Columbia | HikeFest
Results
138
pieces of content
308M+
total audience
617k+
estimated reach
Brief
Gert Boyle, Columbia’s founder and matriarch, once gave a now-legendary direction to her team: “It’s perfect. Now make it better.”
And so, in this spirit, Columbia returned to the trails and tides of the British Isles for HikeFest 2025.
The brief was to take last year’s debut and turn the volume up to 11 with a headline-making event that would move media, spark social and stamp Columbia’s footprint on the cultural conversation.
Idea
How far would you be willing to go to get lost in the music?
This wasn’t a festival you could Uber to.
For HikeFest’s second act, we leveraged the power of creative consistency – a strategy proven to generate +28% more business impact across metrics from profit to market share – and took it further. Quite literally.
In a northwestern corner off the Welsh mainland lies an island called Anglesey, and on its edge, a seldom-seen sandy bay. Here, Mercury Prize-nominated Bombay Bicycle Club took to the stage, but to hear them, you’d have to find them.
Handed sets of secret coordinates, Columbia Hike Society ambassadors laced up and led 200+ hikers from across the UK on six sold-out routes. Some walked eighteen miles, others four, but all traversed coastlines towards a golden bay that scarcely felt real. And on a weekend when Wales was hotter than Ibiza.
As Columbia flags lined the final approach, our festivalgoers swapped phone signal for the sound of indie rock royalty Bombay Bicycle Club and support act Lavender live by the waves.
Sun-baked from dancing in the wilderness, the sea became the after-lunch plunge pool, and with that, the CHS summer season of 40+ free hikes across Europe began.
Amplification
HikeFest was concepted as an earned media moment; a story so thrillingly off-grid and culturally attuned, it practically wrote itself. Guided by our Creativity. Multiplied. ethos, we positioned it as ‘the UK’s most remote gig’ – a headline-worthy hook made to resonate across the entire media spectrum.
Top-tier journalists and influencers had arrived in force, and they were eager to talk about it. National coverage followed quickly, with HikeFest claiming coveted features in The Independent, The Mirror, Time Out, and The Express.
Meanwhile, social feeds lit up. Over 100 pieces of original content, from carefully curated influencers and brand ambassadors, captured the raw beauty of the hike, the intimacy of the music and Columbia’s central role in the adventure. The result was more than 400,000 organic impressions and a combined audience north of 670,000 on social alone.
Post-event, handcrafted follow-ups, bespoke outreach and scroll-stopping organic social content across Columbia’s owned channels ensured HikeFest’s magic lingered long after the boots came off.
Services
Creative ideation
Experiential including end-to-end event delivery, logistics and management
Influencer marketing
Public relations
Content creation
