Why the heck we’re offering a weeklong creative retreat in France this fall (yes, really)
Or: Brand as unexpected authenticity
Hi there! You’re reading the Bonfire newsletter from Kevan Lee & Shannon Deep. Each week, we highlight brand, marketing, and creative learnings from our experience as in-house marketers turned agency owners who think a lot about creativity, our relationship to work, and how all of that impacts our identities. We’ll also feature insights from our digital community of super smart folks (which you’re welcome to join).
Wishing you a great week!
How to create an authentic brand activation (French countryside not required)
At Bonfire, we talk about brand as the sum of all experiences that someone has with a company.
What a freeing idea!
Brands are not limited by what can be manufactured in a company’s widget factory, what can be shipped by its product teams, or what can be benchmarked against established competitors. (Rather, brands are only limited by the imaginations of their CEOs…joking/not joking.)
But the best brands think waaaaay bigger than their core offerings. Mailchimp runs a print magazine. Loom curates a shop of remote work essentials. Floyd furniture has its own Airbnbs. Wistia is practically a media company at this point.
Rather than distract and pull focus from the business, these activations and offerings deepen our perception of the brand, often providing a moment of delight, creating more customer affinity, and driving meaningful differentiation. It’s almost as if (and this is gonna sound cRaZy), companies can and should build long-term, diversified value for their customers and audiences rather than find the most efficient hand-to-mouth way to make money.
Any company can do this. Every brand should!
These experiences are not reserved for grown-up brands with big budgets. You can pull this off today, no matter your stage, no matter your revenue, no matter how long you’ve been in business.
Case in point: us.
(Jump down a few paragraphs if you can’t wait any longer to find out what-in-the-French-château we’re talking about.)
The recipe is way more simple than you think: Unique brand experiences must be authentic—and bonus points if they are unexpected.
Successful activations are authentic when they feel like an organic expression of what the brand already stands for, values, and believes. They are consistent with one’s existing relationship or perception of the brand. If you are brave enough to wear your purpose on your sleeve, then an authentic activation will never feel “random.” But it may feel unexpected. The best activations have an element of surprise or delight, which comes from a blend of your audience reacting, “That is so YOU!” and “That is so cool!”
How we’re applying this at Bonfire
Bonfire, our little toddler business, is part-agency, part-community, and all-Trojan Horse for what our brand really stands for, which is a more creative world for everyone.
With a brand vision that big, it’s easy to fit a lot of things into our brand bag: we have an agency that helps companies tell their story with more creative flair, a community that brings together creative professionals to support one another, and the list goes on. (Literally, the list goes on and on; we have so many business ideas. Send help.)
But one of the futures we have always dreamed about for our brand is crafting real-life, in-person experiences that take people out of the grind and show them that a more creative, connected, and fulfilling relationship with work is possible.
Put differently, we want to embark on our own version of Bonfire “activations” in order to lean even further into exploring how to leverage unexpected, experiential activations as authentic expressions of our desire to build a more creative world for everyone.
So we’re announcing our first-ever retreat: The Soft Reset. It’s a manifestation of our ethos: a living, breathing brand experience that brings our community together to reconnect with their creative identities and move forward in their careers with intention.
Wanna come? Great!
Get in, loser. We’re going to the French countryside.
(Sorry we called you “loser”; we’re too Millennial to resist a Mean Girls reference.)
Join Bonfire for our pilot retreat: The Soft Reset
September 27 - October 3, 2025
For this very first retreat, we couldn’t escape the idea that the people in our orbit—you, reading this newsletter, in fact—may just really want a break from The Grind™️ of being a knowledge work professional in the 21st century A.D. It’s hard out there for a creative!
A sabbatical sounds kind of nice, right?
Sabbaticals are often official vacations granted by employers to reward your many years on the job, and they are meant to recharge you for, well, another bunch of years on the job. We believe that sabbaticals can also be used to reflect while you recharge, to figure out what it is you really want when you return to the workplace and the homespace, what you’re really excited about doing next, and how you might take small steps to get there.
For one week in late September, we’ll gather at a serene château in the French countryside with a small group of fellow creatives who are curious about designing their most meaningful careers.
The programming is light but impactful:
Discussions led by our featured guest, Sam Ogborn, a marketer turned content creator who took an unconventional approach to her own career. Sam will guide us through how to reconnect with our creative identities and reimagine our authentic career paths forward.
Hands-on workshops in unexpected mediums to spark joy and curiosity—no pressure, no outcome needed.
Plenty of unstructured time to wander, write, nap, explore, work on your own projects, or just be. Hang out in the heated pool, sauna, or steam room, or walk the 17 acres of wooded grounds with a lake.
An onsite French chef, Maëva Chiappe, will prepare every meal and share a creative cooking demonstration with you.
Long, unrushed dinners with fellow retreat-goers—people who get it, because they’re in it, too.
Cheese.
We only have 10 spots for this event, and we expect them to fill up quickly. If the idea is tickling your brain in the slightest, please do reach out so that we can keep you on our radar!
There is lots more information on our website where you can get all the details about the beautiful accommodations, the weekly schedule, the travel considerations, and much more.
At The Soft Reset, everything is optional. Nothing is urgent. This isn’t a conference. It’s a sabbatical, a pause, a breath of fresh air for your work and your spirit.
Let us know if this resonates with you!
We’d love to hear from you. Whether you’re free this fall to join us in person or not. Whether this fits within your 2025 budget or not. Any validation and feedback would be helpful as we shape this programming into the future. Just reply to this email!
Notable links, convos, and events
You can see all this and more in the Campout community.
AI event alert! We’re always eager to discover the best new ways to use AI, so we’re beyond excited to welcome writer, editor, and business-builder Meg Moore to share how she uses AI in her workflows without losing the human voice. The event is this Wednesday at noon Eastern. RSVP here to let us know you’re coming!
Our template library is chock full of useful stuff and now features a brand new template from
about navigating your career. Anyone on our paid plans gets access to all the templates plus Mary’s new Career Ecology framework.This week’s co-working session included a nice long chitchat about workplace identity. Check out the recap notes here, and keep your eyes on the Events space for upcoming co-working opportunities!
But wait! There’s more…
Wanna be friends?
If you love this newsletter and wish it were more interactive, you’re in luck! Join us over in Campout, our digital community for creative marketers and the creative curious.
Wanna work with us?
If you need help with brand strategy and storytelling, fractional brand and marketing leadership, and bringing your brand strategy to life in impactful ways, send us an email at hello@aroundthebonfire.com to get in touch.
As always, you can find us on LinkedIn, Instagram, and Threads.
