The objective of this campaign was to get outdoor enthusiasts to switch from their current granola brand to Bear Naked Granola. In order to do it, we needed to prove to them that we weren’t just another boring, all-natural granola. The key to unlocking this was in our name—Bear Naked. Our strategic hook then became: Naked makes natural exciting and our objective was to prove this out in the boldest way possible.

We found our answer among an unlikely group of outdoor adventurers.

When we learned that there’s an entire community of “freehikers” or “naked hikers” who enjoy getting as close to nature as possible…we knew we were onto something. There’s just one, small problem. While nude hiking is legal under federal law in National Parks, it’s not always embraced by park rangers who often ticket people. As a result, it’s challenging for nude hikers to know when or where they can safely hike naked.

Now that was a problem we could help solve. If there was ever a brand that needed to defend your right to hike naked, it was Bear Naked.

The Idea: Naked Trails. Bear Naked will traverse, map, and even blaze new trails to enable the naked hiking community to enjoy nature the way nature intended.

The strategy was to prove that Bear Naked Granola fuels outdoor enthusiasts’ deep connection to nature. Our approach was to prove this out by standing firmly behind the niche community that represents the most unencumbered connection to nature–naked hikers.

We created an ownable moment for Bear Naked, kicking off on National Nude Day 2023, meant to empower naked hikers to finally have the tools to confidently navigate nature while naked. To do it, we created an emoji code they could use when reviewing trails in their favorite hiking app to alert each other of which ones were naked-hiking friendly ( 🐻🍑✅) or not naked-hiking friendly (🐻🍑❌).

We then worked to disseminate this code to the naked hiking community in the most authentic ways possible to put it in their hands. This included a partnership with Outside Inc., where together we launched a film, crafted magazine articles, and created an outdoor influencer campaign, all communicating our code to the naked hiking community. With Outside, we not only narrowed in on our nudist niche target, but were able to connect with the wider outdoor lover community as well.

Naked Trails successfully got Bear Naked back into the cultural conversation. Among those “exposed,” we achieved incredible results to levels the brand had never previously experienced:

• 34% brand favorability (+20%)

• +8.4% lift in purchase consideration

Our “go micro to get macro” approach got our message to naked hikers and beyond with:

• 374 million earned impressions

• 285k+ page views (+418% overdelivery on 55k goal)

• 0:52 time spent on videos (v. 0:39 benchmark)

• 23.7 million total video views across all placements

• CTR: +1.62 above benchmarks

And social listening saw people sharing their thoughts on reddit, revealing that Bear Naked really became a trailblazer for this overlooked community:

• “I wish a few more companies would step up and help us out. This is a pretty kool concept imo”

• “I just downloaded the app. Time to be on the lookout for 🐻🍑✅”

• “Loving this!”