Columbia Omniheat

Part of the largest and most integrated global marketing campaign in the company's history, the Columbia Omniheat design emphasized cinematic seamlessness as the user moved among product shots and videos of incredibly attractive people behaving incredibly… stupidly.

At the 2010 Winter Olympic Games, members of the Canadian Freestyle Ski Team were equipped with custom Columbia Omni-Heat gear that helped them stay warm and limber in the successful pursuit of the first Canadian Olympic gold medal ever won on home soil.

To share the benefit of this groundbreaking advance in the world of outdoor apparel, Columbia created a global ad campaign as innovative as Omni-Heat itself. The marketing launch featured print, online, web broadcast, social media, and event marketing that introduced Omni-Heat to the public in an interactive and experiential way. During the Freezer Tour, consumers were invited to test Omni-Heat products while singing karaoke in The Coldfessional - a large freezer that transported them to the coldest places on earth.

At the center of it all was the website.

Butler, Shine, Stern, and Partners produced a series of videos showing Olympic athletes in ridiculous situations. The humorous clips titled all featured half-naked people playing in the snow to demonstrate the power of Omni-Heat.

I took the visual designs produced by Transistor Studios and combined them with Columbia’s content to deliver an experience that framed the absurdity of the situations with equally absurd, over-the-top interaction design.

Rotating globes. Creeping ice ages. Giant freezers. Seamless navigation and transition effects never broke the narrative. One might say the experience kept people frozen in place.