From Griz Gear to Brand Storyteller

Madeline Staples grew up with maroon and silver in the house. Her parents, both University of Montana alumni — her mother a journalism graduate and her father an accounting major. In their Butte home, there was Griz gear, regular trips to Missoula and the promise of game days.

For Staples, attending UM felt like a homecoming.

Still, her arrival in Missoula came at an unusual moment. She graduated from high school in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic had shortened her senior year and turned the first weeks of college into a question mark. “It was kind of a really nervous time,” Staples said. “No one knew if the University would send people home again.” While some peers considered taking gap years, her parents encouraged her to begin. She did — moving in with close friends, studying media arts and eventually adding a journalism minor to the mix.

That combination is the engine that drives her work as content manager for Planetary Design, the Bonner-based company behind five outdoor and coffee-focused brands: BruTrek, Airscape, ethoz, Cannascape and Fresh-Port. On any given day, Staples may be directing a product shoot, editing a video, designing a graphic, building an email campaign or managing the company’s five Instagram accounts, plus its TikTok and Facebook. It is, she said, a role with many moving parts and plenty of room to create.

“I have the privilege of getting to work in a couple of broad roles as a content manager,” Staples said. The job includes social media and email marketing, brand photography and video, graphic design, occasional packaging work and collaboration with Planetary Design’s marketing and sales teams. For someone who has always loved taking photos, writing and reading, it is an unusually natural fit.

Planetary Design makes that fit even more Montana-specific. The company operates from a repurposed lumber mill in Bonner, near the meeting of the Blackfoot and Clark Fork rivers. Its products are designed and field-tested in Montana, where the company’s staff of outdoor enthusiasts puts the gear through its paces. The company’s origin traces back to the simple want of delicious coffee while backpacking in the wilderness.

Staples had no job waiting when she graduated in May 2024. She was focused on finishing her final projects and had housing secured through August — enough, she figured, to give herself a little time. A week or two after commencement, she began looking for work, determined to stay in Missoula. Then she found Planetary Design’s opening for a content manager.

“I just applied,” she said. She was interviewing for other positions, too, but something about the visit stuck. “When I went there for the first time, it just had a really good feel to it,” she said. “I felt really like; this is where I’m supposed to go work.” The role promised creativity and the chance to build new skills. It also offered something less easily listed on a résumé: a chance to tell a Montana story from inside a Montana company.

Her preparation for that work began in UM’s media arts program, where she focused on digital design and technology. The program introduced her to filmmaking, story writing, Adobe Creative Cloud tools, animation, coding, web design and video editing — expertise she taps into daily. She also credits a professional portfolio course with helping creative students translate their work into a website and résumé that employers can understand.

“I learned pretty much all of the skills I use every day at work,” Staples said. The program’s smaller classes give students time with faculty, while collaborative projects teach them how to share ideas, take criticism and bring a group vision to life.

Staples took a journalism class to fulfill a general education requirement and, having already begun to explore photography in high school, found herself drawn to explore visual storytelling.

“Once I finished that course, I realized that there were more opportunities in journalism school for design and photography and certain things I maybe wasn’t getting as much of from the media arts program,” she said.

She also spent a year as a designer for the Montana Kaimin, helping craft sports pages and feature layouts. The work was a crash course in publication design, deadlines and working with a team. Media arts strengthened her technical fluency and creative storytelling; journalism sharpened her writing and visual communication.

She says her job as the growth marketing manager is about more than taking pictures or making social media videos.

“There’s so much more behind it,” she said. “It has to do much more with strategy and marketing, and it takes a lot of planning and time.”

A good social media post starts long before it appears on someone’s feed. Staples maps out monthly content calendars and email campaigns, develops creative concepts, schedules multi-hour video shoots and searches for the features that make a product useful, distinctive and worth sharing. Lately, she and her team have focused on creating shoppable video content as Planetary Design expands through retail, wholesale, Amazon and TikTok Shop.

Her contribution, she said, is rooted in the Treasure State. “I’m really committed to telling the brand story and showcasing these really quality products and showcasing how proud we are to be a Montana brand,” Staples said. Growing up in Butte and building a life in Missoula has given her an intuitive understanding of the people, landscapes and outdoor culture that animate the company’s work.

She has advice for students who might be looking at an uncertain future from the first days of college, as she once did: worry less, look harder. “There is so much opportunity if you just look for it,” she said. “If you choose well in college, I believe it can really prepare you well for what’s next.”