your brand purpose. This proves you are not only providing sufficient value to each other, but also to the causes you support. Chris shared how working with others who support his brand mission has been fulfilling.
Learn how to market your mission. Even with a passionate brand mission, you may not resonate with consumers immediately. Chris explained how he used numerous A/B testing to determine what worked best and quickly learned and implemented messaging that effectively reached his audience and generated sales.
***A special thanks to Chris Da Sie who made this event successful.***
If you’re interested in mission-driven marketing, but don’t know where to start, apply for an Authority First Discover Session!
