Gerber and Farm League got me to click through this morning. Damn it.

I haven’t clicked on a banner in over a year, but this morning I did. I have to say kudos to Gerber, Farm League and anyone else involved. Was it great contextual advertising or random I’m not entirely sure, but the targeting was spot on and for once, appreciated.  It’s a great example for other brands in the outdoor industry.

My first email of the day had me off reading The Lives They Lived by the only two writers I probably know by name at ESPN, Mary Fenton and Megan Michelson, about the tragic avalanches over the past year. A great article and very personal to many of us in the area.

The combination of context with the article, imagery, the tagline “unstoppable” and “play film” intrigued me. Finally, the fact it was on ESPN and they’ve been known for an entertaining piece or two helped. I’d missed the Unstoppable campaign to this point. It’s very targeted and not intended to work for a lot of people, as it should be. 

This took me to the “hello trouble” piece. 20 minutes later I’ve checked out the whole campaign and have even run off an looked other work Farm League has done. They definitely entertained and have me thinking about knives and Gerber. I won’t go into the intricacies of what makes it good, but I’d love to hear what people think.

Instagram can be a great showcase for Action, Outdoor and Adventure Brands–Part 2 of 2

Continued thoughts on Instagram from earlier today….

Thought 6: If you're a professional creative, you can also post serious pics

There are a number who have been already hard at work. Although she’s not in sports, check out Daniella Rosario from Brazil (IG @daniellarosario - pics to the right). If you don’t have Instragram here is her blog http://www.daniellarosario.com.br/ . Note, that I’m asking for forgiveness after the fact here so check her out.

She’s also kind enough to promote other photographers she likes so cruise her collection on IG to find more examples. At this resolution, any theft would probably be outweighed by the additional awareness of the work I’d guess. Note, that theft is still an ongoing issue on IG, so take that into account and consider watermarking your pics.

Thought 7: Explore the Iphone editing apps available to you

I swear I can edit a photo on my iphone 2x faster than on a laptop. Camera+ is where I suggest you start. The filters in IG are great, but you can do so much more outside. Fact: In two years of being an Iphone owner, photo editing apps have been the only ones I was happy to pay for. That’s me though…

Thought 8: Get on the Pop page

From what I can tell, you'll want +200 followers to start making the page. As professionals, I'll leave the artistry to you. Not surprisingly, I can tell you IGers tend to favor quality pics that are interesting. The key is to have a large enough base of followers since the IG pop page algorithm has a lot to do with momentum in the first hour.

Thought 9: Feed word of mouth

For integrated marketing (buzz word alert!) add IG to your website as well as post pics to Facebook, Twitter and/or Tumblr. Another approach I’ve seen is to host\judge a contest of user photography in your genre. This can position you as an authority.

Thought 10: Direct the right audience to your feed

Figure out the right hashtags (#actionsports etc) so your feed can be easily discovered by community members interested in topics related to your work and tag your pics accordingly. I’ve been lazy with this, so do as I say, not as I do. Also, think about creating a #[yourbrandname] hashtag. Then, create an RSS feed so non Iphone users can follow using this format http://instagr.am/tags/[hashtag name]/feed/recent.rss

Last thought: It’s about integration, so don’t forget about your other social channels

Instagram killed my Twitter time as indicated by my Klout diving 30 points over the summer. Oops.

Instagram can be a great showcase for Action, Outdoor an Adventure brands P1 of 2

You know that Instagram has exploded onto the scene unless you live under a social media rock. In my experience, compared to any other platform, the level of engagement is amazing. Social media became fun again and a lot less like work.

As we cruise into fall though I started wondering if this could translate into professional benefit for the action, outdoor and adventure industries. It’s not a definitive guide, but I did come up with 11 thoughts for creatives, athletes, destinations and brands.

To start, I asked an accomplished action sports photographer who’s had success on Twitter. "In comparison to Twitter, I don't know if you can target your audience nearly as well (on Instagram). Sure, they might like your photos, but does it have any pertinence to business? I know for sure I've received jobs because of my presence on Twitter. I've yet to feel that from Instagram. To me, it feels more like Facebook. That said, I think it's yet another piece of the social media puzzle that you need to interact on. Something that can't be ignored either." I thought about this and put down my thoughts on using IG professionally.

Thought 1: Use Instagram for posting any “good” pics regardless of what you use now

I mean, why not? It interfaces beautifully with all the major network (e.g Fb, Twitter, Tumblr etc) and with its open API has an extensive community of 3rd party apps being built. Most importantly it has an exploding user community and a rich array of editing tools.

Thought 2: Think about starting with a small group of trusted friends and a larger community of people who wouldn’t know you from Adam

When I built my community on IG I stayed away from friends and focused on new people engaging (liking and commenting) on photos I liked. As I parsed through them, I looked for people who also had photos that interested me and started following them (and engaging). My “real” social graph is starting to track me down now, but I liked the anonymity as I experimented. [Find me on Instragram @matchase – Photos to the right]

Thought 3: Building a community doesn’t have to take ages

For me the time required to build a community of +1000 on Instragram was about two months. Twitter took a year.

Thought 4: For creatives, post pics that reflect what you do without compromising what you get paid for

For example, on our campaign for One Eyed Bird in February called Military Rider, I wish I had been on Instagram. I took all sorts of informal shots and Facebook just didn't give the same engagement I see on IG. In fact yesterday, I saw that Travis Rice (athlete and film maker) was doing just this by teasing followers (@travisrice on IG – Screenshot to the right) with pictures of the course being built for his new event in BC with Red Bull called "Supernatural". Try and string together images and tell a story whenever possible. I don’t do this very well but love it when people do.

Thought 5:  Crappy, lame photos are like crappy, lame Tweets. Nobody likes them.

Take interesting pictures . This means restraining from pics of food, flowers, your feet, the sky or yourself. That’s hard for the “me” generation I know, so feel free to upload those directly to FB.

Look for the second half of this later today