Patagonia wants to use its customer community to encourage participation in the United States legislative elections on November 3. The company has launched an initiative in which it will offer a $100 credit to people who encourage three friends, family members or acquaintances to vote. The campaign involves an investment of 11.2 million dollars and leads the brand to become directly involved in electoral mobilization through a mechanism that combines activism, community and commercial incentive.

The initiative will begin on September 26 and will work through Relentless, a platform that will be integrated into the Patagonia website. Participants must enter the data of three people they want to encourage to participate in the elections. Based on their address, the tool will create a voting plan for each person with information about the place where they can vote, the possibilities of doing so in advance or by mail, and the corresponding identification requirements.

The participant may later send that information by text message or email. Once you indicate that you have done so, you can choose between receiving $100 in credit to spend at Patagonia or allocating the same $100 as a donation to the League of Conservation Voters, a US organization focused on environmental issues and public policy.
The reward, furthermore, does not depend on whether those three people end up voting or who they vote for. The incentive is awarded for taking the first step and contacting them to provide them with the information necessary to participate.

11.2 million dollars to mobilize 11.2 million environmentalists

The total amount that Patagonia has reserved for the initiative responds to a specific fact. The Environmental Voter Project estimates that 11.2 million Americans identified as environmentalists did not participate in the 2024 presidential elections. The organization works precisely to identify citizens concerned about climate and environmental issues with a low propensity to vote and encourage them to participate regularly in electoral processes.

“We couldn’t believe it”explained Corley Kenna, head of Patagonia’s Communication and Policy team, to Fast Company. The company believes that it can use its own community to reach some of these people and encourage their participation at a time when it understands that environmental issues require greater citizen involvement.

The strategy is based on a practice known as relational organizingbased on mobilizing people through those with whom they already have a personal relationship. In this case, Patagonia chooses to dedicate resources to activating its community so that its own members can contact friends, family and neighbors, instead of limiting the initiative to a conventional advertising campaign.

The approach is especially significant from a brand point of view because it transfers Patagonia’s environmental positioning to an action directly linked to electoral participation. The company does not limit itself to communicating a cause or generically asking people to vote and, instead, introduces an incentive associated with a specific mobilization action among individuals.

A political involvement that Patagonia dates back to 1978

Patagonia’s entry into this field is not something new. According to Fast Companythe company dates its first actions to promote political participation in 1978, when it published an advertisement in a local newspaper in Ventura (California), defending candidates and electoral measures favorable to environmental protection. And in the 2024 elections, Patagonia claims to have contributed to around 5,000 people voting or participating as volunteers.

For the midterm elections this 2026, the company is articulating its activity under the “Vote Big” platform and the message “Our Vote’s on Earth.” On its US website, Patagonia currently points to the protection of nearly 90 million acres of public lands as one of the issues framing its call for electoral participation.

The campaign also comes in a context in which the Environmental Voter Project continues to point out the distance between environmental concern and political participation. Since 2015, the organization claims to have contacted 12.8 million environmentalists who did not vote or did so in an unusual way and estimates that more than 2.18 million have since become regular voters.

With its new initiative, Patagonia takes this issue to the level of the brand and its relationship with consumers. The $100 works as an incentive to activate a network of personal contacts, while the $11.2 million allocated to the program translates into economic terms the same number of environmentalists who remained outside the polls in 2024.

In this way, the company once again places its environmental positioning beyond commercial communication and links it this time to a concrete action on electoral behavior: mobilizing those who are already part of its community so that, in turn, they try to mobilize those around them.

More info: Patagonia Vote Big