The Announcement: What Is Patagonia’s Involvement?
And how did it evolve over the time I spent working on the project?
I have a longstanding relationship with Patagonia, thanks to the many friends I have working there, and a mutual respect and admiration that goes back years.
Case in point: a trip to Amsterdam I made in May 2019, as we were finalising plans for Type 2, the podcast project we collaborated on in which I explored the intersection between the outdoors, action sports and activism.
(In effect, Type 2 was the beginning of my exploration of the themes that would eventually underpin The Announcement).
Anyway, I was grabbing a coffee in the communal kitchen at Patagonia Europe's Amsterdam HQ when I was approached by a Patagonia employee. I remember it clearly because he was tall, like me, and (ahem) strawberry blonde, like me, and he kicked off the conversation by saying laconically, "Are you Matt? I'm a huge fan of Looking Sideways".
This doesn't happen to me every day, so naturally I was pretty stoked. We ended up chatting for ten minutes; during which this engaged, friendly stranger made it clear that he really did listen to my show, he really did enjoy it, and he really was a very smart, shrewd individual.
Anyway, I wandered back down to the meeting room, and told my pals from Patagonia marketing that I'd just had a coffee with a really nice bloke called Ryan.
"Yeah, that'll be Ryan Gellert," came the reply. "He's the boss of Patagonia Europe".
(Ryan, of course, now runs the entire company from Ventura, and was one of the key architects of the announcement, as listeners to The Announcement will know.)
The Evolution of the Project
Anyway - Type 2 had a great run and amassed a very loyal audience around the world. But by the end of 2022 we agreed that it was time to park that project, and began discussing ideas for something new.
This was two or so months after Patagonia had signalled their intention to make 'earth' their only shareholder at the company-wide town hall that picked up coverage around the world.
It was clear to me that this was the biggest story in town when it came to Patagonia, so the brand agreed to provide access to members of the senior team in Ventura, and to financially support the development phase of a project that at this point we thought would be a fairly straightforward focus on the sports and environmental community and campaign work of the company.
Editorial Independence
But as the months passed, and I developed a clearer idea of the story I wanted to tell through what would eventually become The Announcement, it became pretty obvious that the series was only going to be a credible and robust piece of journalistic storytelling if it was a completely independent production.
Happily, my relationship with the brand is such that we were able to have this conversation completely frankly and professionally.
We reached the agreement that The Announcement would be a wholly independent Looking Sideways production, and that all editorial decision-making would be mine alone.
As Patagonia put it:
"...we talked about it with the team and made the decision together that this should be an independent production. Patagonia continued to provide access and a sounding board from a production perspective. But editorial control sat completely with Matt and the story he tells is his own."
Editorial Integrity
Of course, since then I have thought long and hard about what Patagonia's initial involvement means for the editorial integrity of The Announcement.
Obviously, if it gains enough traction, there will undoubtedly be people out there who come to it with zero context and decide that this initial involvement means, whatever the circumstances, the series is a PR puff piece that shouldn't be taken seriously.
Of course, I disagree. In creating this piece of work, as should be obvious when you listen, I had absolutely no interest in making a glorified piece of marketing for the brand (I do enough of that in my day job at
).My view, you probably won’t be surprised to hear, is that The Announcement is a completely even-handed look at the decision, aftermath, and implications of this seismic, well, announcement.
And, happily, so do the many, many independent individuals who have listened to and rigorously critiqued it prior to release. Hopefully, you will agree once you've had a proper listen to all three episodes.
Transparency
But this is why it's important for myself, and the brand, to be completely transparent about how this unfolded in the two years I've been making this thing: which is what this post is about.
All creative projects like this need financing, and most 'content' you watch these days is, one way or the other, funded by brands. The slightly unusual thing about this scenario is that it was initially financed by the party that stood to gain the least from it being released, and who voluntarily relinquished editorial involvement once the direction of the project became clear.
I think it's worth pointing out how unusual this is. I've been working with brands in various contexts, either as a journalist, or through my agency, for close to 30 years now.
So in the same way that it was the rarity of Ryan Gellert's humble, artful approach that impressed me back in Amsterdam; so too did Patagonia's willingness to respect the editorial integrity of a project that might not be in their own corporate self-interest.
This is the only time this happened to me in three decades of working with brands. That's how rare it is.
Anyway, if you're interested in learning more about my relationship with Patagonia, and how we arrived at the understanding I outline here, I discussed it at length in this bonus podcast recorded at the Kendal Mountain Festival, which you can listen to above.
And if you want to listen to Type 2, here's a favourite episode from the archive.