Bergans’ digital journey with Mynewsdesk
Almost a hundred years after the company was founded, Bergans is now in the middle of an explosive growth period. With an ambitious content strategy using their Mynewsdesk newsroom as a hub, the outdoor clothing supplier has drawn the spotlights to itself at a time when people are rediscovering nature.
Bergans delivered their first backpack in 1911. Today, the assortment has expanded and includes a wide selection of clothing as well as hiking gear, such as tents, sleeping bags and hammocks. The company has been a respected supplier in the industry for a long time, providing equipment for expeditions to the North and the South pole as well as to the world’s highest mountains – but Bergans is still relatively unknown to the general public in Scandinavia. To change this, the company has developed a digital communications strategy, with continuous publishing, visuals and outdoor-related content at its core. When launched, Bergans used both Mynewsdesk and a competing platform, but after a short while, they decided to continue with Mynewsdesk only.
Mynewsdesk had what we were looking for. The platform is user friendly and intuitive, even before we had taken any of the courses we were offered – but what weighed the most was how easy it is to mirror social media postings. After their latest update, the design is also very nice and it looks quite good even when the content is mirrored on other platforms, says Anders Sten Nessem, Brand Communication Manager in Bergans Fritid AS.
One newsroom might become three
Today Bergans sell the majority of their products in physical stores, but the ambition is for both sales and operations to become more digital in the future. Last year, an online store was opened in Sweden, but most of the digital marketing is still done via the Norwegian newsroom on Mynewsdesk. Bergans is now exploring the possibility of opening two more newsrooms, one for Sweden and one for Germany, to tailor their communication for the different markets.
The interest in the outdoors has exploded in recent years; we want to both ride the wave and make it bigger. Every week we have editorial meetings where we go through the publication schedule and the results of the latest publications. We use these insights to focus more on the things that engage people and produce less of everything that doesn’t, says Nessem.
Mynewsdesk is the hub
Even as the newsrooms proliferate, Bergans content will be created by the production department at the Asker headquarters – with the same approach that won Bergans the Digital Storyteller of the Year award in Mynewsdesk’s annual Digital PR Awards competition. The newsrooms on Mynewsdesk will continue being the hub where all communication assets like press releases, events, news or blogs are gathered and then mirrored to other platforms.
We realised that there is limited interest in only hearing about our products, so we decided early on to tell people about everything that a hike can entail, from what to consider when staying overnight in the mountains to recipes that can be cooked in the great outdoors. So far, it seems to have been a good strategy; both the prize we won and the fact that our audience is constantly growing are proof of that, concludes Anders Sten Nessem.
