Our last issue came out February 21, 1995. But we're not going to start each one with an apology. Deal with it. And a lot of shit has gone down in those last few months. The Las Vegas Trade Show, which we thought we were going to rail, went down with nothing really big happening. Our decision to ignore it was based on this logic: the whole Ski Industries of America thing is about blatant, unadulterated consumerism, so bagging it would be like stopping by a Penthouse Magazine shoot and complaining about seeing a bunch of naked people. That's what trade shows are about--showing, trading, hoaxing, playing, and smoking big old bowls of stinking bud with all the bros. Damn, pot smokers rule. They're so quick witted, intellectually agile, upbeat. . . ah, we're joking.
Mindless Quote
"Should some future historian ever feel the need to duplicate a San Fracisco coffee bar circa "The Dawn of Multimedia," they will require the following: thrashed PowerBooks covered with snowboarding and Chiquita banana stickers. . ." Douglas Coupland, Microserfs, pg. 115.
During the winter the American Pro Snowboard Series went off like a charm: no one showed up at the contests and even fewer watched the colorful action on ESPN.
But not everyone missed it. One guy in the rec.billards newsgroup on USENET thought there was a little too much. "Am I crazy or what. There are over 40 million pool players in the U.S. alone, yet pool on ESPN occurs about twice a month, but on any given week, you can see an hour or two of snowboarding." Hum, maybe we just missed it or something.
MTV's Mountain House went off like a dream. 
Jeff Brushie used the opportunity to hook it up with quick-witted, virgin, Republican VJ Kennedy. They later attended the US Open together. Obviously, Kennedy didn't bring any good luck to Jeff as he finished well back in the pack. But she did look good standing next to Brushie's mom (who looked dashing in her gargantuan full-length dead animal coat).
Anyway, back to the advertising. . .here's goes nothing.
What is it about marketing to girls. Someone must have written a story in some trade magazine that says "the women's market is really coming on strong." Because it seems like everyone's onto it. Goddess Snowboards says their boards are "for girls who like to spin."
Pure Snowboards says they're "designed for women." What does this mean? Are they built by women? Sold by women? Sometimes this whole women thing seems more like a Sunday morning cable access TV show. As usual Pure boards are probably designed for women by sweaty, hairy, stinky men and manufacturered by the same.
Rossignol decides to climb on the girlie-girl-girl bandwagon and highlight some of their team talent. Tricia Byrnes is a ruler snowboarder, but the ad is ugly. Bad colors, by design, bad everything. Damn, we hate to rag on them, but they continually force us.
Kemper , proving once again why sales strategies that work for golf clubs and tennis rackets flail in the world of snowboarding, brings us an ad with attractive female snowboarder Ursula Nygaard with the headline "Kemper Honey." The bottom of Ursula's board has a bee on it. Oh, on second thought maybe that's what they mean by honey. On a side note: our Word 6.slow spell checker threw up the word "arousal" as a suggestion for properly spelling Ursula's name. Arousal? Exactly, honey.
Is it Prom or is it Swag? 
Is it Swag or is it Prom? What good is having a special brand name if you're going to tie it in directly with the original? That is something someone should ask Swag marketing wizard Lisa Hudson. Does VH1 advertise on MTV? Is Prom just for girls? Is Swag just for boys? Damn, this is getting too confusing. Learn a lesson from Proctor and Gamble: separate ads for separate brands. It's that simple.
Snowboarder Magazine is paid for by A For Better Living Company which also owns Powder, Surfer, and Bike. The last magazine is probably where this Syncros ad came from but what it's doing in a snowboarding magazine we'll never know? The ad says, "Ride this pole, stiffest there is." What are they selling, porno exercise equipment? Why was it on the other side of the page from Goddesses' "Girls Who Like To Spin" ad? We don't even want to know. If you really want to know, why not ask Snowboarder's publisher Doug Pallidini.
Hypothetical questions: let's just say we had a snowboard company called Never Board, Inc. and someone pointed out to us that naming a snowboard brand Never Board was kind of silly because no one would want to buy a snowboard from people who say they Never Board. And lets say we decided to change the name to Option Snowboards because we liked it better. Why then would we advertise the fact that Option boards are made by Never Board, Inc. Answer: because we're that dumb I guess.
The funny thing about Oakley advertising people is that they probably think their whole techno thing is working. Apparently, they don't realize that people wear Oakleys in spite of the company's mini-truck-driving-tri-athlete-crotch- rocket-riding-jet-ski-owner image. And that's fine. And it's okay if they continue to list their address like they're crazed UFO worshipers by adding the word "earth" to the end i.e. "Irvine, CA 92718, USA, Earth." But why must they continue to torture us with ads like this one: a bald man with the words "Technology without adult supervision?" We'd add advertising to the list of things Oakley seems to enjoy doing without any supervision whatsoever.
Silence, the new company by Trent Smith and Matt Nipper has been down on the advertising groove lately. Showing the world that they know how to spin a startup. Having some help from ex-Calloway golf millionaires probably isn't hurting business either. And looky, they're hooked up to the net so you can send them e-mail at silencemfg@aol.com. And tell `em flakezine sent you, and they won't give you squat.
For quite sometime Smith has been the victim of those Big Advertising Agency Blues, come on, sing along with us. "We've paid them so much money, that we had to think they're right. Even though their ads are ugly, and there's no creative in site. We're a damn huge corporation, and we had to give them time, but when it comes to their advertising, we chose to draw the line. So we fired their sorry asses, yes we fired their sorry asses, yes we fired their sorry asses and now we're doing fine." Or something like that.
Palmer get's big points for being the first snowboard company to put their web address in their print advertising. They were first to the Web. Come on, give them a big round of ham. This ad with Temple Cummins and a faced Andy Hetzel shooting the Mt. Baker Highway on a street board is golden, literally. Plus, it has that pseudo glamour Palmer tackiness that goes down so smooth.
Just a quick note to American Airlines: cut that snowboard shit out. We're tired of seeing that old Burton Safari board. Get a new picture or quit the promo already.
We called Duotone's number (800-238-6386) and got a message that said "Hi you're reached Kami Pike please leave a message and I'll get back to you as soon as possible." No, we don't know what this means, but their address is Airport Rd. Oceanside, CA and that means it's just up the street from Tea-World. Hmmm, what could that mean. Is it those wacked bodyboarders at Earth and Ocean? The folks that used to distribute Look Snowboards? Definitely.
And the winner in the "Copy a Helmut Newton photo and cause young boys to jack off" contest is, you guessed it, Cappel. With a taut bikini'd model standing erect through the sunroof of a car parked near the San Diego Airport, Cappel continues to stick to the "boners-move-product" marketing strategy. Hey, why not. It works for piss-water beer.
Robbie, the guy in the new Barfoot ad, looks like a serious badass so we won't talk shit about him. But we still don't get this ad. Is Robbie Olhiser someone we should know? 'Cause he sure brings new meaning to the term "Fat Air."
Now Snowboards runs some brochure from a Eastern European summer camp with the words, "Another Summer Option." And we think to ourselves, hey, that would have been a great ad for Option Snowboards, don't you think?
The +2 Snowboard's ad features a logo made out of condoms and the OR:G Snowboard's ad uses the condom wrapper. Someone is clearly getting screwed but the questions is: who and by whom?
Dear Morrow Snowboards,
When we want to see another sequence of Todd Richards (pictured) doing a frontside 360 we'll write. Until then could you please cut it out. We know he can do other tricks, yet this is the only one that ever gets run of him.
Thanks, the guys and girls at flakezine.
Just when we were starting to enjoy poking fun at Joel Gomez for running a photo of The Damned in a recent Sessions ad, he comes back with a Glen E. Friedman photo of Jay Adams circa 1976 and blows us away. The headline reads, "This Ad is All About Respect!" And damnit, no one deserves more respect than Jay Adams. Period. The man is a legend and Joel captured it perfectly. You younguns who don't know who Mr. Adams is should check out some old copies of Skateboarder Magazine (1976-79). Jay Adams was immortalized by writer/photographer Craig Stecyk in his mythologizing surrounding the Dogtown boys. Nuff said.
And the Bryan Adams 64 love affair contestants are: Beacon for "Watch Your Back," and NFA for "Casual Comfort."
Damn, SMP forgot their vertical stripe is this month's ad. But, they made up for it with an appearance in People Magazine being worn by Tommy Lee of Motley Crue.
And this issue's "Confused Marketing" award goes to Generics, that new company headed by ex-TeaWorld Editor Jamie Meiselman. First, he runs an ad in TeaWorld's April 95 issue saying, "We build snowboards, Not Pros." And now he's coming back at us with a new artsy-fartsy blurred b/w photo of a bunch of pro riders standing around in a bar looking cool. Well, which is it Mr. Meiselman: pro hos or boards? You're going to have to decide pretty soon. Remember, while sitting on the fence can give you a pretty good view, you still end up with big ol' splinters in your butt.
The Never Summer ad features a picture snapped only moments before both boys got a big old mouthful of core material.
There's other great stuff like the Movement's multipage ad that we'd love to show everyone, but we don't have three days to scan the whole thing in, and since we're not getting paid for this we'll have to cut it short right about here. So, until the next issue which should be done around the third week in August, consider this the final word.
