MISSOULA, Mont. — The Outdoor Media Summit announced the launch of a new Executive Track for its 2024 edition. Marketing, media, PR and more types of outdoor professionals convene at the annual event for education sessions, networking opportunities and a product exposition with a demo component.
To qualify for its Executive Track, attendees must be a CEO, Managing Director, or President, or hold another chief executive position, at an outdoor retailer/product company.
Yoon Kim, the summit’s Founder, explained that CEOs of emerging companies are usually more interested in media coverage than those at more-established corporations, and a number of them attend Outdoor Media Summit every year. In response, he created content tailored to their needs and interests.
Kim added that the track is meant to fill a gap in the world of outdoor industry C-suite events as well.
“The space is very crowded … there are multiple entities, big entities, that are trying to go get the CEO market, so to speak, in the outdoor industry, but the content is not relevant for emerging companies … These guys are not getting talked to … [and] it’s a natural fit with our product,” Kim said.
“It’s an exciting time to be involved with Outdoor Media Summit. This is our biggest event yet and we’re continuing to provide new ways for visionary leaders in the outdoor industry to connect, learn and shape the future,” Lucie Patton, the summit’s Event Director, added.
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Inside The Executive Track
The track’s all-inclusive tickets include two nights of lodging at The Wren, which is, according to the summit, Missoula’s highest-rated hotel, along with meals, exclusive networking experiences and high-level learning opportunities.
“We’re having conversations that are not being had in the outdoor industry,” Kim said. “The word on the street in the outdoor industry is that the trade show model doesn’t work anymore. It works in hunt, [and] it works for fish, because those industries still depend on brick and mortar … whereas in the outdoor industry, the buyer and specialty shop owner has learned to buy the stuff online so they don’t necessarily need to go to shows to see it anymore … the other side of that disruption, what I see, is either a consumer event, a leadership event and then hyper-productive, single value prop. events like Grassroots, [and] like Outdoor Media Summit … we’re trying to take that leadership event space [too].”
The summit is co-located with The Annual Gathering of the Confluence of States, a conference for a bipartisan coalition that advocates for the outdoor industry. Its Executive Track gives attendees the option to go on a networking hike or eat breakfast with the Confluence of States’ Directors to foster connections.
The track’s education sessions include The State of Specialty Retail, A Marketplace Model Where Brands and Retailers Collaborate for Online Sales, Tips and Tricks: A VC and M&A Update, and An Honest Conversation About Outdoor Industry Events, where Kim himself is a speaker.
Other speakers include Eoin Comerford, former CEO of Moosejaw, Julia Clark Day, Executive Director of Business Development, Sports at Circana, and Maribel Castañeda, Executive Director of The Confluence of States.
For show organizers interested in hosting a leadership event, Kim believes that the most effective model is co-location, instead of a bolt-on, which he explained was adding a leadership conference before or after an established event.
“Whenever you try to bolt on a leadership event on top of an existing consumer event or trade show, it almost always fails,” Kim explained. “I’ve never heard a single good thing about it … it’s very, very difficult to put your attention on a leadership summit when you’ve got this giant trade show the next day.”
You can learn more about Outdoor Media Summit here.
