REI Family Adventure Club
Concepting, articulating, testing, and branding for a new club to help families have fun outside together every week—come rain or shine!
Challenge
57% of parents are concerned their kids aren’t as excited about the outdoors as they were as kids and 68% say they often try to come up with creative new activities to keep their child excited about getting outside. (Data according to a 2022 study of 5,000 parents by Claritin.) Parents are having a hard time “fitting in family outdoor time” due to planning, logistics, gear needs, and costs.
Solution
An REI Family Adventure Club offering monthly outdoor excursions designed for families. Each adventure includes gear, guidance, and exclusive year-round benefits to stay inspired and active.
This offering is a middle ground between REI multi-day experiences and one-off classes in REI stores.
Branding assets designed by Season Studio.
The Process
Before we identified a solution, we had to explore the problem space. I worked with the initiative’s Product Manager, Product Designer, and several others across REI to create possible solutions for how to help parents with kids ages 8-14 get outside together more often, increase their motivation, and discover their outdoor antidotes to screen time.
Then, the Product Manager, Product Designer, and I refined the solutions and began the work to test our concepts. I detailed the offerings and prepared them for focus groups.
We received resounding positive feedback for a whole-family adventure club, and for the next 10 months, we refined and tested this solution, along with other concepts, to ensure its desirability and product market fit.
Pricing Structure
One of the greatest obstacles to finalizing the adventure club was establishing the ideal pricing structure. After several pricing tests, we settled on a three-month season where parents or guardians purchase a family pass for four people. Below you’ll see the landing page I wrote to test the most-desired pricing structure.
Branding
Because we were tight on time and resources, I hired an external studio to help with the branding for REI Family Adventure Club. My brief was to create a brand, along with digital and print assets, that used nostalgia, play, movement, vibrance, boldness, and organic shapes. I managed the agency relationship, timeline, and feedback between my team and our vendor. After working with the agency for several weeks. we delivered the branding below.
REI Co-op Family Adventure Camp
Tapped 2,600 customer voices to gain insights, position the product, and bring to life an all-inclusive family camping product.
The Challenge
For parents with little outdoor experience or very little time, planning an outdoor vacation can be mentally exhausting and overwhelming. Families needed a one-stop shop to help them have a great experience while they unplug and make memories outside together.
REI, with its 37 years of experience guiding groups in the outdoors, was uniquely positioned to welcome this kind of customer.
While REI had the guiding expertise, they focused on iconic (i.e. expensive) destinations with adults and occasionally older kids and teens. Their expertise was vast and their passion was deep. How could the REI Innovation team help this REI Adventure team meet with a new customer base?
The Solution
REI Co-op Adventure Camp makes outdoor getaways effortless by providing families everything they need for a gorgeous and memorable camping experience that’s still close to home.
We’ll offer comfortable lodging, delicious camp meal, and guided activity options that are flexible and kid-friendly. Guests can customize their getaway to their budget and family needs. So they can stress less and focus more on making memories with the people they love.
The Process
Research
Acting as an interim UX Research Designer, I partnered with the Product Manager to refine the concept through qualitative testing using Play Money and Card Sort tests along with customer interviews and user testing.
A/B Testing with Google Ads
In collaboration with search marketing, we used landing pages to test waitlist conversion for a pilot of this camp, and whether they preferred an all-inclusive camp or wanted to pay a la carte. See the A/B landing page experiences.
I outlined the value propositions, wrote the landing page copy, and created the headlines, descriptions, and keywords for Google Ads. In 8 days, and using 1/3 of our original budget, we exceeded our target of a 2% sign-up conversion. The precision of targeting allowed us to use the remaining budget to test in two other regional markets and gain results in a total of three weeks.
The waitlist sign up included required questions about their preferred lodging and ZIP code.
While it was a near tie between all-inclusive and a la carte, we decided it was operationally more feasible to go with all-inclusive.
Pilot Proposal
Using the quantitative and qualitative feedback from nearly 2,800 target customers, we proposed moving forward with a pilot of the REI hosted camp. Those voices also shaped our recommendation of location, features, pricing structures, activities, and lodging.
Pilot Planning
Once our partners on the Experiences team gave the green light, the Product Manager and I began the sprint to pilot. We onboarded a UX Product Designer, Project Manager, Engineer, and multiple people on the Experiences team whose expertise was required to make this camp a reality.
My focus was on REI Co-op Adventure Camp’s new website, booking experience, and communications. Creating the customer’s journey requires me to nail down the specifics of a pilot to best prioritize and communicate it with users. I used my ability to see the big picture while zooming into the details to craft the journey with help from a small but skillful agency Season Studio.
Leading up to the pilot launch, I collaborated with our internal legal team, brand, marketing search marketing, finance, and experiences/adventure travel teams.
The Pilot
In March 2024, REI will host 40 cohorts of families over the course of 4 weekends in Arizona. This will be the ultimate “do” test and first of several pilots with a mind to refine the offering using real-world user testing.