Craig Rowley had been an REI customer before he became one of its senior marketers. Classes from the outdoor co-op, he has said, helped him summit Mount Rainier. It is an unusually tidy preface to a career chapter: learn the mountain from the brand, then help the brand persuade the country to choose the outdoors over a shopping cart.
In 2015, during Rowley’s rise to vice president of marketing, REI closed its stores, distribution centers and headquarters on Black Friday. Employees were paid to spend the day outside. The invitation became #OptOutside, a campaign, a company decision and a small rebellion against the annual retail stampede. Before the first Black Friday arrived, more than 750,000 people had signed up to join.
Rowley later explained the choice with brisk simplicity: “We chose to do it because we felt it was the right thing to do for our employees.” The campaign wanted attention, certainly. It also put something at risk. The doors were locked on a day when retailers normally regard every unlocked minute as sacred.
“We wanted to be disruptive and to show how businesses can think and act differently.”Craig Rowley on #OptOutside
That combination, conviction with a visible cost, is the useful thread through Rowley’s public career. His résumé contains an improbable retail shelf: Procter & Gamble, Porsche, Harley-Davidson, Toyota, REI, Groupon, Shutterfly, Included Health and now Cotopaxi. A motorcycle and a photo book have little in common until somebody asks why either one matters to its owner. Rowley has spent decades asking versions of that question.
Chapter one / Learning the symbols
The agency years taught him that products travel as identity
His career began on the client side at Procter & Gamble, followed by a long education in agencies. He worked at Hal Riney & Partners, moved to Poland for Young & Rubicam, spent a decade at Carmichael Lynch, led Borders Perrin Norrander in Portland and joined Saatchi & Saatchi Los Angeles in 2009 to oversee account management on Toyota.
At Carmichael Lynch, his clients included Harley-Davidson and Porsche. The agency’s Harley work pushed the motorcycle brand toward younger customers and strengthened its digital and direct presence. For Porsche, Rowley oversaw an international SUV launch, helped establish the marque’s digital presence and developed its first dealer co-op field team. These were practical assignments with budgets, dealers and sales targets. They were also lessons in symbolism. People do not wear a Harley logo because they admire the efficiency of transportation.
Agency life also trained him to move between categories without losing the human plot. Intel and Columbia Sportswear needed different vocabularies. Toyota and Mountain Hardwear occupied different landscapes. The common discipline was locating the tension that makes a company recognizable. Rowley has described purpose-led branding as “not for the faint of heart.” A point of view clarifies whom a brand is for, but it also makes neutrality unavailable.
Chapter two / From a campaign to a choice
At REI, purpose became an operating decision
Rowley joined REI in 2013 as director of integrated marketing, moved through a divisional vice president role and became vice president of marketing in late 2015. His remit was wide: advertising, local marketing, internet marketing, digital content, loyalty, analytics and community engagement. The breadth matters because #OptOutside could not live as a slogan alone. Store operations, employee policy, communications and outdoor partners all had to make the promise physical.
The result won the Titanium Grand Prix at Cannes Lions and entered the permanent calendar of brand case studies. Rowley’s own interpretation was less decorative. Businesses could think and act differently. The paired verbs are the entire point. Thought without action becomes copy. Action without coherent thought becomes a stunt.
REI’s Force of Nature work brought another value into public view by challenging gender inequality outdoors. Both initiatives widened the brand’s story beyond gear. Rowley put the principle plainly in an interview: “It’s not just about selling stuff.” He also argued that any brand can have a purpose that is meaningful. The difficult part is choosing one close enough to the company’s behavior to survive contact with reality.
Chapter three / Meaning in different packages
A voucher, a photo book and the motive behind the object
In 2019, Rowley became Groupon’s global chief marketing officer. The business wanted to outgrow its reputation as a daily-deal voucher machine and become a marketplace for local experiences. Rowley talked about building deeper connections with customers and merchants, adding national partners and investing more aggressively in social, YouTube, cinema and experiential marketing. He noted that people were moving from buying things toward buying experiences.
The assignment was less a new logo than a new mental filing cabinet. Groupon wanted consumers to stop placing it under coupon and start placing it under what shall we do tonight? Rowley’s language followed the desired movement: away from the voucher, toward the neighborhood; away from a discount event, toward a repeat habit.
At Shutterfly, where he became senior vice president and chief marketing officer in 2020, the object returned. Yet his team again looked behind it. The Make It a Thing campaign shifted emphasis from the merchandise customers produced to the meaning they put inside it. “Every item made with Shutterfly has a backstory,” Rowley said. “That’s what makes it truly valuable.”
A mug is ceramic until it carries an old joke. A card is paper until a distant relative puts it on the mantel. Shutterfly’s largest brand campaign at the time leaned into that private emotional payload while courting younger customers through streaming, Snapchat and TikTok. The media plan was current. The insight was ancient: objects become precious when people use them to carry a relationship.
A trail map through four decades
Chapter four / The llama brief
Cotopaxi already had character. The job is to let it grow intact.
Rowley joined Cotopaxi in December 2024. He remembered noticing the young company from inside REI years earlier. It arrived at events with llamas and staged Questivals, quirky adventure races that made community participation look like an elaborate dare. In his announcement, he called himself an official member of the “llama herd.” For an executive appointment, it was pleasantly short on mahogany.
The playful surface comes with hard commitments. Cotopaxi makes colorful travel and outdoor gear, operates as a certified B Corporation and dedicates 1% of revenue to its foundation, which backs poverty-alleviation work. Its remnant-fabric packs made material constraint part of the visual language. The company’s promise ties durability, ethical production and social impact to the product itself.
That gives Rowley an enviable brief and a delicate one. Distinctive brands attract growth precisely because they feel unlike the market. Growth then produces a hundred sensible requests to make them more familiar. Cotopaxi must expand channels and audiences without replacing its oddness with fluent corporate beige.
By mid-2025, CEO Lindsay Shumlas described community as a major focus for Rowley. Cotopaxi had increased its investment in social-first influencer work, targeting college students and young professionals through creators aligned with the brand’s curiosity, quirkiness and purpose. Rowley also appeared at Outdoor Retailer Industry Day to discuss authentic partnerships, social engagement and consumer shifts.
“Cotopaxi has always been about redefining what it means to be an outdoor brand.”Craig Rowley, on joining Cotopaxi
The creator economy changes the machinery but not the standard. A borrowed audience can produce reach. A shared value can produce participation. Cotopaxi’s old Questivals understood this before “community-led growth” acquired its conference badge. People remember what they did together, especially if a llama was involved.
Field notes / A reusable playbook
Three ideas worth carrying into the next brief
Put behavior behind the belief
#OptOutside worked because the operating choice made the sentence credible. If a value never changes a decision, customers will correctly file it under decoration.
Market the motive, not only the object
Shutterfly’s object held a relationship. Groupon’s voucher held an experience. Outdoor gear holds the anticipation of going somewhere. The motive gives a product emotional range.
Invite people into a role
A customer can buy. A member can belong. A creator can rally others. A llama-herd member can tell a better story at dinner. Participation gives the audience a part to play.
Rowley’s public aspirations at Cotopaxi are straightforward: build the community of brand enthusiasts, help drive the next chapter of growth and inspire more people to see the world and make it better. The phrasing carries both sides of the assignment. There is growth to deliver and a mission that makes the growth worth having.
His career offers no magic formula. It offers something more useful: a repeated practice. Find the human meaning inside the category. Make the company act in agreement with it. Give people a way to join. Measure what happens, but do not confuse the dashboard with the destination.
Mount Rainier remains a fitting image. The summit is visible; the route is earned one decision at a time. Rowley first climbed it with help from classes offered by a brand. Then he helped that brand open a much larger trail. At Cotopaxi, the colors are brighter and the mascot has four legs. The work is familiar: make the invitation real enough that people want to come along.