Hydration Brand CamelBak Uses Infrared and Technicolour to Capture How Activities Look and Feel

Look around the fitness marketing and outdoor product spaces and you’re going to see a lot of high-intensity activities and messaging that demands something of people – effort, energy, miles, sweat equity, time, productivity, etc. But adventures don’t care about how much you sweat, who you are or what you look like. What matters is how that activity makes you feel.

In a new campaign from CamelBak – ‘Do What Fills You Up’ – the leader in hydration innovation taps a diverse, inclusive and powerful group of brand ambassadors and visually arresting production techniques to transcend stereotypical representations of athletes and outdoor enthusiasts using water bottles and hydration packs, elevating the brand to a higher order: CamelBak is how you get hydrated, body and soul. No matter who you are or what you do to get centred, CamelBak wants you to fill up, so you can do what fills you up.

To generate brand and product breadth awareness, CamelBak and creative agency partner GYK Antler produced four seasonal tentpole videos. The video series illustrates the duality of activity + emotion and how that enables self-care, and the difference between what an activity looks like – shot in black and white – versus what it feels like – shot in infrared, giving the campaign an otherworldly technicolour vibe.

A winter video will go live in October, features Zoe Kalapos, a 25-year-old professional snowboarder specialising in halfpipe

A fall hiking video launching August 19th features Jenny Bruso, a writer and founder of Unlikely Hikers — a nationwide hiking community seeking to redefine the definition of 'outdoorsy' to include all body sizes, ethnicities, LGBTQIA+, people with disabilities, neurodivergence and beyond

In support of CamelBak’s summer PRIDE initiatives, a video that launched July 18th features Gabriela DeBues-Stafford, a LGBTQ+ advocate and professional runner in her 40s 

To align with spring travel timing, a video launched in June featuring Cliford Mervil, an adventure photographer and outdoor enthusiast born in Haiti

The campaign, concepted to seamlessly align with CamelBak’s overarching brand platform – “Thirst for More” – demonstrates the company’s commitment to accompanying every adventure and how they’re prioritising inclusivity and representation in their marketing efforts. ‘Do What Fills You Up’ represents a conscious departure from the idea that only high-intensity activities are worthy of being aspirational – because everyone’s journeys should be honoured.

‘Do What Fills You Up’ – which will live across YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, DTC efforts and digital, is CamelBak’s first campaign since naming GYK a creative agency partner in March 2022. Amid the global explosion of outdoor recreational activities during the pandemic, CamelBak hired GYK Antler to evolve their brand platform and continue to fuel growth. 

Tim Perry, senior manager, brand and product marketing at CamelBak said, “CamelBak is not only committed to accompanying every adventure, we’re also committed to highlighting diversity among adventurers and honouring all of the many different ways they experience an activity. Representation and inclusivity are paramount to us and this new campaign, under our 'Thirst for More' brand platform, presented the perfect opportunity for storytelling through the eyes of our amazing partner athletes and ambassadors.”

"No matter what fuels you, no matter what you do to feel whole, we believe hydration is the gateway to get to your 'more,' and CamelBak will support you with the hydration and carry solutions to anticipate your needs and help you function flawlessly." 

Ellen Foord, creative director at GYK Antler said, “To tell the stories of the CamelBak ambassadors, we needed to go beyond a generic representation of an activity – we needed to get to the specificity of what it feels like. Choosing to highlight the relationship between activity and emotion allowed us to portray the nuances of each ambassador’s deeply personal inner experiences of an activity. We loved the idea of illustrating the contrast between what an activity looks like versus what it feels like because it’s such a universal part of the human experience.” 

“Our goal was to create a compelling campaign concept expansive enough to tell the dynamic stories of CamelBak ambassadors’ ‘unseen’ emotional experience of an activity. We chose to shoot the campaign in infrared, for both the symbolism and the striking visual result, and then custom-tailored colour, sound design and pacing based on each ambassador’s story to produce differentiated expressions of one cohesive campaign narrative in alignment with the overarching brand ethos.”