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Yvon ChouinardA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Patagonia markets an authentic image of itself. Paradoxically, this authenticity derives from the team’s lack of concern about its image. Its substance originates from the passion for the outdoors and environmentalism shared by its employees and founders. In Chouinard’s words:
Patagonia’s image is a human voice. It expresses the joy of people who love the world, who are passionate about their beliefs, and who want to influence the future. It is not processed; it won’t compromise its humanity. This means that it will offend, and it will inspire (198).
A typical TV watcher has to see an ad around seven times to register it. With its alternative marketing, Patagonia hopes to cut through the frenetic stream of images and products and grab customers’ attention. For many years, it largely achieved this goal through the catalog. The catalog that started during the days of Chouinard’s fledgling tool company came to define Patagonia’s brand—it was equally about selling the company and its values as it was about selling product. As Chouinard puts it, the “primary purpose of our catalogs is to serve as a vehicle to communicate with our customers” (181).
The catalog didn’t look like any other: It focused less on presenting products and more on presenting a lifestyle defined by immersion in the peace and wonder of nature and a commitment to its protection. Rather than using professional models with no connection to climbing or the outdoors, Patagonia solicited photos from everyday users of its products, selecting the most authentic images of people doing everything from car repair to helicopter skiing in Patagonia clothing. Every outdoor magazine and catalog uses real people as models, following the trend Patagonia set.
The catalog also offers space for the company to expound its philosophies. Notable essays include the 1972 catalog’s “Clean Climbing,” which prompted a sport-wide switch from destructive pitons to non-destructive chocks, and the 1991 “Reality Check,” which urged customers to buy less because of the environmental harm clothing production inflicts.
In line with its authentic approach to marketing, Patagonia avoids aggressive advertising and egregious product promotion by sponsored athletes. Instead, it trusts that the quality of its line generates independent promotion in the form of word-of-mouth recommendations and favorable press. It only uses advertising (which amounts to less than 1% of sales) as a tertiary means of promotion for special occasions and in sports-specific magazines.
By refusing to compromise his values for profit, Chouinard burnished Patagonia’s image as a progressive, do-good business with integrity. Customers saw this integrity in Patagonia’s catalog and retail stores.
The Patagonia catalog was the company’s main innovation in marketing. Through the equal focus on environmentalism and an outdoor lifestyle with the products essential to it, the company established a deeper reason than consumerism to buy its products. To wear Patagonia was to live the lifestyle seen in the catalog photos of everyday people being active in far-flung places and to choose to consume in an environmentally conscious way. The lack of aggressive advertising and messages such as that in the 1991 essay “Reality Check” to buy less clothing because of its environmental impact authenticated the company’s image as both a friend of the environment and a purveyor of quality. Patagonia’s reliance on its catalog and word-of-mouth recommendations for product promotion, and its general aversion to advertising, preserved Chouinard’s original intention for the company to exist outside of mainstream consumer culture.
Customers didn’t just interact with the culture Patagonia marketed remotely through its catalog; they also did it in-person at the company’s retail stores. Realizing the opportunity to multiply its influence, Chouinard oversaw the design of the flagship store in the Bay Area, the center of the outdoor industry in the 1970s. The store itself—a restored auto garage with recycled shelves, blown-up catalog photos, and a neater look than other outdoor stores—was itself an expression of and advertisement for the brand. By choosing a location off the beaten path, Chouinard restyled the store as a destination in itself, a place for like-minded people to congregate. This approach fostered a sense of an outdoor community centered on Patagonia.