Patagonia: Brand Positioning Case Study

💼 The brand: Patagonia

💛 The empathy: Outdoor enthusiasts care about the planet and hate waste

☀️ The feeling: Timeless, sustainable, nostalgic

♟️ The positioning: Website copy that speaks to the timeless, sustainable characteristics of the Patagonia brand with a hint of nostalgia.

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There are all kinds of outdoor brands: North Face, Columbia, Marmot, REI, Kuhl — that’s just to name a few.

All of them might qualify as an “adventurous” brand, but Patagonia is the only one that truly sticks out as a timeless one.

Sure, their clothing is high quality. But this feeling of timelessness starts as soon as you land on their website.

I took a brief stroll across their site recently and noticed that almost every single page hints at the timeless, nostalgic nature of their apparel.

When you hit the home page you see “Thank you, 1985” with a warm photo of a father and son.

They even somehow managed to work this feeling into a page about their shorts… “just get better with time” and “as classic as they were in ‘82”

The Best Sellers page? You bet. The headline even uses the word “timeless” and the brilliant line “goods you’ll never get rid of” — content speaking to the timeless and nostalgic nature of the brand.

A few clicks later on their “Gift Guide” page… you read the the headline “Quality for Life”

Of course everyone wants to buy high quality goods. But there’s more at play here. Patagonia has positioned themselves as not just another outdoor brand.

They’re an outdoor brand that bleeds intentionality, sustainability, and timelessness — from their website copy to the clothing itself. They’ve mastered the art of positioning.

They’ve used empathy to understand what their audience wants from them: a company that cares about the outdoors like they do.

Patagonia has also put their money where their mouth is. In September, founder Yvon Chouinard committed all future profits of Patagonia to fighting climate change. That works out to about $100M per year  🤯

This is what means to be driven by empathy and guided by the heart of your brand. Purpose over profit or popularity.

This doesn’t mean you have to give away all of your profits to be a purposeful brand. But hopefully it’s an inspiration to have a vision for the future for your business.

This might seem daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s all part of our 5-Minute Marketing Plan. There’s even a page specifically for your Brand Vision 👇

You can get it for free right now by clicking this link. We can’t wait to see how you use it to position your brand!

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