CGPR’s Chris Goddard with Marisa Nicholson, Outdoor Retailer Show Director in front of the Salt Lake City Salt Palace January 2023.

 

CGPR is the AOR for Outdoor Retailer (OR), the largest trade show for the $862B outdoor industry. The event brings together thousands of outdoor brands and buyers, all looking for the latest innovations and the newest outdoors products. nd the newest outdoors products.

For the last 10 years, CGPR has been providing senior counsel to OR as it navigated changing locations (Salt Lake City/Denver/back to SLC), politics impacting the show’s exhibitor attendance, and brands boycotting the show because of state policies on the environment. This initiative involved working side by side with OR CEOs, exhibitor brands CEOs, Utah state government, both SLC Mayors, Visit Salt Lake, environmental activists, endemic media and general stakeholders.

Sponsored Media Group to Attend the Show:
Secured the attendance of reporters from Hearst Magazines, Good Housekeeping, Rolling Stone and Well+Good, among others, all of who posted content during and after the show.

New Platform for Media Preview:
Revamped the Media Preview, allowing non-exhibiting brands to participate which increased the value for media to view industry trends. 50+ journalists attended including AP, Backpacker, Forbes, Men’s Journal, MTB Lab, Outside Magazine, Overland Journal, Running Insight, Runner’s World, and more. This was the most successful media preview in the history of the show.

Influencer Engagement:
As the issues surrounding OR’s return to SLC were complicated, FWV developed an influencer strategy generating content needed to reflect wider points of view and the benefit of the show. The agency secured industry legend Greg Thomsen and garnered nearly 20K impressions for two LinkedIn commentary posts. This work is continuing.

Daily Show Newsletter:
Due to budget cuts, OR disbanded its daily print publication and looked to FWV to develop a daily newsletter distributed to 200+ media, identifying trends, events and news from the show.

A a result of 12 live TV remotes and countless stories in mainstream, local and endemic media, FWV reached 227,790,750+ (unique monthly viewers) in three days. Just as important, the Media Preview, Sponsored Media, and influencer work addressed critical issues facing the show greatly contributing to the success of the entire communications effort.