Back at the end of March & beginning of April I blogged about a hiccup with the presentations at the British Snowboard Championships. When the medals were presented Sam Rogers was given Gold in her age group while Becky Cullum was missed off the podium completely despite the fact that both she and Sam had qualified for the overall finals and the other 2 girls on the podium hadn’t, meaning that at the very least Becky should have placed 2nd. It turned out that actually Becky had beaten Sam into 2nd place and should have been on top of the podium.
The Boyf and I have just sat down and watched the recently released video podcast from Animal who sponsor Sam and I was interested to see them promoting Sam as the winner. So the question is, were they informed of the change of placings by the event organisers? And if so do you think they are wrong for using the footage, thereby leading the uninformed to believe their rider won whereas Becky’s sponsors are unable to use footage or photos to promote her win as there was none?
Knowing both riders involved I know this was a tough situation for them both and it’s a shame that the footage made it into a film edited over a month after the event as opposed to “live” footage as it happened.
Do things like this affect how you feel about a brand and make you less likely to buy products or attend events? Or is it simply just a passing media misrepresentation that doesn’t bother you?
I’d be interested to know your thoughts so do leave a comment
It’s a shame that both girls aren’t able to benefit from promotion from the true results of the event.
but i’m not sure if advertisements or self promotion from any brand that is riding on the back of it’s winning comps sways me to buy from them anyway.
As for the rest of the buying snowboarding public, as has been the discussion on many forum threads, it beats me why they get behind certain brands and not others anyway!!
i am not in the animal buying demograph anyway i guess, so their inability to podcast fact only compounds that feeling..
That’s true, I suppose for me what gets me to buy a brand or not is more often swayed by the interactions I have with the people that rep or sell the brand. There are certain brands I won’t buy purely based on my personal dislike of the person selling it and their behaviour to me in the past.
I’m not a big fan of Animal but I do know that they support their riders well and they get plenty of kit so for them they’re the perfect brand.
I think what annoys me more at the moment is that Animal told all their riders to jump on to Twitter because they obviously saw it as the next cool thing to be involved in but all they do is broadcast and never interact with people who “@” them……a wasted opportunity if you ask me
definitely agree with interactions thing, i tend to buy (or blag) from people who i like rather than focus completely on the brand (although that’s really important as well)
obviously that’s from a shop staff to customer interface, or the distributors that work hard (other than the ones that you don’t here from from one boardtest to the next)…
i’m a bit hypocritical in giving people grief for buying stuff from companies that don’t do anything for the UK scene, but then i give brands like animal a wide bearth..despite all the sponsorship they plow in.
one big thing that gets a thumbs up to animal use their UK riders in magazine adverts, it annoys the hell out of me when i see some random Noggie, Scanna or Yank filling up adverts in the UK mags, when those brands have UK talent on the books.
Yeah, that does suck about the ad side of things. Nike 6.0 have bee really good on that front this year with Jamie, Sparrow and Kightley all featuring
You gotta love nike ‘snowboarding’ ?
PS. Samantha Rogers has a great attitude towards her riding. Good UK talent… Watch out for her in the future.
I don’t see a problem with Nike being involved with snowboarding, I know a lot of kids who’ve benefited from their involvement. And yeah could agree more about Sam, we did our first comp at the same time so been riding with her for years