When we are profiling a person or experiencing a story through another person’s eyes, we should remember that nobody is defined as one thing. Just as we embrace multipurpose in our product design, we should embrace a holistic view of people. Someone is not only a photographer or only a footballer or only a farmer or only a skier. If we have a multifaceted view of people and bring this out through story, we can:
Demonstrate the versatility of our clothes.
Demonstrate the Icelandic Art of Living. Part of the Icelandic Art of Living’s charm is that it isn’t “work/life balance,” where someone has completely separate, compartmentalized lives that counterbalance and offset one another; it is a holistic, multifaceted life in which the way people live, work, interact, and experience nature builds a single, bigger life. Showing this way of living is at the heart of our brand’s aspirational promise.
Build on our brand theme of paradoxical “liminal spaces.” These are in-between locales at the edge that embrace seeming opposites, such as a place that it is both at the end of the earth and the height of the sustainable advanced world. People, too, can embody such contrasts.
Differentiate from hardcore outdoor brands and build a bridge to the everyday. Whether it’s a part of the story happening inside, or in liminal spaces (like a journey between places), putting our clothes into multiple contexts via a person speaks to our strengths. This should not be 50/50—activity and being outside should be the majority of the story. but still build a bridge to the everyday experiences of our customers.
While our content ideas and themes may take many creative forms, there should always be an Icelandic tie-in to our content to repeat our core point of differentiation and emphasize the Icelandic Art of Living. Content could cover, for example:
See Story frameworks and archetypes for more on what kind of stories we write and how those come together
The headline should be a preview of the story, telling people what they’re clicking through to. This is a good user experience in general and emphasizes the 66˚North commitment to transparency. The headline should create “positive tension” by embracing contrast, paradox and the unexpected as a way of creating brand-relevant interest that isn’t dishonest “click bait.” Even if the user doesn’t click on the story (remember, most won’t!), he or she should get a sense of the 66˚North world through reading the headline and seeing the image.
For example, the headline of the Benjamin Hardman video is “Further,” paired with an image of clouds over a mountain. This doesn’t explain what to expect by clicking, nor does it give a sense of our world to the user who doesn’t click. What if we rewrote it as “Born in the wrong climate” and paired it with a portrait of Benjamin in front of ice, mountains or snow? In so doing, we are creating tension between the story as it is presented and the user’s preconceptions about beauty, comfort, and cold. Sometimes it will be helpful to write the headline and outline the lead image, first, before creating the whole story.