Revitalizing a 150-Year-Old Brand: Simon Perkins of The Orvis Company on Marketing Smarts [Podcast]

Source: MarketingProfs

The lifespan of large companies today is less than 20 years, and experts predict that it will drop to 14 years by 2026. Fledgling brands would do well to take a lesson from established brands that have proven their staying power, like The Orvis Company.

Founded in 1856, Orvis is the oldest mail-order outfitter and longest continually operating fly-fishing business in the United States. Today, the company is thriving, with more than $340 million in annual sales and product lines as diverse as men’s and women’s sportswear, fine gifts and home furnishings, luggage and travel accessories, dog beds and shotguns, and more.

Simon Perkins is director of brand marketing at The Orvis Company, and he knows a thing or two about his company’s target audience. Simon worked as a fly-fishing guide in Montana for 10 years before joining the family business, so he’s racked up thousands of hours in one-on-one time with fly fishing enthusiasts (and he’s a fly-fisherman himself).

I invited Simon to Marketing Smarts to talk about The Orvis Company’s recent rebrand, and I asked him how an outdoor brand that’s been around more than 150 years managed to evolve its business model and thrive in the digital era.

Here are just a few highlights from my conversation with Simon:

Spend as much time as possible getting to know your core customer (14:58): “Before I joined Orvis, I actually worked as a fly-fishing guide out in Montana for 10 years…. It was an amazing opportunity—I mean you’re stuck all day long in a 12-foot-long boat. No one can escape, and you’re with your core customer all day long, listening to them. It was pretty fun coming in with that kind of qualitative insight.”

To build a brand that stands the test of time, you have to move beyond your comfort zone (08:00): “We’ve been around for a long time, and one of the reasons why we’ve been successful for so long is because we really made a science out of this catalog marketing where you can measure and analyze to a pretty amazing degree. You can reduce risk, you can pinpoint customers, you can measure contribution to…

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