Social Rocket
Columbia Sportswear has significantly reworked its media strategy: instead of relying primarily on long-tail programmatic, the outdoor brand is investing more heavily in attention-grabbing channels, TikTok, creators and even direct mail again. Marketing chief Matt Sutton told Marketing Dive that Columbia has expanded the number of creator and influencer partnerships from a few dozen to several hundred per year.
From media planning to "attention planning"
Sutton describes the overhaul as a shift from classic media planning to planning based on actual attention. Columbia has moved budget out of long-running programmatic placements and into channels that get more noticed, both online and offline.
This includes TikTok, which Columbia activated as part of the overhaul. At the same time, the brand reactivated direct mail. The mix deliberately seems contradictory: creator content and social sit alongside analogue formats, as long as the respective channel generates attention.
For social media teams, this is an interesting counterpoint to a purely digital efficiency logic. Similarly, Molson Coors is using faster creator workflows to get more impact from social content, while Chipotle built 100 creators into a campaign.
The fax campaign shows the logic behind the strategy
The current activation makes the approach especially clear: Columbia is giving away 90s Helvetia fleece to people who send in their order by fax. According to Marketing Dive, the campaign is supported by a collaboration with creator Ken Eurich.
The channel itself is part of the idea. Columbia combines deliberately outdated technology with social distribution and creator reach. This fits the larger brand platform "Engineered for Whatever," which Columbia launched in August 2025, according to its own press release, as the first major brand refresh in roughly a decade.
The platform relies on exaggerated product tests, humour and unusual scenarios instead of the glossy landscapes typical of outdoor advertising. In spring 2026, for example, Columbia had Robert Irwin flee a horde of inflatable crocodiles in a campaign. The "Expedition Impossible" stunt, in which flat-earth believers were challenged to find the edge of the earth, follows the same logic.
Creators become a fixed part of the media mix
The expansion of creator work is therefore not a single campaign element but part of a broader brand and media strategy. Sutton said Columbia now works with several hundred creators and influencers per year. At the same time, the brand wants to move closer to younger and more active target groups.
This matches Columbia's own corporate communication. In its Q2 report 2026, the company describes the "Engineered for Whatever" platform as part of its multi-year ACCELERATE strategy. The brand aims to address younger, more active consumers in particular. Group revenue rose 2 percent to 614,4 million US dollars in the second quarter; no direct campaign effect can be derived from this, however.
Sutton himself told Marketing Dive that Columbia won double-digit percentages more new customers in North America in the second quarter. This figure comes from the interview and was not reported separately in the official quarterly release.
What marketers can take away
The key point is not that fax has suddenly become a sensible performance channel again. Rather, Columbia treats channels as part of the creative idea and not merely as distribution space. An analogue mechanism can generate social reach, while creators in turn drive offline activation.
This fits a broader trend: brands increasingly build creators permanently into their go-to-market strategy. Old Navy reported significantly more traffic after a MrBeast campaign, and Carter’s has just launched its own creator programme along with a new social strategy.
Columbia's approach points to a second development: reach alone is no longer automatically the goal. What matters is whether a channel generates enough attention to get a brand idea across at all.