There’s a natural symbiosis between outdoor enthusiasts and camping. So why spend a good chunk of your time in a hotel when you could Make Home in the place you truly came to explore?

We found that the biggest obstacle keeping people from camping was leaving behind the comforts of home. To adjust this perception, we identified outdoor influencers with large social footprints and proposed featuring them in six short films that not only told their camping story but would educate and inspire our audience through the key objects and rituals they never camp without.

We would also provide useful information like guides, lists, and articles so they would feel prepared to take on new adventures.

This content would be aggregated in a hub on Matador’s website and shared socially across Matador and our influencers’ social networks to maximize exposure

and engagement.

To uncover each influencer’s story, we journeyed across the country with Matador Networks – from California’s redwood forests to Utah’s Valley of the Gods. Through stunning imagery and compelling stories, we wanted to inspire our target audience, appeal to their wanderlust, and give them helpful camping tips.

Matador’s credibility and their audience of adventure-seekers paired nicely with REI’s authenticity and desire to tell similarly authentic stories. This marriage created the perfect content program for our target audience.

The six-part video and editorial series engaged viewers while showing how each influencer made a home in the outdoors. This not only made camping seem like an option for our audience, but also made it the most appealing option.

All content was aggregated in a hub on Matador’s website and shared out socially across Matador’s and our influencers’ social networks to maximize exposure and

engagement.

Make Home inspired more people to trade central heat for a campfire. KPIs focused on engagement to reach the right audience with the right content – measured across metrics including page views, video views, time spent, and actions taken.

Each video garnered roughly 590K Facebook and YouTube views, 195% above Matador’s video view benchmark. Total view time for all videos totaled more than 2.3 MM minutes, roughly 4.5 years.

Editorially, articles garnered about 213K page views each – average time spent 6:29 minutes, 63% above Matador’s benchmark.

Video and editorial content saw about 100K social engagements across Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Since this campaign was driven by story-led content rather than a gear-focused message, ROAS was not a priority metric. Yet pieces of the Matador content drove a ROAS as high as $3.05 with no overt product messaging.