When Nicks Ericsson joined KEEN as chief marketing officer about a year and a half ago, he was inspired by the work that could be done at a purpose-driven company with social impact built into the business model.
“My mission is to make sure that the world knows that KEEN was founded over 20 years ago on this idea that shoes can be made more responsibly, made using less harmful chemicals and that it can be done better for people on the planet,” says Ericsson.
With more than a decade at UGG under his belt, Ericsson has always been passionate about promoting brands that embrace sustainability. At a time when many brands are backing down from their values and struggling to retain customers and attract new consumers, KEEN has doubled down on its commitments to the environment. The brand leans heavily on respect for the planet and aims to cultivate a love for the outdoors.
Ericsson wants to make KEEN “the most trusted brand in the world.” To accomplish this bold mission, he is not focused on moonshot goals, but rather, incremental improvements. The company is focused on innovating manufacturing processes to have less impact on the planet and is being very transparent about its processes.“Trust will set us apart,” says Ericsson.
Brand Innovators caught up with Ericsson from his office in Portland, OR to talk about sustainability, showing up in culture and the importance of transparency. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
As a purpose-driven brand focused on sustainability, how are you thinking about growth?
Purpose and sustainability and growth are actually completely integrated. It’s fundamental to the strategy and to the brand. As we grow the brand, it’s about scaling that purpose. That’s how we’ll grow awareness. That means, continuing to stay close with our product team to make sure we tell the most important stories around designing durable high-performance products.
We are working closely with what we call our KEEN Effect Team – our research, environmental and social impact team – on making sure that we reduce our harm in how we make our products. We are also making sure that we use our profits to invest and build community with charitable organizations. For us it’s more about walking the walk and doing what we’ve always been doing with consistency and credibility. Removing PFAS from our supply chain before it was legally mandated is a good example of that. We share and educate consumers about issues that they might not be aware of. Choices they make everyday impact not only the world but also their personal health potentially.
How do you bring that into your messaging?
KEEN has always been a brand that takes risks and does things a little bit unexpectedly. From our creative point of view, we want to inspire our fans to do things differently whether it’s just going outside or making better choices. Education is a big piece of it. Consumers say they care about values and about sustainability. Sometimes their actions don’t show that, so you need to give them everything around that.
You need to give them the world they want to be part of. Create this aspirational idea of belonging to the community. This first year of brand repositioning is to really bring a new creative expression to the KEEN brand by bringing some fantastic new talents that have a real understanding of values and sustainability, but also understands outside and understands fashion and culture. We’re on a good trajectory of showing up in interesting disruptive ways, but always doing it in the purpose of leaving a message.
Can you talk about how you are connecting to audiences from a media perspective?
The media landscape is so fragmented. Channels that maybe weren’t traditionally seen as media have become even more important. I’m thinking about events and community, even showing up in our stores and in our wholesale accounts. It’s not just about the paid media or publications. It’s about actually leaning in even more to real-life connections.
Trail running is a big category for us. We want to connect KEEN to this community of folks that are like-minded, that care as much as we do about people on the planet and understand the impact of the choices they make every day. That’s how we bring in our nonprofit partners.
As content creators, values alignments are as important as reach for us. It’s about being very mindful of everything when we create content. Then we show up at events. For instance, the Outside Festival here in the U.S. or Fuji Rock Festival in Japan that we’ve been sponsoring for the last 11 years. It’s about doing more than just showing up and selling shoes. It’s doing trail restoration. It’s engaging fans and the community to leave the place better than it was there when they came.
Can you talk about why it is important to show up in cultural moments?
Probably the most globally consistent one has been this Fuji Rock Festival, which is kind of the Coachella of Japan. It’s one of the most environmentally friendly festivals in the world. They do an incredible recycling program that we’ve been part of. We’re now bringing what we do there to smaller events. It’s about education. It’s about engagement with communities.
We partnered with a filmmaker called Max Romey, an Alaskan filmmaker. We create films to bring awareness to big complicated topics that people may sometimes be scared of. PFAS, for instance, being one of them. We just released a new film now about glaciers. It’s just showing up with emotional storytelling and interesting films. We’re starting to show up in non-traditional outdoor cultural spaces like New York Fashion Week and Paris Fashion Week. It’s about showing up again with intent and purpose. We have new collaboration partners for next year that build on the authenticity and build an even stronger values alignment into the messaging and the product. You’ll see KEEN popping up a little bit more in some of those bigger cultural moments this next year.
Can you talk about your past experiences and how those have helped shape your perspective?
I started at a pretty small company called J. Lindeberg – a Scandinavian fashion brand. It was a visionary founder-led, values-driven company. That helped me shape the power of being pretty scrappy and using what makes you different as a lever to cut through. I learned a lot around PR and influencers and celebrities. I helped lead the brand reposition there and what I love about my learnings there was leaning into making a difference and not being shy, not pretending that you’re not who you are.
KEEN is different and can be different and should be different. That’s what people will gravitate towards. The work definitely has helped me bring some new strategies and processes when it comes to social media and influencers collaborations. How to connect with younger consumers. that I led some really exciting social impact and environmental initiatives. It was great and proud of those and happy that a public company supported them. But you’re always at the whim of the next earnings call. It just feels really good to be able to know some of those things that will never go away here at KEEN. You can build for the long term what I’m most excited about here at KEEN. It’s the consistency and the reliability and what we stand for and being able to build trust around that.
What marketing challenges are keeping you up at night?
Every company jumped on the sustainability bandwagon in the last five to ten years. Now companies are actually backtracking on some of their sustainability goals. In this post-values world, consumers are more skeptical. They’re less open to trusting brands. It’s front of mind right now to make sure that we’re highlighting and documenting the work that we’re doing and are extra careful in how we do that. It’s about being transparent and really going deep in the storytelling and showing how things are done.
We just opened a factory in Kentucky this last year and we’re launching some really exciting new products there. We’re going to be telling more stories about how we make our shoes. Fifty percent of our shoes are made in our own factories. We have this control and transparency that other brands don’t have. It’s just about transparency and breaking down some of those barriers and being as honest as possible that keeps me up at night.
AI, obviously, is top of mind. I don’t know if it keeps me up because I am scared of it. I’m actually more excited about it and trying to see where we should put our focus. Last year AI was about making me do stuff faster and more efficiently and now it’s maybe more being used to power human thinking and creativity. As a values-driven family-owned company, we want to be very mindful of how we use AI. Transparency is going to be key there. When we use AI, we’re going to say that we’re using AI.
