Outdoor Retailer - Winter 2016 - 22

THE PULSE
PRESIDENTIAL MESSAGE
Keen hopes to convince
Obama to build a rock-solid
conservation legacy.

SWAG FOR SIGNATURES
KEENFests' Live Monumental party at Outdoor
Retailer Summer Market.

The Road to Advocacy
This summer, Keen set out to implore President Obama to
protect three-million acres of wild lands. Retailers across
the country were key to making sure the message was heard.
by Nancy Coulter-Parker
OVER THE SUMMER A TEAM FROM KEEN COVERED 7,500 MILES, MADE 47 RETAIL STORE AND
event visits, gathered more than 30,000 signatures-but there was not a shoe for sale in sight.
This marketing campaign had a goal far bigger than the bottom line. The focus of the Portland,
Oregon-based manufacturer's Live Monumental Road Trip was to advocate for the protection of
three million acres of public land, a cause the brand sees as essential to not just ringing up sales but
to preserving the very foundation of the outdoor industry.
"We identified strategic pillars for what doing good business means, and we found the yellow
thread of activism going through everything we do," says Linda Balfour, Keen brand marketing
manager. "As a brand, we have supported great causes in the past, but we wanted to step it up and
take more of a leadership role where it makes sense. We wanted to go beyond just raising awareness and actually do something."
The tour would call for the protection of five specific areas across the U.S.-Idaho's BoulderWhite Clouds, Oregon's Owyhee Canyonlands, Nevada's Gold Butte, California's Mojave Desert
and West Virginia's Birthplace of Waters-and urged President Obama to designate these unprotected ecosystems as national monuments before his time in office wraps up in January 2017. Why
monuments? Mostly because the designation cicumvenmts the partisan gridlock of Congress.
Via the Antiquities Act (first used in 1906 by Theodore Roosevelt), the President has the power

22 OUTDOOR RETAILER

/ Winter 2016

OPENING UP THE CONVERSATION
Keen enlisted retailers across the country by
sending them kits with petition postcards and
table toppers to help direct people to the Live
Monumental website (keenfootwear.com/
livemonumental). And then the brand put its
ambassadors in a retro yellow RV and they
started touring the country to talk to people in
person about what was at stake.
"Keen does a great job in terms of making
these issues that seem boring, legislative and
a bit arcane, exciting," says Mark McKnight at
Rock/Creek in Chattanooga, Tennessee. "We
had always quietly done our thing-trail days
or writing a check to nonprofits. But we're in
a social media world now. You have to toot
your horn. And you have to invite customers to
come along on the journey."
The road trip began at Keen headquarters
in Portland at the beginning of August and
wound its way across 25 states, making many
stops, including at the potential monument

Photos courtesy Keen

THE BIG PICTURE

to protect federal lands deemed places of
natural, historical and cultural significance
as national monuments with the stroke of a
pen. Although he has the legal power to create
monuments, what the President really needs
to act without political reprecussions is widespread public support.
"There are a lot of people out there doing
great work on the ground that have enabled
these campaigns to for success, but we thought
we could bring some excitement to the conversation of conservation," says Balfour.

http://www.keenfootwear.com/livemonumental http://www.keenfootwear.com/livemonumental

Outdoor Retailer - Winter 2016

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