The North Face — City Experiential Platform

Redefining what it means to Never Stop Exploring in the city

Agency: The FADER / cornerstone
Role: Lead Strategist + Experiential Planner

Ask

Bring the spirit of Never Stop Exploring to the city.

Cultural Challenge

Exploration is usually linked to some sort of arduous physical pursuit — like ridiculously built men free solo-ing El Capitan (I’m looking at you, Alex Honnold) or colonial figures making their way across the pond (I’m scoffing at you, Columbus). While true, we know that exploration takes on an entirely different meaning in the city.

Strategic Insight

In recent years, the definition — and faces — of exploration have certainly shifted, shaped by the invisible creative forces that underpin cities. Rather than traversing mountains, a new breed of explorer is forging new paths in music, fashion, activism, and sustainability with a ripple effect on society at large. The North Face (and New York City) has always known this to be true, evidenced by the bygone, Nuptse-wearing cultural explorers of yesterday like the Notorious B.I.G.

Creative Strategy

In 2018, we launched a city-focused experiential-led platform called New Explorers, spotlighting the people, places, products, and spaces that fuel exploration as a mindset. Each New Explorers activation doubled as an exclusive product and performance drop, where we paired up a curious and courageous cultural voice/artist with an accompanying LTE/capsule product collection. Each chapter of the New Explorers story — which featured curious and courageous icons-in-the-making like Pi’erre Bourne and Princess Nokia — was told and captured through snackable social films and wheatpasting to earned editorial coverage.

Results

In addition to generating 17+mm impressions across social, OOO, PR, and publisher partnerships, TNF reaffirmed its status as the unofficial uniform of youth culture in NYC — even to the point of nearly selling out Mustard Yellow Nuptses in the region.