All Eyes On Us
The 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver means people will be paying attention to Canadian snowboarding like never before. In their own words, Canada’s top halfpipe contenders talk about their feelings on the Olympics and what it’s like to be in pursuit of one the world’s most sought-after prizes.

READ IT HERE

Yesterday, I attended an interesting event for action-sports website push.ca. It was called a media lab, and was intended to explain to agencies and companies that might be interested in advertising on the site how the world of action sports works, and how best to market to it. It is a rather necessary exercise, because mainstream marketing and action sports are wary foes, due mainly to the legions of terrible marketing ventures that have tried to co-opt “extreme sports” and failed miserably in doing so. Action sports — skateboarding, snowboarding, etc. — are communities based on cool and cool, as most in the business know, is an ever-elusive thing to capture. After a day of discussion and excercise (planned and executed by mar-comm agency Hypenotic) much of the discussions boiled down to several key ideas: mainly that in order to impress an audience, you have to respect it first. And for these communities, it’s all about legitimacy and authenticity. There are many non-endemic brands that have done this well — Gatorade’s new G campaign was cited as one of them — but there are many terrible examples too. It’s a theme I revisit often when I do my annual “Best of” review of resort ads in snowboard publications for SAM magazine, which was just released in their May issue. Resorts, out of anyone, should “get it,” but so often they just don’t, and end up looking like a dad who just gave his kid knucks and said “That’s just how I roll.” Do your research, folks, and take a look at how this community interacts with one another. Social media sites have made this very easy. You’ll notice that images are key, and people are extremely critical of them. So if you’re going to use action-sports images in your campaign, make sure they’re legit. Becuase skimping out and being lazy with an ad campaign to this community is much worse than not advertising to it at all.

Leave it to RED BULL to go big in action sports when other big-league sports events in NASCAR and the PGA are going belly-up thanks to loss of sponsorship dollars.

Never afraid to go where few are willing, the energy drink company is building a massive 90-foot snowboarding Big Air jump in the middle of Manhattan for the Red Bull Snowscrapers contest, part of the city’s Winter Jam festival in February.

They’re getting a pretty ritzy lineup of riders to attend too, including Shaun White, T Rice and Pat Moore, all competing for a $100,000 prize purse.

It’s a good winter for high-profile shred events, at least in the mainstream eye, with the Winter Dew Tour getting some prime weekend NBC love and events like this in one of America’s biggest cities. (If it were some puny rail jam, I wouldn’t rank it as big, but this promises to be pretty Danny Way-style impressive.)

More: Red Bull Snowscrapers: Riders List – News – push.ca.

Four pro riders share their wild tales and dicey dispatches from the farthest corners of the world.

Snowboard Canada Women’s Annual 2008

Travelling all over the world is one of pro snowboarding’s best perks. While the rest of us are lucky to squeeze in one trip per season, pro riders spend their winters gallivanting around to all sorts of places. Glamorous as it may seem, this privilege also comes with its share of hazards. Evil airline staff, homicidal hall-mates and death-defying drives are just some of the crazy situations pro riders Marie France Roy, Dominique Vallee, Spencer O’Brien and Sachi Tanaka have found themselves confronting over the course of their travels last season. Throughout the winter, we spoke to each rider about their most unusual destination and what it takes to travel to some of the farthest corners of the world.

Read the whole story here.

Is it a harbinger of doom when the most glamorous ski club in the US files for bankruptcy?

It was reported today that the Yellowstone Club, an ultra-glam private mountain club in Montana was seeking protection from creditors as it scrambles to secure enough money to run its operations. The club is as high-end as it gets, with members like Bill Gates, a $250,000 membership fee and the requirement that you build a house on site when you join.

But I don’t think it’s that bad of a sign. First of all, it’s more likely a sign of the current business climate than people taking away their skiing dollars. But if if membership is down this year, the pool of people that kind of club draws is very small anyway and by no means representative of the general population.

My feeling is that the wee resorts near big cities, like Dagmar or Lakeridge near Toronto, are going to see increased ticket traffic this year as people reduce their destination trips and opt for a day out closer to home. But that doesn’t mean we’re losing people from the sports, it just means they are altering their spending habits. Yes, it will hurt the big dogs until this passes, but they have enjoyed boom years for most of this decade and if there’s anything about the economy that’s dependable, it’s its cyclical nature.

-KB

SBC Business, Winter 2008

Lately, it seems like it’s a green party everywhere you go and action sports is no exception. More and more brands are adding eco-friendly products to their lines and for the most part, style is no longer a necessary sacrifice for having a cleaner conscience.

But while (almost) everyone knows ‘green is good’, how exactly does all this hype translate onto the shop floor? Are customers into it? The staff? Can anyone on the floor successfully explain what sustainable means? And really, what does panda food have to do with saving the world?

To read the whole story, go here.

A Q&A with up-and-coming snowboarder Adam Chuntz.

Published in Snowboard Canada Magazine, Winter issue, 2007-08.

To read the whole article, go here.

Snowboard Canada Women’s Annual 2006

This was the year when all-female snowboard movies really hit the mainstream, offering girls the chance to land a real video part in a snowboard movie, rather than a token few shots, if any at all, in anything in the male-dominated snowboard movie genre.

Read how the founders of two all-girl snowboard movie production companies took the leap into making movies for girls, by girls, and what it took to get everyone on board.

Read it here…

Reality Check
An inside look at how today’s best riders get on their game and keep it

Published: Snowboard Canada Women’s Annual, 2007

“Have you ever wondered what would feel like to drop a big-mountain line in Alaska?

Like really thought about it. About what would go through your mind while perched on top of a razor-thin ridgeline, staring down a chute that has 10 feet of visibility before a blind turn releases you into the white void below….”

Full article here.