From household names to emerging products and trends, branding surrounds our everyday lives. While we’re all very used to the brand experience as consumers, as a business operator, you may be wondering how exactly you can harness brand power in the outdoor hospitality space. In fact, it’s the power of campground branding that’s made the difference for Camp Fimfo—Northgate Resorts’ quirky trademark with two Texas locations—by attracting new and repeat campers while amplifying their name far and wide. 

In a recent webinar, we heard from Addison Wittry, Director of Brand Strategy at Northgate Resorts, about the research, design, and storytelling that shapes Fimfo’s success. Addison supports Northgate’s 33 campgrounds around the country and 11 unique brands across those properties. With his insights, you can walk away with the inspiration and successful branding knowledge to apply to your own marketing. 

Now let’s peek behind the curtain at the creative process that brought Fimfo’s award-winning brand to life! 

How Camp Fimfo Began

Texas Hill Country on the Guadalupe River was the flagship location for Camp Fimfo—although it is located just up the road from one of Northgate’s neighboring Jellystone properties. To avoid brand crowding with two Jellystones nearby, Northgate seized this opportunity to start from the very ground up with their new property’s name and image. 

“High-end camping takes itself very seriously, which we found as missing some playfulness and approachability,” said Addison. In their research, they also found family-friendly camping was often too tailored to little children and young families. To be frank, Addison shared, “We didn’t want to dilute the fact that grownups like to have fun, too!”

Thus, Camp Fimfo was born as a happy medium for the every-camper: families with children, couples, and friends alike. It also struck the perfect medium between the common pitfalls of under designing and over designing the camping experience. 

Like all solid brand foundations, Camp Fimfo’s began by addressing key questions: 

  • What’s our purpose?
  • How are we going to serve our camping community?
  • How can strategic design position us in the market to meet our objectives while leaving room to grow?

To hear what “Fimfo” stands for as an insider acronym and other ingredients of the brand’s secret sauce, tune into the full webinar here.

Campground Branding Formation in Practice

Creating a mood board is a very informal exercise of compiling digital graphics, magazine clippings, photographs, and more that strike inspiration and have some cohesion. Addison encourages listeners that it’s meant to be a messy process, one where you piece together literal pieces of an idea to form a unique direction with enough legs to pursue. For Camp Fimfo, their initial inspiration was to merge the nostalgic summer camp experience with boutique hotel or bed-and-breakfast vibes.

Paid agencies or consultants can certainly assist with this iterative process, but it’s great to explore the creative path on your own first. Mood boarding will help you see and feel the it-factor you’re after, which may be refined many times over later. This free-flowing process should take place before the name and logo creation stages, too. Not sure where to start? Below are a few additional questions to mull over as you consider your campground branding.

  • Who else (e.g., competitors, companies in other industries) is doing things you like and what are those things?
  • How can you take what you like and adapt it into something original, beginning with word associations and concepts? Try doodling. 
  • What are possible visual and physical manifestations of your brand concept—colors, objects, themes, imagery? This is where mood barding can help.
  • Are your ideas still relevant, tailored, and attractive to your desired audience?

Beyond the common visual aspects of a brand such as color palette, voice and tone also distinguishes Camp Fimfo from the crowd. For example, they’ve coined “the great outside” in lieu of the more common mantra, “the great outdoors.” It may seem like a small tweak, but this deliberate tagline aids the brand’s approachability, consistency, and casual nature. 

Merging Brand and Experience

Remember, the actual experience someone has onsite is the majority of what encompasses your brand. Addison distills this into a simple question, “What do people say about you when you’re not in the room?” The experience you are creating onsite is the most tangible and memorable way to translate your brand. This of course goes hand-in-hand with the visual and online advertising of your park, but this should also reassure you of the ultimate control you have over the branding process when and where it matters most. 

In the remainder of the webinar, Addison reveals more aspects of Camp Fimfo’s iconic identity and campground branding strategy, including: 

  • Instances of how the brand comes to life on the ground, including park photos
  • Custom furnishings, murals, and merchandise ideas to compliment your brand
  • Ways to invest in, grow, and bring value to your brand while measuring that value
  • An explanation of Fimfo’s campy “doors to nowhere”, and much more!

Catch the rest of these topics and our Q&A with fellow campground operators at the link below. 

Haley Dalian is a lifelong Michigander who takes advantage of recreation throughout the state’s changing seasons—from snow skiing to scuba diving in the Great Lakes. A former Campspot marketing manager, Haley holds a B.A. degree in public policy from Michigan State University and an M.S. degree in sustainability from the University of Michigan. She is passionate about environmental stewardship, exploring the outdoors, and has never met a potato she didn’t like.