Burton and HP
Burton and HP have partnered up to produce some marketing videos with some insight into Burton as a company, how they’ve grown, the design and marketing processes. Check out the microsite here.
Working in online marketing, I found this really interesting on a few levels.
Firstly, interesting to see how Burton have grown from a small business with a few people with a common goal (the company I work with employs only 20 or so people currently) to the leading brand in the sector. Burton are synonymous with snowboarding now.
Also interesting that Burton are caned by loads of snowboarders for being the mega corporate company now. Not sure how this would go down with those guys. On one hand, a tie-up with Hewlett Packard must stink of big-business uncoolness. on the other, I think the videos show the opposite is true - a real small business, hard working ethic, a business run by snowboarders for snowboarders.
Finally, from a professional stand point, I’m interested in seeing how successful this type of campaign is for HP. I initially found the site after clicking a banner on the social network linkedin.com. I can’t remember the last time I clicked a banner, so their agency must be doing a decent job. The microsite has been built to go viral, with links to a load of social bookmarking and voting sites such as Digg, del.icio.us and Newsvine.
I see the story has already been picked up by Drew McLellan (including a comment from Eric Kintz of HP), Kulworld, Future Snowboarding, Powderroom, Andrea at laralu and many more places.
del.icio.us | Digg it | Furl | Spurl | Yahoo MyWeb
Explore posts in the same categories: Burton, Snowboard media
December 31st, 2007 at 5:43 pm
Burton just keeps getting bigger and bigger.
January 1st, 2008 at 12:06 am
Eww! HP?!?! ;)
January 7th, 2008 at 8:56 pm
Hi Adam, thanks for this post - I personally like the campaign and don’t think it reeks of big-business ickiness. Burton is still out there innovating and coming up with high-quality stuff for the most part (although I think they’re outsourcing a lot of the manufacturing of clothing to China, which can be questionable…)
And to me, they still seem “of snowboarders, for snowboarders.”
Did you know that Jake Burton is also part of a series of ads for the Wall Street Journal?
Story here
Sample ad:
(this is the print ad, I believe there is also a banner ad and an interactive web site to this campaign)
p.s. I work in online marketing too, don’t think I haven’t noticed how well your site is optimized for SEO ;-)
Cheers!
January 7th, 2008 at 11:24 pm
hey Erica, I hadn’t seen the WSJ campaign as well, thanks for posting it.
>>optimized for SEO
yep, thats my day job, or a large part of it at least, working for an agency in London. What do you do?
January 8th, 2008 at 7:06 am
:-) I am the marketing director at a startup company which sells online marketing campaign management software.
January 10th, 2008 at 8:28 pm
I love the poaching contest Jake and his Burton crew put together, it got Taos open to snowboarders this spring! YeeeeHawwww.
January 23rd, 2008 at 7:13 pm
I just came from Tahoe, where Jake Burton is doing big things at the resort level to keep Burton’s image as “homegrown” as possible, although he’s doing other things in order to shape his company, and the sport for that matter, so it continues to be at the forefront of what’s going down in snowboarding. Working in retail I’ve seen the ups and downs of the brand and as corporate as they are, one of my favorite boards through the years has been the Dominant. Super solid and it surely took a beating.
As far as the HP campaign, isn’t it odd that it’s a PC company, when you know that many of those guys are on macs. It seems to be the standard when it comes to the sport, because so many people are editing footage, managing photos, and living there lives outside of snowboarding, online and in front of a computer. I may be wrong but it think it’s a big step for HP to lock down Burton snowboards to endorse their brand….
How is the online marketing business by the way? I’ve dabbled and haven’t really been able to wrap my head around it, but social media- like this- and other places are becoming very important pieces of the marketing puzzle and oftentimes the most successful…
And the poaching contest Burton had was great. i think it pissed a lot of people off, something that snowboarding did from the get go…
January 23rd, 2008 at 8:53 pm
Hey CMYK
Didn’t give the hp/PC/Apple thing any thought to be honest. Could you not use hp printers with a Mac? Dunno.
>>How is the online marketing business by the way?
Its good in that it pays for my snowboarding habbit ;-)
>>And the poaching contest Burton had was great.
Yeah, would be cool to see some of the entries to that comp. Last time I checked the site they didn’t have anything up yet. Will be fun to see the skier reactions.
Thanks for the comment!
January 24th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
Didn’t think about the printer thing, I was primarily talking about the computers. You can definitely use the printers with Mac.
Where are you snowboarding in the UK? How are the hills? Park riding as big over there as it is here?
January 24th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
To be honest I don’t really ride in the UK. I leave that to the hardcore. Living in London, you have the choice of snowboarding in a massive fridge, dryslopes, upto Scotland or far north of England when the snow is good enough (rare) or getting over to mainland Europe.
Given that France is closer that Scotland, its usually a case of heading there, or one of Austria, Switzerland or Italy mainly. Loads of quality resorts to chose from.
Off to Serre Chevalier in France in a week. There are a few parks I believe, which I’m sure we’ll check out, but likely to spend more time in the trees, piste/off-piste.