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When outdoor accessories brand Yeti completed its first major acquisition last year, there were skeptics. After its January 2024 purchase of Bozeman, Montana-based cult bag brand Mystery Ranch, many of that brands acolytes feared it would disappear, swallowed by its larger new owner. And second, isnt this a coffee cup and cooler brand? Not exactly. Its been almost a decade since Yeti first dropped its first Panga duffel in 2017, and since then its branched out to include backpacks, luggage, and more. But the company sees the new Ranchero backpackthe first Yeti product to integrate Mystery Ranch designthat launched in March as a turning point for it to truly become a bags brand instead of just a cooler brand that makes bags. CEO Matt Reintjes says that if you look back at the last decade of Yeti images and films, chances are they include a lot of non-Yeti bags. Because of the brands presence across the outdoors, whether hunting, fishing, surfing or skiing, or in camping and BBQ, bags were just a natural presence. So its perfectly natural for the company to be expanding its portfolio of bags. This isn’t just about grabbing something, slapping our brand on it, draining the opportunity, and moving on, says Reintjes. We think there’s an incredible opportunity to take what Mystery Ranch has created in its brand, and what Yeti has created, with our brand and our capabilities, and have the best of both worlds. Yeti has long believed in a low-and-slow approach to expansion, that takes the company into areas that make sense and, more importantly, it has permission to be. It took the same approach to bags, gradually rolling them out over the past eight years. Now, with the Ranchero, the brand is ready to add some swagger. No more dabbling The original Yeti bags were a natural extension of their founding product, the indestructible cooler for outdoor adventure. The Panga duffel and backpack were fully submersible, waterproof packs. Yetis head of marketing Bill Neff says that even though the brand has a pretty big portfolio of bags, it’s always been seen as dabbling in the category. For the people that know we make these bags, they’ve been really successful for us, says Neff. We just have never taken it overly seriously. Now, with the Ranchero, we’re going to talk about bags like we do coolers and drinkware. This is the flag were planting in the ground. Its a flag in the ground, but the brand is still doing it the Yeti way. Dont expect a Super Bowl ad. Instead, its about showing up in places that add credibility along with exposure. In 2023, the brand signed a licensing deal with F1s Oracle Red Bull Racing, and now outfit the entire teams luggage and bags. Neff says theyre also taking bags to ambassador deals. We have ambassadors that personify who we are as a brand, but theyd be using North Face or Patagonia bags on-camera from other deals, says Neff. But a lot of them would use Pangas off camera. So we’re at a point now where our contracts include the bags category. Mystery Ranch Lives Often when a smaller brand is acquired by a larger one, its value is in the expertise and IP, but the brand name is eventually phased out. Even at Yeti, this has happened with its 2024 acquisition of cast-iron pan brand Butter Pat. Reintjes says that this is not the companys goal or intention with Mystery Ranch. While the new Ranchero backpack is the first Yeti product to utilize Mystery Ranch design IP, the Mystery Ranch brand is still alive and well. A Mystery Ranch Catalyst bag (left) and Yeti Ranchero (right). [Photos: Mystery Ranch, Yeti] Reintjes says that one of the things that attracted him to Mystery Ranch was its origin story. Founded by Dana Gleason and Renée Sippel-Baker in 2000, it quickly became known for its focus on pushing the edges of design and development for gear in extreme environments. The brand will still live on in creating specialty gear for military and firefighting. Mystery Ranch has really established itself in that world, and that’s that place we’re excited about where it can grow, says Reintjes. And on the broader, outdoor, everyday adventure travel side, the Yeti brand really fits in. So we think they’re really complimentary. Deposits and withdrawals Yeti has managed to maintain an incredibly strong brand connection to its roots, despite becoming a public company in 2018. But quarterly demands haven’t altered the brands commitment to growing at a natural pace and in areas it has already an established presence. We feel very fortunate that we have built a brand umbrella that’s much wider than the product portfolio that we have today, says Reintjes. So the privilege and permission to expand the product portfolio underneath the Yeti brand, that we work hard to earn from our consumers, puts us in a position where we have a lot of ideas on where we can go. An example of this approach is surfing. Yeti didnt just jump in and sponsor the World Surf League or pro surfers like John John Florence. Its connection began as surfers were using its products while fishing and cooking outdoors. It became a natural place to expand. The acquisition of Butter Pat, and subsequent launch of Yeti cast-iron pan, came from its BBQ and cooking ambassadors. From an acquisition perspective, we tend to think about it as, Are we making deposits on the brand or are we pulling out from it? says Reintjes. Sometimes you’re drawingon the brand to help establish it somewhere, but we’re almost always looking to add to it. I think what happens when you start cashing out a brand, it just gets more and more generic. It gets less and less loved. So were always asking, are we making it more rich, are we making it more deep and more connected?
Category:
E-Commerce
Im a journalist, and the first 30 minutes of my day used to be spent mainlining newsfeeds. Now, more often than not, its dedicated to LinkedIn. Such is the natural course of technology; I seek an engaged audience for pieces built on considered thought. And I discovered the pseudo social network that Id once found cringe is actually full of smart peoplewho crop up if Im willing to spend a bit of extra time sharing my writing with them. We are now in the era of the AI-born LinkedIn expert. Their mastery is dropping a story into ChatGPT and asking for a perky LinkedIn post summarizing it. (LinkedIn even has its own AI writing assistant that encourages people to Rewrite with AI to serve up this slop.) They snatch the thoughts and research of others, reconstitute it, and present it as their own. Even when they source a link, the new work is still oddly pre-chewed. A steak transformed into mechanically processed meat. But honestly, its not the plagiarism lite that gets to me most. And LinkedIn is hardly the only spot youll find people publishing AI-drafted copy. Beyond the Great Truncation at the heart of Zoom meeting summaries, I can tell the pitch emails I receive are increasingly written with the help of AI, while companies like Microsoft promote Copilot to help write corporate memos (and LinkedIn posts!). It seems every designer I know is using AI to write about their projects, and Canva just unveiled tools to batch write ads for you in about every language on earth. This is all *fine* [the room around me beginning to smoke but not in full flames yet]. Not every pitch deck needs to be a Shakespearean sonnet. Even language specialists will tell you that a lot of writing is formulaic, which is a reason why predictive autocomplete technologies have been so accurate for so long. I used to fear that AI would trap each of us into our own universe. Now Im imagining a future that’s far more mundane. It’s one where I use AI to write you a thing. Then you have your AI summarize it. Then you have your AI write back. And then my AI summarizes it. Why wasnt it all just summarized in the first place? Does anyone need to have a full thought ever again? Dont take me as some Luddite denying the current impact or supreme possibilities lurking inside generative AI. We consolidated all our knowledge into the internet, which we used to train humanitys synthesizer. Life is gonna be messy for a while. But Im not just a curmudgeonly old writer who is threatened by a machine that can pump out copy even faster than I can. (And ask my editors; Im lightning.) What is so insulting to me about those AI-written messages is that they take less time and consideration to produce than they do to consume. You are, by the nature of sharing these automated words, signaling to me that you care less about my time and attention than you do your own. Of course youre free to believe that as much as you likein your own head. Just dont drop it into my inbox or feed. Because thats rude. In a way, an AI-generated image or advertisement is less offensive to me, because we look at most digital ads for a second or less (with a mere 4% commanding our attention for a full two). To everyone in marketing and graphic design, please do not cancel your weekend plans to get 10 additional microseconds of my engagement! Who cares? (Apologies, I really do enjoy a great ad.) Reading simply takes longer than visual processing. It inherently asks more of an audience. Presenting a friend or colleague with a note an AI wrote is like inviting them over for dinner and microwaving a Stouffers. An AI post on LinkedIn is bringing that same microwaved dinner to a potluck. You should be embarrassed in either case! Not by your lack of skill or practice in putting together words, but your lack of respect for not even trying. Now, in full fairness, I will acknowledge that this faux pas is not all your fault. The omnipresent do-anything button of AI is certainly tempting. And companies including OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft are encouraging such behavior while hoping to prove out their investment in AI tools. They will addict us to automation even when it’s uncouth because there’s no business plan in the world built on moderation. The truth, however, is if something isnt worth you writing it, theres about no way in hell its worth me reading it.
Category:
E-Commerce
If youve ever been to a Nashville honky-tonk, youve witnessed the chorus of cowboy boots, the thrumming acoustic guitars, the roadhouse neon, the Stetsons, the buoyant bourbon-and-barbecue-fueled energy. You probably wouldnt describe this scene as simply a bar. And yet, if you’re blind or have low vision and happen to use a screen reader to read the alt text of a photo of a honky-tonk, thats likely the description you would get: This is an image of a bar. The current [state of alt text] is pretty abysmal, just to be quite candid. It’s almost a bit out of sight, out of mind, literally and figuratively, says Josh Loebner, creative marketing agency VML’s global head of inclusive design, who also happens to be blind. Images create another layer of depth to what narrative is on a website, regardless of what it isbut particularly for travel and tourism. This led VML and the Tennessee Department of Tourist Development to launch Sound Sitesan initiative to replace the alt text on the states official tourism website with lyrical verse from one of Tennessees best natural resources: songwriters. Now, no longer is a photo of Kings Palace Cafe in Memphis an image of a person playing guitar in a bar. Rather, as songwriters David Tolliver and Billy Montana put it: Theres blues singing offthe strings of Lucille, Ringing down the black topand sidewalks of Beale, The soul of BB King ispresent and real, The songs seem to find youand know how you feel. Kix Brooks of Brooks & Dunn [Photo: courtesy Tennessee Department of Tourist Development] Tuning up Often, Loebner says, accessible design is regarded as a matter of checking the box. It’s treated as an afterthought that doesnt involve any semblance of creativity. But alt text is competing with vivid sensorial power. When someone sees a photo, in an instant, they not only distill the information, but in travel and tourism, it starts to put them in that place . . . them stepping into those mountains, walking a trail where they can have a beautiful scenic vista, or sitting in front of a stage hearing an artist play their favorite song, he says. It takes creativity to bring an image to life in the truncated space of descriptive text, which best practices place at around 125 characters. If theres a group of people who excel at working in those tight borders, its songwriters. Loebner acknowledges that VML could have hired copywriters, but the states heritage of songwriters was too perfect an opportunity to pass up. Our tagline for the state is Sounds Perfect. And if you think about it, if an image doesn’t have an alt text associated with it, it really doesn’t sound perfect to people who are blind or partially sighted, Loebner says. A songwriter, at their core, is about putting words together in very evocative, sublime ways that really nobody else can do. [Photo: courtesy Tennessee Department of Tourist Development] Loebner says when VML brought the idea to Tennessee officials roughly six weeks ago, they loved it. So far theyve worked with a dozen songwriters, including Kix Brooks of the musical duo Brooks & Dunn; the aforementioned David Tolliver (who has written for the likes of Tim McGraw, Wynonna Judd, and others) and Billy Montana (Garth Brooks, Sara Evans); and Hilary Williams (granddaughter of country music legend Hank Williams Sr.). VML paired them with people from the blind communities to collaborate, converse, and help get a sense of the challenges and barriers of generating image descriptions for alt text. [Photo: courtesy Tennessee Department of Tourist Development] Pun intended, it opened up the songwriters eyes to seeing how their verse could be used in quite a unique way that hadn’t been considered before, Loebner says. Noodling around on their instruments, the songwriters have added lyrical alt text to several hundred images, with the hope of reaching a thousand as a benchmark. And while this all makes for a great PR/marketing story for VML and the state, its one that reaches far beyond the initial buzz. Loebner says the goal is to expand the scope of the project, continuing to recruit songwriters to create alt text for a variety of uses, from social campaigns to video ads and more. Tennessee native Jana Jackson, a music artist and travel agent, appears in promotional materials for the Sound Sites initiative. [Photo: courtesy Tennessee Department of Tourist Development] AN ACCESSIBLE SOLUTION The project has been dubbed a first of its kind for the tourism industry. And that tracks: Loebner says accessible design is often regarded as an insurmountable mountain, where everything must be done in one fell swoop across the board. But he believes that any element of progress is progress. He adds that its also thought to be time-consuming and expensive, but as this project shows, it can be done quickly. I can guarantee it will not break any bank of any travel or tourism department, he says. Of course, weak image descriptions are an issue in most industries, and song lyrics obviously arent a universal panacea. Image descriptions at large just need to be more evocative about telling stories in a succinct way for the benefit of alland Sound Sites serves as a powerful reminder that innovative solutions are needed for a potent problem. Loebner says 93% of all websites have at least one page that doesnt include any descriptive text, and many others lack quality image descriptions, if they have them at all. Which can be utterly detrimental to not just planning a vacationbut major life decisions at large. Think about a young person who is considering college, and they’re blind and they want to know what college to go to. If that college doesn’t have accessible websites or immersive alt text, then that college may be passed over. Or think about different careers, he says. We all want to dream. And when there’s inaccessibility as a barrier, that could diminish dreams. We want to be able to open the aperture, to hopefully allow everybody, whether they’re blind or not, to be able to dream bigger.
Category:
E-Commerce
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