Stealing the Kendal Mountain Festival Spotlight

THE YEAR OF THE YURT

“KMF this year??” is a phrase heard in UK outdoor industry conversations about as often as “Hang on, I left my down jacket in the pub."

Kendal Mountain Festival is now “the world’s premier cultural gathering for the outdoor sector”. Lovely words there from a little newspaper called The Guardian. But words that pose a problem: with every global brand worth its salt turning up to Kendal and ramping up the amp on its own story, how do we guarantee our partners get heard - and seen - through the weekend?

Luckily, we’ve racked up a timesheet-imploding number of Kendal team hours over the years. More than enough time, then, to know that brand education starts not with big wafty messages or new products, but by getting bums on seats and ears in stories.

It’s why every activation idea for Kendal 2024 had to pass a simple test: will the concept jump out of the programme and lasso the punters/media in with a single sentence? The result was a schedule packed with more ACM clients than ever on site, showing up in local breweries, packed-out quiz rooms, hangover-soothing ASMR soundscapes, and Utah (thanks, Outdoor Recreation Archive).

And it’s why, after another year of gold-standard collaboration between ACM creatives and KMF organisers, the YETI Yurt became the most popular activation on the site. By a Lake District mile.

Our huge, nomadic, creative canvas palace is where the steal-that-programme mentality shone brightest. It was a creative totem to YETI’s ambassadors, communities, product stories, and brand values, all elevated and united in the most authentically entertaining way possible.

We had live folk songs and fishing tales with friends of the brand. We respun the classic cinema screening by giving the audience an active role in what they watched. We served up 60-odd sausages with a YETI BBQ pro before diving into a celebration of fearless women in male-dominated industries.

So, er, KMF this year?