For too long women haven’t seen themselves equally represented in the outdoor industry – REI set out to change that. #ForceofNature put women—of all ages, races, sizes, gender expressions—front and center through a complete takeover of the co-op’s digital marketing, social media content, media partnerships, and storytelling for one year. By combining powerful imagery with convincing research, REI illustrated the disconnected relationship women have with the outdoors and created a movement to help dismantle the barriers to gender equality in the outdoors.

REI also pledged $1 million in 2017 to support nonprofits that create opportunities for women in the outdoors and increased its efforts to develop and offer high-quality technical gear and apparel for women.

REI shared a CEO letter with 12,000+ employees and 17 million members before the announcement broke with embargoed coverage in Forbes, Fast Company and Fortune featuring interviews with REI female leadership. We leveraged an extensive collection of assets in media outreach to ensure visual storytelling that would travel across social including original images and video.

To sustain the momentum following launch, Edelman conducted national media outreach resulting in top-tier coverage including a Good Morning America segment with host Paula Faris climbing a mountain with a female REI outdoor instructor. Local media outreach to key REI markets drove attendance to over 2,700 outdoor women-specific events, classes and experiences across the US.

REI also partnered with Outside to create the magazine’s first all-women’s issue – from the editor to writers, photographers and featured athletes.

• Although the initiative was initially executed purely as a brand effort, REI’s full-price women’s business saw sales numbers increase by 20% during the height of the initiative

• 472+ million media impressions across national and regional outlets. Beyond initial curtain raiser stories, we secured coverage in top-tier outlets including Good Morning America, WIRED, SheKnows.com, Racked.com and Fortune’s Broadsheet

• More than 140 earned media placements in print, online and broadcast

• 45 million social impressions, 15 million of which came from REI employees – 10% higher employee social engagement than #OptOutside 2016

• 48,000 women participated in 2,700 outdoor events, classes and experiences with a waitlist of 17,000 people

• Nearly 200K tags across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram – reaching a younger and more female audience than any previous REI effort

• Up until September 1,2017 the #ForceofNature video generated the most social engagement of any video in the co-op’s history with a 27% higher click through rate than #OptOutside (2016)