Outdoor apparel brand Cotopaxi sponsored the Sundance Film Festival this year, after the Sundance Institute ended a decade-long relationship with luxury outdoor apparel retailer Canada Goose. The pivot created space for Cotopaxi, a smaller, Utah-based retailer known for its mission-driven strategy and colorful products.
Partnering made logistical sense, since Cotopaxi already operated a store on Park City Main Street. For the festival, it partnered with the publication IndieWire, which sold Cotopaxi products at its own Main Street pop-up location.
Cotopaxi’s chief brand officer, Brad Hiranaga, joined the company in 2022 after previously serving as General Mills’ chief marketing officer. He told ADWEEK that the festival partnership worked because the Sundance Institute’s values align with Cotopaxi’s commitment to sustainability, cultural exploration and adventure.
The CMO spoke with ADWEEK about Cotopaxi’s new role as a Sundance sponsor, its commitment to economic empowerment and whether Cotopaxi will get more involved with filmmakers.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
This is the first time you’ve activated at Sundance. Tell me about the partnership.
Cotopaxi has been around for about 10 years, but it has never activated [at the Sundance Film Festival]. As a smaller [Utah-based] brand, it was always great to have [the festival] in the backyard of Park City. Canada Goose had been doing the director’s jacket for quite a while. When they ended that partnership, the Sundance Institute called us.
Sundance Institute had a patch and a logo that they wanted to design. We had a jacket that we thought was pretty iconic, and the colors match really well.
They’re a nonprofit. We’re for profit, but we operate much like a philanthropic company does.
The reason I was excited for the partnership is that Sundance is all about having filmmakers show people the world, and giving access to culture and community through their filmmakers’ lenses. Cotopaxi’s beliefs are all about [the message], “See the world and make it better.” When you see the world, when you go explore other places—cities, states, just a town over even—you start to learn about other people who maybe have different cultures, communities, beliefs, eat different food or have different stories. We love that connection because it’s very similar to the mission that we believe the brand is built on.
Plus, we’re a Utah brand. It’s right in the dead of winter, [and] we have a lot of winter outerwear for cold winter environments. It perfectly lined up.
It seems like a big change for the Sundance Institute to have gone from Canada Goose, which is a very different luxury outerwear company, to a more sustainability-oriented partner.
The company was founded on this idea that we can do capitalism better. Our tagline is “Gear for Good,” and [Cotopaxi] was founded upon that idea. 1% of sales, at minimum, go toward the Cotopaxi Foundation. That foundation was set up with a broader mission of trying to alleviate global poverty, which is the No. 1 United Nations sustainability goal.
Our foundation works with a lot of nonprofits, mostly in Latin America, where we’re really focused. They’re all solving poverty in different ways. Some of those [ways] are environmental and some are social. We bracket the work into livelihood, education and healthcare. We try to figure out ways we can help [those nonprofits] do their work, which ultimately ladders up to poverty alleviation. That’s a big part of why the business was started.
Clearly, the environment is massively important, especially as we’re encouraging people to adventure. So we have a lot of environmental pieces to it, as well, and we have a big circularity strategy. One of the parts of that is one of our main product lines, called Del Día.
It’s our pack and bags business, and each one of those bags is made with completely different colors, zippers and buckles. We take dead stock material, which is material that was likely going to go into a landfill, and we purchase it. Then we make [the packs and bags] in all those color combinations.
When you see other people with it, [you assume they know] the story of why the brand started, and they’re usually pretty [interested in] mission-driven companies. Cotopaxi is a B Corp, so [customers] feel like they’re part of a community, which is really important for us as a small company—building that community and that word-of-mouth.
That mentality … that sustainability ideal … is baked into everything that the people who created this company did. They built it into the finance model [and] they built it into the product model.
I can see the alignment there with Cotopaxi and the festival. Beyond the director’s jacket, what were you offering Sundance visitors?
The main objective that we had was to go, as a small brand, into Sundance, and leave a really visual brand mark on Park City.
The director’s jacket … that’s the “big iconic moment.” We had a lounge where the directors could come in, they could learn about the brand and they got fitted for their jacket. We had a big photography and video moment for them so they could capture it for their family and friends.
Sundance is very protective of that [jacket] because it is so special. It’s such a career highlight for those filmmakers, and it felt like it was part of our job to make it special for them.
We partnered with IndieWire because we wanted to get closer to all the films that were coming through and get our brand in front of actors, directors, producers and media people that we could tell our story to. It was a customized little space [within] what IndieWire was doing. When people were interviewed, they could come into the Cotopaxi space. We had our team there to talk about our brand, [and] we had some of the products to show them. We had different kinds of jackets and some of our hip bags. We could tell them the Del Día story, for instance, or tell them about our mission.
These folks that are coming to the festival are the best storytellers in the world, and our brand is trying to tell a story that’s much deeper than just talking about products. It’s really trying to solve a big human problem. We wanted to come in and say, “Hey, this is what we do,” and then see where our paths might cross. Or [learn of] intersections with talent [who are] making films that are related to [Cotopaxi’s sustainability mission], or can get inspired by it, or have other ideas that we could potentially support or partner with them on.
Is there a future opportunity for Cotopaxi to fund some of these independent films?
The answer to that is totally yes. There’s organic stuff that comes up with product placement and film, which I feel is actually the entry point. Whether it’s a brand story or not, as long as it’s related to our mission and it helps around this idea of human sustainability, there’s potentially always a good partnership opportunity there.
We actually partnered with three filmmakers this year. None of them was at Sundance, and they were much smaller. To help tell the story about [the intersection between seeking] adventure and doing good, and this idea of being unique and embracing your culture. In those particular instances, because they were smaller and we got involved early, we were able to help shape some of the storytelling.
We feel like we’re dipping our toe in the water a little bit. We looked at some films that were here to partner. There were a couple that reached out and wanted to do some executional, tactical things. If you’re a big brand, those [offers] are no-brainers. As a small brand, [we wonder], “What’s going to be more meaningful, given our limited resources, and what can we do?” We’re headed down that path.
Do you think you’ll come back to Sundance next year?
A lot of the [other partner] brands have been there for many years. Acura, I think, is on year 14. We did the jackets for a number of the partners—for Audible and for Adobe. We got to know those other partners, which is great, because you want to create an ecosystem of partnership.
Our missions are aligned. We love what the Sundance Institute is all about. We want to create partnerships with people who are telling stories. We want to be that “iconic moment,” if we can be, because our product and our brands fit so well.
Canada Goose did an amazing job with their jackets, [but] you know, they’re busy, black, big jackets. We have so much color and variety in what we create that we can bring new spins on creativity every year.
My plan is to come back to it and continue to build it. Our activations would shift. We would do some more meaningful things, and some other on-the-ground things that we learned about when we were there this year.
