Waterproof Jackets Show Their Strength Not in the Rain, but in the Shower

Arc'teryx, a 33-year-old outdoor gear company, usually relies on traditional channels to advertise like print or paid media, and for many years has hidden in the shadow of its bigger competitors like Patagonia and NorthFace. More recently though, the company has found their share of newfound brand loyalists and even celebrity endorsers.

Their jackets are high-high quality and relatively expensive as far as jackets go, but that cache helped put them on the shoulders of celebs from Drake to DiCaprio, which slowly helped build and cement their brand as a pseudo luxury and utilitarian clothier.

While celebrity endorsements are are known to be one of the strongest signals of success for a seemingly under the radar brand, becoming a TikTok trend is now the holy grail.

Over the past year, hundreds of users began posting videos of themselves wearing a $599 Acr'teryx Alpha AR jacket, which is promoted as a premium waterproof hooded jacket with Gore-Tex fabric, not in any sort of picturesque adventurous location, but instead, in their showers, showing off the mesmerizing visual of water droplets falling off the fabric and on to the shower floor.

These original shower videos then causes a string of challengers where other TikTok users would show how the fabric would repel other liquids in other odd venues (e.g., pouring liquor down a coat while at a club) and even had some showing how their non Arc'teryx jackets faired (horribly) in similar conditions. All of these videos amounted to millions of views and impressions for the brand.

Though the company struggled to directly link impressions to sales, it clearly demonstrated that social media trends can come in the strangest of places

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