The North Face serves up a rebellious manifesto in a new brand campaign themed “We Play Different” that seeks to elevate the outdoors beyond all other traditional sporting environments.

The campaign includes the 30-second spot above, which uses a mirrored split-screen effect to show outdoor athletes in action. The North Face is positioning the campaign as both a celebration of the brand’s fearless spirit and core values as well as a challenge to consumers to step into total immersion in the outdoors. 

The work also includes print executions with outdoor photography, as well as the manifesto below. The campaign will appear on YouTube, in print outlets including The New York Times, and on wild postings in New York during New York Fashion Week.

The North Face: ‘We Play Different’ manifesto

Out here things are different.
They look different. They feel different. They sound different.
You won’t find state of the art stadiums.
Only couloirs and canyons.
You won’t hear starter pistols or whistles or the roar of eighty thousand fanatics, screaming at the top of their lungs.
You’ll find no mascots in animal suits out here.
But you might find bears, or wolves or bald eagles.
Nature doesn’t play games and neither do we.
So out here we play different.
We don’t play by the rules,
we make them up as we go along.
We play hide and seek with convention.
We play tag with potential.
We play mind games with can’t.
Kiss chase with powder.
We play hooky with the status quo,
and hard to get with boring.
We play roughhouse with failure,
And chicken with gravity.
We play and we play and we play.
And when we play there’s always a little voice in our head
that reminds us why we do what we do.
It reminds us why we play the way we play.
It doesn’t say much. It doesn’t need to.
It says all we ever need to hear.
This is going to be wild.
We don’t play games. We Play Different.

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