I’m sitting in a meeting room at Atomic’s global headquarters in the quaint village of Altenmarkt, Austria, and the women in the room—Christina Hofinger and Karoline Schindlegger, both of whom work in the ski brand’s marketing department—are discussing a very specific question: Should they be done with #sheskis, Atomic’s women’s specific marketing campaign that’s been around since 2015? I’ve come to the Austrian Alps to get a behind-the-scenes look at how this old-school, European-based heritage ski brand is evolving its messaging to make inclusivity something preached and practiced.
Hofinger and Schindlegger, with help from their North American colleague Hannah Fleming, conducted extensive market research, interviewing a general audience and in-house employees on their thoughts on the #sheskis women’s initiative. The sentiment amongst those surveyed was nearly universal: Women don’t want to be alienated. They want to feel included and seen. So why have a marketing strategy that separates them from men?
“What we found in these interviews is that the campaign started with good intentions to increase awareness, but as society has moved in a direction of inclusiveness, we as a brand should be doing the same,” Hofinger says. “As female skiers, we are now sitting at the same table as everyone—not in a separate room.”