How Vollebak Built a Brand to Survive the Polycrisis with $1,000 Rainjackets and Extreme Innovation

Vollebak have built a brand that’s captured the imagination of celebrities, starchitects and entrepreneurs and generated demand for survival clothing fit for the polycrisis

Who will love this

• Anyone who’s fed up with the plague of boring sustainability marketing

• People who don’t mind paying $100 for a white tee shirt

• Futurists who want to escape Earth for Mars

Today

G’day!

Welcome to the 77 new brand builders making the case for brand.

If you’re new here, I’m Amanda, a brand-forward, creatively literate marketer and fractional CMO.

Today’s brand came recommended courtesy of Damian. Today’s brand is Vollebak, a clothing brand fit for ‘ultraviolent weather, fires, megastorms, and a world that’s heating up.’

A lot of businesses say they’re all about the future, but they don’t really do much to generate demand in said future. Vollebak do.

Vollebak: Making the first billboard designed for Mars. Working with starchitect Bjark Ingels to buy an island and model “the future of habitation”. Making the first clothing to be worn on Mars. We’re going to unpack how Vollebak uses innovation, story, and stunts to build a category defining business.

Vollebak, founded just 8 years ago, have: 

• 💰 Raised a $10M Series A

• 🏆 Won Time Best Inventions - twice!

• 🦘 Exactly one stockist (in the middle of the Australian outback)

• 😎 Attracted an A list roster of customers, investors and employees including Bear Grylls, Christopher Nolan, Jack Dorsey, Joe Gebbia, Bjarke Ingels, and Mr. Porter co-founder Toby Bateman

Let’s get into it.

Amanda

📣 Community shoutout 📣

Huge shoutout to the good people who read this newsletter and generously shared it over the past week:

• James Greenfield, founder of Koto, global design studio who’s work you will definitely recognize

• Bobbi Mullins, digital marketing consultant (and early reader of this newsletter)

• Dari Israelstam, founder and executive creative director of Universal Favourite, a cracking indie design studio in Sydney

Thank you. I love getting to connect with more of you. Let’s grow the collective of brand builders making the case for brand (why do I feel like Judge Judy?) 👩‍⚖️

Your referral link is at the bottom of this email 🔗.

HOW VOLLEBAK COMMAND ATTENTION TO OWN THE FUTURE OF CLOTHING

Vollebak is bonkers in the best way possible. They have very successfully built themselves a reputation, an A-list customer and investor set, and a library of stories, stunts and style that most brands could only dream of. Vollebak are masterful at capturing people’s attention.

Why does capturing attention matter?

Mental shortcuts make it easy to be memorable

• If a brand comes to mind quickly, it’s a good choice

• If a brand feels good, it’s a good choice

• If a brand is recognizable, it’s a good choice

Attention builds memories, and memories build brands.

Vollebak’s brand is anything but dull. Here are three things they focus on that we’re going to cover:

1. Innovation: What can clothing do that it hasn’t done before?

2. The human story behind the technical gear

3. Marketing stunts: Vollebak’s bold moves

4. Piggybacking on the polycrisis

A visionary question: What can clothing do that it hasn’t before?

Vollebak take technical gear into a new stratosphere (literally) by telling a story about clothing and the boundaries of the human race.

As Vollebak’s founders, who worked in advertising, found themselves training for ultramarathons in extreme weather, they noticed that the gear they were using wasn’t as advanced as advertised. “What you had [from brands] was quite a high level of conservatism that wasn’t really matched by the athletes, who were far more experimental than the brand serving them.” That led them to the question: What can clothing do that it hasn’t done before? 

There’s no popular brand frameworks that will tell you to start your business with a question, but I find that a lot of visionary founders are simply setting out to answer a question.

The human story behind the technical gear

As I watched one of Vollebak’s founders wax poetic about what clothing can do, I found myself oddly moved?! Instead of making a logical, rational case for their materials and products, Vollebak tell an inspiring story about man’s* relationship with clothing. Check it out 👇

“Humans have had clothes for over 150,000 years. And over the course of history clothes have been used to do the same thing - keep people warm, keep people dry, tell the world you’re a king…and what’s going to happen over the next century is that clothes are going to be used for fundamentally different things. They’re going to be used to increase our strength, or our sensory perception. We’re going to undergo a fundamental shift. And the reason it’s going to happen is that we have the technological possibilities for it to happen with the rise of technology and new materials. But second we have the need for it. And the need is being driven by a whole series of different factors: we’re going to run out of resources fairly rapidly, the climate is changing at a really staggering speed. We’re going to have to save our own planet and colonize new ones. And all of that is going to mean that clothing has to fundamentally change what it does. And we’re doing to demand new things of it. And it’s going to have to do new things for us….”

A lot of businesses, and even advertising agencies, given a product as robust as Vollebak’s, would have sung the praises of the technical nature of the fabric. Not Vollebak. Emotive stories trump logical arguments, and Vollebak know it.

*Yes, they only make men’s clothing. Yes, I’m mad about it.

Marketing Stunts: Vollebak’s bold moves

Vollebak’s entire promotional strategy are geared around marketing stunts and culture jacking:

• Filming a solar charged jacket over 24 hours to

• A timelapse of a compostable tee shirt being eaten by worms

• An ‘extreme discount card hidden somewhere in the world that unlocks free Vollebak clothing for life, Vollebak have completely rewritten the playbook on marketing technical gear.

Marketing stunts are effective for two reasons: 1) they attract media attention, which amplifies reach and increases the likelihood more people will see it and 2) they are emotive and memorable. Over time, these memories build up and build a brand perception of Vollebak as the best gear for extreme conditions. I still remember the first time I watched Vollebak’s tee-shirt decompose back into the earth.

Piggybacking on the polycrisis

Vollebak have used their product descriptions and marketing stunts to play on cultural tension between the polycrisis (climate, pandemic, inflation) to capture press, conversation, and attention.

Case in point: Vollebak’s product descriptions state explicitly that their clothes are designed to withstand extreme (and let’s be honest - upsetting) events like megastorms, fires, and floods. They advertise the fact that they want their clothing to be the first clothing worn on mars. All of this is by design, in my view.

Playing on a cultural tension is a delicate game, but it can be a powerful growth lever. A cultural tension is like a river: it’s moving with or without you. If you can find an appropriate way to get into it, you’ll move a lot faster than if you’re standing on shore.

Summary

Vollebak show us that imagination, marketing stunts and a foray into the odd cultural tension or two can build a reputation that exceeds it’s share of the market, wins friendships with Bear Grylls and Bjarke Ingels and sells $895 waterfallproof jackets.

That’s all until next week!

Amanda