Sure skate, surf, board culture have been defining fashion trends for the past several years… think Diesel was making those tight men’s jeans before it was skate culture norm 3 years ago, I don’t think so. Or that 80s plaid had any chance of making a comeback before Burton and others rocked it several season ago… but this is old news — though it is interesting to note that it took several years for mainstream clothing designers to ‘get it’ (and now that they have maybe thats why some of the originators are struggling..)

What I think is new, and what I’m seeing constantly for the first time is mainstream marketing latch on and use pieces of action sport culture to market their brands. I don’t know if its an influx of Gen Y into the ad agencies and brands themselves or if its just mainstream culture becoming more knowledgeable about what it means to be a Skater, Snowboarder, Climber, or Surfer but now music that once was only found in snowboard films is being used in car commercials a season later. Major brands are using action sports in their print campaigns and just right now there is a huge North Face ad on Pandora as I write this blog post.

This Cadillac commercial rocks thanks to tunes by Justice, but Alterna films used Justice when they were just getting hot in Apple’s and Oranges nearly 8 months earlier.

Read More… and I’ll get to the point after the break.

Personally I think the music cross over is some of the coolest things to come out of the trend towards mainstream. MGMT tracks that first appeared in ski films have since been on 90210 and Gossip Girl (really I heard about it through the grapevine) and a Citizen Cope track that I used in a film of my own a couple years back was recently in an Acura commercial. 

NOW TO MY POINT — I bring this up because the people that read this blog really fall into two categories. Either fellow photographers (and media makers) or outdoor enthusiasts. Because of this, in general we can tell when the use of action sports marketing is done well OR looks totally cheese ball. So my question is this, is it important for agencies and companies to portray these cultures accurately? I mean while 99% of the general public doesn’t care if some grom is grabbing tindy in say a Hummer commercial, should the agencies worry about these details? 

Personally, I think, if you are Hummer why the hell are you bothering to spend $100k to shoot snowboarding to promote your brand if what you are shooting is LAME to anyone who really does the sport — after all those 1%’s add up after a while.

Here is a perfect real world example, and it in fact involves Hummer:

At first this looks like a killer ad, and if you’ve been following any of Modernista!’s new work for the H3t line in general its looking real nice, but upon closer inspection it becomes blatantly obvious to anyone who is a climber that:

1) The girl doesn’t look a climber, where’s the chalkbag after all?

2) She was obviously photoshopped onto the rock!

3) DOES SHE HAVE SASQUATCH FEET?! Take a closer look:

In my opinion, of the 250,000 pairs of eyes that see this ad, the majority will see these flaws (and some simple calling around has confirmed this).

Here is another example of action sport going mainstream, this is Japanese music video that features Suzanne Graham skiing in Alaska, and eventually climaxes with a ski base off a nice cliff. Obviously there is always a bit of a disconnect between Asian and American culture, but that gap is closing and I can’t help but feel that this video wasn’t suppose to be as amusing as it is.

So, if it took them a few years to get it right with the clothing, will it take few years for them to get it right with the marketing? 

I also can’t help but wonder, if you were an ad agency, who would you want out there shooting these commercials and print images, the studio guy that you have a relationship with or the outdoor guy that knows the athletes, locations, and sports well enough to make sure the images are ‘REAL’? Did Nike hire a wedding photographer to shoot Michael Jordan?

tk