Every day – as with all media organisations – we receive many press releases here at Walkhighlands. Some are of great interest to those of us who love the outdoors, whilst others are simply advertising or spam competing for attention. But as the world heats up and there are droughts across much of Europe, and wildfire risks become sky-high – there’s one type that’s particularly depressing to receive. It’s the use of photos of irresponsible wildfires – in woodland and forests – for marketing purposes by outdoor brands that really should know better.
Today’s was from Jack Wolfskin – here’s the headline image from their new “brand reset”.
It helps launch their new range of clothing – actually called “Campfire”. They say “it captures the feeling of winding down the day by the campfire with friends and family, dressed in absolute feel-good pieces with checked shirts, parkas, fleeces and soft flannels.” The release says that the (Germany-based) brand was established around such a campfire. Elsewhere, it states “The company‘s mission is to provide the best and most sustainable solutions that minimize its impact on our planet.”
The image looks appealing, doesn’t it? So what’s the problem? Here’s Walkhighlands columnist and countryside Ranger Ben Dolphin, tweeting from back out in the “real” outdoors world.
Ben spends alot of time visiting wildcampers and helping them to ensure they enjoy themselves whilst also acting responsibly, in a way that doesn’t damage the great outdoors so that others can continue to enjoy it too. This means not having wildfires in woodland or on peat soils – which includes most of the places people actually do this.
What about the Scottish Outdoor Access Code? Well, outdoors twitter can find the answer (see below) – so why can’t our outdoors brands?
I’m aware this may be a bit unfair on Jack Wolfskin, since the fact is too many brands – whilst being keen to extol their environmental credentials – are happy to play into the current trend of normalising fires like this.
To be fair to Tiso, their CEO Chris Tiso (featured in the image) did come back to say he would arrange to have this display on the exterior of their Perth store taken down, and that it was unhelpful – so some credit for that.
No such explanation or retraction we’re aware of from North Face, for this – rather inexplicable – advert:
Anyone involved in Scotland’s outdoors knows that the use of campfires has risen hugely over the past few years. It seems very likely that this is partly due to marketing like this. More and more people are heading to the outdoors, and simply don’t know that you shouldn’t light fires in the forest, that stoves are used for cooking, or that peat soils continue to burn underground after you extinguish the fire on the surface. We need to help everyone learn how to care for outdoors, which images like these make much more difficult. This is happening at the same time as the world gets hotter and Scotland’s peat soils drier, and human-caused wildfires proliferate around the world’s woods and forests.
I really do think that many of those managing our outdoors brands and gear care really deeply about the outdoors, just as we do. Is it not time they stopped to think – and then made sure their marketing folk finally stopped peddling the tired cliche of the woodland campfire?