WillowWorks has evolved into Liquid Spark, a media & marketing agency focused on the adventure & outdoor industries and sustainability. Different form – expanded powers.
Our Liquid Spark mission statement:
To create practical marketing that inspires adventure, action, and stewardship of people, place, and planet.
Just like my sons’ favorite Pokemon characters evolve from lower forms with youthful qualities through middle forms with expanded abilities, then ultimately to top forms that are bad-ass and powerful – so too, has WillowWorks, Inc. evolved. We’ve added Social PR, Tools & Training, and a focused Environment & Sustainability ethic to our evolved form. In the process, we’ve changed our name to Liquid Spark.
Why Liquid Spark? Well, for starters, water is the dominant element that calls to us. We think of water, in all its forms, as the spark that fuels our year-round play in the outdoors. Think rivers, lakes, mountains – paddling, skiing, fishing, swimming, etc. But, it’s also more than that, because we aren’t so shallow as to live only for these outdoor sporting passions. Water is the spark of life and without it our planet, (and that means all of us) wouldn’t be here. As an outdoor-focused marketing agency, we can help people enjoy the outdoors for wellness, community, and stewardship reasons, as well as pure fun. Liquid Spark has an explicit connection for us to the outdoors and adventure. We also really like the energy and zest the name implies, and how it sounds. That’s good because we’ll be saying it a lot!
But, what about WillowWorks? WillowWorks started in late 2007, rather unintentionally after I found my career path suddenly derailed. Launching a strategic marketing company specializing in the outdoor adventure industry started out as a “must-feed-the-family” recovery plan. I had accumulated quite the set of practical, strategic, and wickedly detailed business experiences in marketing, retail, operations, and finance, from Wall Street to Main Street. Along the way, I snuck in an MBA degree. My passion for the outdoor industry started early – growing up in the ski industry in Vermont. That interest later expanded into paddlesports and bicycling as a guide, instructor, manager, and senior executive. WillowWorks became a perfect way to help get people to experience adventure recreation in the outdoors. It also meant I could work with the outdoor industry tribe whose values align so well with mine. Over these past six years, WillowWorks has had the good fortune to work with some of the top outfitters in the US and Costa Rica. We are known as the company that “gets” the outdoors and the special challenges of running an adventure company. Outfitter owners know they can rely on sound strategy and practical marketing that achieves their business goals, with no sales hype with us.
Now, as we enter 2014, we’re stepping up our game to a higher and bolder intentional level (thus the “evolve” metaphor). The accidental marketing agency named WillowWorks was no longer the right container for this expansion. Voila – with the exceptional help of the two kids who were the reason WillowWorks started, we named the new company.
