Outdoor Retailer - March 2021 - 8

THE PULSE
Long a perk for outdoor
journalists and a way for
brands to really show
how products perform,
the press trip has
become more personal.

HEADLINES

Pandemic Press Trips
An industry standard for connecting brands with media has faded during COVID-19,
but some PR pros have taken the press trip wholly outdoors. By Jenn Fields

8 OUTDOOR RETAILER

/ March 2021

and many remain on hold.
There are exceptions. Abby Schwamm of
Purple Orange PR says her company has canceled its big press trips, but Purple Orange is
still facilitating one-on-one outings for journalists with client 57Hours, a guiding service
that specializes in backcountry skiing and
avalanche education. Other PR pros have cautiously shifted into a scaled-back version, connecting their clients to media in tiny groups
socially distanced outdoors.
" This was a trip designed to showcase
this area, to introduce this specific place in
Colorado, and the only way you can do that is
to give them the experience firsthand. On the
brand side, the best ways to use and test out
products are in the elements they're designed
to be used in, " says PR veteran and SMAK
Strategies owner Maria Hennessey, who organized the trip I attended in September with
her husband, polar explorer and guide Eric

Larsen. (I interviewed Larsen during the trip,
months before his cancer diagnosis at the start
of 2021. If you want to help the family during
his treatment, go to Meal Train at mealtrain.
com/trains/30llyl)

THE TRIP I ATTENDED WAS THEIR FIRST SINCE
January 2020. " We were on a press trip in
northern Canada with Baffin Boots, where
there must've been 14 of us in one small cabin,
sharing bedrooms, eating big meals shoulder
to shoulder, and it was a great time, but there's
just no way (now), " says Larsen, who also canceled his North Pole guiding season in spring
of 2020 because of the pandemic.
Larsen loves bikepacking, and at the winter Show in January 2020, he had started
working on a press trip from his home base in
Crested Butte. " I talked to a bunch of companies, had started writing up a proposal, "
he says. " It became very apparent it wasn't

Courtesy Stio

THE CAMP CHAIRS WERE 6 FEET APART,
and the brand reps were talking against a
setting fall sun. Raising his voice over the
wind, Andrew Sandstrom, the communications director of the Gunnison-Crested Butte
Tourism Association, told the four journalists present about fall and winter fun to be had
near our mesa-top campground at Colorado's
Curecanti National Recreation Area. The
founder of trails app TerraQuest, Derrick
Nehrenberg, noted that the app's users had
recorded more than 700 miles of trails in
the county. There were no handshakes upon
meeting or parting, just friendly waves. Later,
we journalists (I was one of them) would retire
to individual tents, just as we had each night
on this press trip in the time of COVID.
A strategic stalwart in the industry, press
trips have changed in the pandemic. Like
other in-person events, press trips dropped
off PR agencies' calendars in spring of 2020,

http://mealtrain.com/trains/30llyl http://mealtrain.com/trains/30llyl

Outdoor Retailer - March 2021

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