On the AI Use for Outdoor Brands

In his latest post on his website Matt Trappe picks up a conversation that happened in the Second Nature Slack channel last week wondering about the use of AI in product marketing shots and in actual product design:

I think it just comes down to the branding ramifications of consumer facing AI. We all accept that big brands seek efficiency, process and safety – not risk taking and creativity. This fits with the idea of AI. We’d expect and likely accept these moves from a massive brand (of course Coke is going to create its Super Bowl commercial with AI). However, I greatly prefer to see small brands harnessing the analog nature of human creativity. Too much of their competitive advantage is linked to the human touch they can uniquely provide vs. a big corporation.

For one, I think we don’t accept that big brands use AI, it’s just forced on us. But the conversation we had was mentioning the use of AI in Nnormal’s new running tops and Speedland’s marketing for their new road shoe.

About Nnormal Matt writes:

Instead we see Nnormal, a very small brand with a strong environmental focus, utilizing a massively energy intensive and impersonal computer process to create products we are supposed to connect with. Just doesn’t seem at all on brand to me.

And on Speedland:

Then we saw Speedland drop an AI image of a wolf staring down their new road shoe. This one didn’t bother me nearly as much a Nnormal. Knowing how trail runners feel about running on the road, I thought the ad’s concept resonated and it’s a big ask for Speedland to arrange an IRL wolf. That being said it seemed to me this one had even more skeptics than Nnormal from the community.

Here’s my thought on these brand’s use of AI:

Maybe, now that I’m thinking about this some more what you were touching on with the question about the Speedland promo isn’t so much the use of AI or the quality of the marketing but that in the outdoor industry storytelling through real people has always been a big part of the history of marketing and selling. There has always been something real and believable about the way outdoor gear was sold. Real athletes and adventures doing real epic shit and we wanted to buy into that. If this all goes away then what is the brand’s differentiating factor between a brand being born in the outdoors selling real quality gear for high prices and fast fashion brand Zara selling a carbon plated shoe because it’s currently fashionable to do so?

Gorpcore was about bringing the authenticity of outdoor gear to the runway and the city life. It seems to me we’re entering a reverse trend where the manufactured glossiness of the runway is entering the outdoor world. Outdoor brands were always able to charge extra for their perceived value in allowing you to scale Mount Everest in their clothes. If we start faking this now then we’re not selling outdoor gear, just luxury gear.