Yeti Takes Slow And Steady Approach To Sports Marketing

Similarly to the speed at which ice water warms in one of their tumblers or water bottles, Yeti is taking a slow and steady approach when it comes to sports marketing.

Rather than shelling out millions to have their products and logos plastered on billboards or TV screens, the Austin, Texas-based brand lets the communities that embrace their products and brand dictate where they prioritize and invest.

“When we started, the product was adopted by the fishing community, so we joined the fishing community,” Yeti chief marketing officer Paulie Dery says. “The product then found other communities—ranching, rodeo, the backcountry snow world, the alpine world, equining and then it found, strangely, the culinary world, and then it found surf and skate.

“We let the product lead the way and tell us where to go.”

Today, Yeti is investing further in the surf community through a global partnership with the World Surf League (WSL). The three-year partnership, which spans the WSL Championship Tour as well as the Challenger Series, is a testament to the brand’s growth on and around the water.

As the Official Drinkware and Cooler of the WSL, the organizers of the annual tour of professional surf competitions and broadcast events originally founded in 1976 as the International Professional Surfers, Yeti will host on-site activations at competitions in addition to a branded content series exploring iconic locations on the WSL Championship Tour and Challenger Series featuring Yeti ambassadors John John Florence and Stephanie Gilmore.

Unsurprisingly, part of this new relationship is to protect and conserve the world’s oceans through the World Surf League’s We Are One Ocean initiative.

“About three years ago, we had John John Florence and others as an ambassadors and we were booming on the coast,” Dery says. “We thought about the WSL thing back then, but we still didn’t think we’d earned enough to be in that community as a true community member, so we kept doing our thing.

“Now in 2023, we feel like we belong and we’ve earned our spot there, so we’re really happy to be in with the WSL.”

The exception to Yeti’s slow and steady rule is Austin FC, the first professional sports franchise in the brand’s hometown.

In addition to being named the Official Jersey Partner of the Major League Soccer organization that began play in 2021, Yeti is a Founding Partner of Q2 Stadium.

“It’s a bit of the anomaly because we aren’t in soccer and we don’t have a community in the soccer world,” Dery says. “We are an outdoorsy brand that soccer doesn’t really play a part on but what we did see was Austin and our hometown community. We thought, ‘Wow, this is the first pro team to ever spawn from Austin,’ and we just wanted to be part of it to be honest. It was kind of a reverse.”

Yeti’s marketing approach is paying dividends, literally.

For the three months ending on October 1, 2022, the company reported sales increased 20% to $433.6 million, compared to $362.6 million during the same period the year prior. Direct-to-consumer channel sales increased 15%, while wholesale channel sales were up 25% in Q3 of 2022.

With existing partnerships with Pro Bull Riders, snowboard competition series Natural Selection Tour, freeskier and snowboard freeriders series Freeride World Tour, and youth baseball and softball platform and scouting service Perfect Game, where Yeti ends up next is up to its consumers.

Dery says the brand is becoming more embraced globally, showing up in communities including downhill alpine skiing, equestrian, Australian rugby and even craft brewing in Japan.

“The sports world is a big one and we obviously love seeing our product being adopted there,” he says. “It’s up to those communities to point us in the right direction and we love that. It’s about getting out there and doing it together. Communities find other communities and that’s certainly what’s happened with Yeti.

“The Yeti tent is real big.”