Since 1973, outdoor gear retailer, Patagonia, has been designing with adventure in mind. And since the 2010s, the brand has been operating with the environment in mind. Patagonia is a community of sports fanatics, activists, and storytellers—and their goal is to save the planet, one sustainably-crafted article of clothing at a time.  How are they accomplishing this? Through dozens of stunning, powerful films (more than a handful of which are Staff Picked). Alex Lowther, Patagonia’s Creative Director, explained that Patagonia’s unique video strategy allows them to make films with no commercial intent. “We get to make films about issues that we’ve determined matter as far as the environment is concerned.” We sat down with Alex to better understand exactly what this means and how it supports their business goals. 

How did Patagonia get into filmmaking?

Video has always been a part of Patagonia’s DNA. In 1968, Yvon Chouinard, along with Doug Todd, Doug Tompkins—who actually founded the North face—and a couple of other guys, took a road trip. They went from Ventura, California, where Patagonia is based, down to Patagonia (the region) to climb Monte Fitz Roy. They made a film about it, “Mountain of Storms.” It’s a crazy relic of the early days of Patagonia. Then, there was “180 Degrees South,” which is kind of a cult classic—it was on Netflix for ages. And that was an attempted recreation of the original “Mountain of Storms” trip. Patagonia wasn’t directly involved in it, but a bunch of our ambassadors made it and Yvon and our Vice President Rick Ridgeway were in it.  The modern video work started with “DamNation,” which is a film about how harmful dams are. I actually saw “DamNation” premiere in New York City, and it was a real wake-up call as to what a company could do in terms of making film and video work. It won the audience award at SXSW that year, and I got hired a little less than a year later to continue Patagonia’s filmmaking efforts.

Why is video an important medium for you?

For the product campaign work, video is important because we have really interesting stories to tell. There’s a lot to our brand that people don’t know. And for the supply chain stuff, it’s so important to showcase our products and show them in action.  Put simply, video is what people interact with and engage with. It’s what works. So, we keep creating more and more work because it does what it’s supposed to do. 

What makes a story worth telling for Patagonia?

The maxim that gets tossed around comes from, “Let my people go surfing,” which is in Yvon’s book. It’s sort of our marketing strategy—just to tell people what we do. It sounds like the simplest thing you can possibly imagine, but the tricky part is actually doing something.  Luckily for us, there’s like a whole mess of people who are out there doing things. We work with a huge stable of Patagonia ambassadors who are on trips doing cool things with our products. Basically, we just send camera crews along with them to document what they’re doing. We prefer to glom onto things (trips, events, etc.) that are already happening rather than create Patagonia-branded things. It feels more natural that way, less forced.

Are most of your films made in-house or do you collaborate with other filmmakers?

We produce about 30 percent of our films totally in-house and hire outside filmmakers for the other 70 percent. We have a roster of creators who we work with pretty consistently—we were surprised at how difficult it was for people to understand the Patagonia voice. But once people did, they kinda got it. And it makes things a lot easier to work with the same people.  But we also have an unspoken mandate to foster talent, particularly from our ambassador crew—people who work with nonprofits in general. We’re always trying to expand the roster.

How do you measure the success of your videos?

We like to see what the average watch times are. So, we go into the back end of Vimeo and look at those metrics. It’s pretty shocking to me how many people stick with stuff for as long as they do. We put a lot of long-form content online, probably longer than is advisable. It’s wild to see that 200k+ people watched a 50-minute film to completion. That’s like filling Yankee Stadium three or four times. It’s really gratifying to see. We also ask people to do a lot when it comes to activism and we’ve gotten pretty good at turning people out for things like that. The biggest and most gratifying measurement of success for us is if people do something after watching one of our videos.

How do you optimize your videos for views?

We know that the first few seconds of a film are the most important—which is actually a bit of a bummer because it means we have to front-load some stuff that we might not otherwise. But if that’s how we get someone to watch something, that’s how we do it.  When we put something online, we’ll frequently make a mini trailer that plays at the top before the credits start. It’s basically pre-roll that’s burned into the file. I don’t think anybody else is really doing that, but we like it because it hooks people right away. That hook is super important.

What does your distribution strategy look like?

We make social cut-downs of everything and those get pushed out according to a promotion schedule we build around the release of each film. The idea is to drive people to watch the full-length video. We also run pre-roll ads on YouTube. It’s just one way we make sure that people are aware of what we’re putting out. And again, it’s very surprising to see how many people stick around when they’re fed a 15-second ad. They’ll sit for the next 10 or so minutes watching the film. We have a pretty robust festival strategy and we do store tours—it’s shocking how many people turn out to watch a film at a Patagonia store. But they do. We fill rooms with hundreds of people and it’s just a great way to build community.

When did you join Vimeo and how do you use it now?

How long has it been around? I probably joined a decade ago. I was in journalism school in 2008 and I joined around then. Now, I use Vimeo daily—it’s our best review too. A lot of my job is watching cuts and giving notes, so Vimeo makes it super easy. In fact, when somebody sends us a cut on another platform, we download it and upload it to Vimeo so we can use the review tools. It’s just the easiest way to give the specific, time-coded notes that we need to give. It’s a good tool. I dig it. 

What does the Staff Pick badge mean to Patagonia?

The Staff Pick badge means that something is capital S significant. There’s a validity to it and it’s a really nice badge of distinction. The badge also seems to draw a more unique crowd than we get on other platforms. The people who engage with our Staff Picked films on Vimeo do so more deeply and with more appreciation for the craft.