“Surprising hikers on the trail where they would least expect it.” Merrell Magic

Coming to a Vermont state hiking trail on July 16^th will be a commercial marketing campaign consisting of a “pop-up” back country lemonade stand sponsored and set up by Merrell Outdoor apparel and Backpacker Magazine. Vtdigger.com reports: The free lemonade is part of a social media marketing campaign called Merrell Magic to “celebrate the trails by surprising hikers and trail crews when they least expect it,” according to Merrell’s website.

The “magic” usually takes the form of weary long distance hikers stumbling upon a cooler with ice cold sports drinks on the Appalachian Trail or a water cache in dry areas of the Pacific Crest Trail. Merrel Magic representatives have even cooked [?] beef tartare with duck egg for backpackers in Providence Canyon State Park in Georgia and thrown a pizza party for a Mount Rainier National Park trail crew.

That’s right. Vermont — the state that in 1968 (fifty years ago) banned highway billboards and has strictly enforced it to the point of challenging a town’s “vintage” style painted roadside mural (painted on a barn no less) — will now have businesses “popping-up” lemonade stands on state trails “… where they least expect it!”

It isn’t clear what, if anything is “in this” for the state to allow  Merrell and Backpacker Magazine’s lemonade stand to “pop-up” on a rural trail. Rob Peterson, regional manager of the state’s northwest parks, said : “[…] the lemonade stand proposal is an appropriate use of state trails because the wooden stand is “low impact” — it’s carried up on a backpack — and will only stay in place for a short period of time.

But what does it look like? Well, here’s a 23-second Merrell promotional video of their company lemonade stand popping up at Corona Arch in Utah https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IuJ9c9GD2U (picture the Pepsi Generation or Coke’s Teach the World to Sing commercials )

Now called “branding” not too long ago something like this was simply called advertising stunts. But, for Vermont  it is just a little “low impact” commercialization of part of our state parks this summer. What product branding stunts could be next?

Makes me wonder if Governor Scott can or wants to keep a lid on this kind of thing — is this a  state promotional he wants to make? I mean some people carry branding to an extreme and cover every available inch with signage for a business sponsor.

Opening up Vermont parks and trails for commercial promotion  could be a tough one to limit or stop once businesses start their  “pop-up trail magic” branding (aka advertising) stunts and cooked beef tartare is served on our trails.

Maybe Merrell should take the hint and make this ad-fest like steak tartare: exceedingly rare.