We recently sat down with Mark Hickey, Creative Director for Natural Habitat Adventures, to discuss our partnership and transformative power of promotional products and branded apparel on their brand.
Mark Hickey says:
People wear these things proudly in public, to church, and to the mall. They're proud to wear their Nat Hab gear. And just the fact that we have thought of all these little finishes and touches and sustainability and conservation issues have all gone into the background of this thing. So it's more than just a baseball hat. It represents a brand.
Natural Habitat Adventures and Anthem branding have been working together for over a decade to bring the ethos of our brand to a bunch of quality products. My name is Mark Hickey. I'm the creative director at Natural Habitat Adventures. We're sending people all over the world on these fantastic wildlife trips. We're partnered with WWF. Our stuff is a quality product so we want our brand to show that, and you might not think that a hat really matters, but it does. If you look at some of these details that Anthem brought to this, everything about this speaks quality. There's not a stitch on here that doesn't say that somebody was doing some extra thinking here.
About six months back, Anthem approached us and jumped on board with us to help design a new Polar Parka for our polar bear and Northern lights trips. We had some obvious... It had to be warm. It had to be somewhat sustainable. It had to be made from this material or that material. It had to keep our travelers comfortable in a bunch of different situations from 20 below outside to unzipping and venting inside of a polar over while they're seeing polar bears. So we worked over a number of months with Anthem to really get this jacket right, to zero in on some of the features that we needed and some that we did and to find the right color combinations and things like that.
We send out our PDBs in these sustainable and recycled canvas pouches that can be used for other things after a trip. But knowing that you guys had our back and knowing that you know me and how obsessed I am with quality, we literally can call exactly what we want. We can remove a zipper here. We can add a pocket there. We can make it the best travel bag that we think our travelers will love.
In working with Anthem, you get a whole other team working for you. I'm the sole creative director. I have a team of designers, but the buck stops with me when it comes to stuff like that. So when I am able to pull you in on something, you know what I'm going for. You guys have definitely developed a product that there's a little bit of a buzz in the field. People want a new trucker hat. People want the new parka. People want to buy these things and own these things and wear them like a badge of honor. It's pretty cool. The true ultimate compliment to a well-designed product is people wanting to, like I said, wear one of these things out to the movies at night.