People wonder, they stop us on the street and they’re all, like, wassup with your site? You don’t update it as much as you used to? And we’re all, like, yeah, wassup with that? And then we, like, remember that we’ve been keeping our client’s blogs super fresh, and then we’re like, wow…we manage a bunch of blogs for our clients:

• http://www.visitsaltlake.com/mysaltlake
• http://www.skiutah.com/blog
• http://www.whereskarl.com
• http://backcountryblog.blogspot.com
• http://theprobar.com/archives/category/blog/
• http://www.gregorygoesthere.com
• http://www.bluehouseskis.com/blog/
• http://www.konabiketown.com

So, there’s that…

In a recent story in Snews on Life is Good taking heat for the way they handled ending relationships with retailers who also carry the Life is Crap brand, the following gem jumped from the page:

“I totally used John Banse’s (editor’s note: Banse is the legal counsel for Life is Good) list of comments… I didn’t really get to say much…” The email further stated, “I just tried to stay to the J Banse script, talked politely, and just restated our policy, offering that I hoped she’d see the importance of spreading optimism rather than negativity….”

A lawyer’s communication style and language is best suited for the court of law. It is direct, cold and there is lots of it so as to leave absolutely no mistake as to the intent of the communication. PR peep’s style and language is better suited for the court of public opinion. We use things like adjectives to help convey feeling and emotions.

Have you ever had a warm glowing feeling after reading a letter from a lawyer? Do you want your customers to feel that way? Let the PR peeps translate the legalese into a more palatable form so your customers will feel good and not crappy.

After spending a night stuck in a hotel room watching Fuel TV and the accompanying endless X Games promos, I have a better sense of what drives action sports industry’s popularity among mainstream America’s youth, particularly in contrast to what drives outdoors supposed lack of popularity among America’s youth:

1. Sick tricks.
2. Peer powered online community
3. SoCal-centric

1. Sick Tricks

Skateboarding, freestyle moto-cross, surfing, BMX, snowboarding, wakeboarding in real life and as represented in TV coverage consist of successful or attempted sick tricks, one after another after another after another… sick tricks galore without pause.

In outdoor we have epic adventures of perseverance that are sick in their own right but are much better suited for books and long-form magazines than for TV, and who reads anymore? Old people.

2. Online Community

Go to Shredordie.com. Click around…

The pursuit of sick tricks builds community. Go to any skatepark and watch as the entire posse of punk-ass kids celebrates when one of their own completes their first 540 shove it. They then go to the home of whomever parents are at work and study the DVDs of their rock star athletes, then go back to the park to try and duplicate the tricks, film it and post it on ShredorDie.com. The community then comments, shares, disses…there is an ongoing conversation.

Outdoor pursuits are individualistic, introspective and take place in remote locations. The more remote the better. It’s very spiritual, lends itself nicely to poetry. And we all know who writes poetry…

3. SoCal-centric

Save for wakeboarding’s foothold in Florida, the entire action sports world is based out of SoCal: the manufacturers, athletes, media, events.. If outdoor is going to build a youth movement, we need to build it in SoCal, primarily because that’s where trends start in the U.S.

Outdoor’s base camp is Boulder, CO. Boulder is a really nice place, ask anyone that lives there.  It’s also wealthy, white, and uber-liberal (not that there’s anything wrong with that)…Boulder is elitist. If we want to continue to reach out to affluent white people, Boulder is the perfect place from which to work.

We’re only kidding a little…

Outdoor is clearly different than action sports, and that’s the opportunity: Further developing and promoting a well-defined alternative to the action sports world.

The bottom line is if you want things to be different, you can’t do things the same. But what?

Some ideas next week about chasing cool, parents, climbing and more…?

Just posted a new case study on Base Camp Comm’s launch of Backcountry.com’s newest ODAT site, Chainlove.com. It’s a look at how an interactive PR approach that includes traditional media relations, social networks and word-of-mouth strategies can take a new site from zero to, well, lots of customers in just under a month.

Traffic numbers have been redacted and messed with to protect secret stuff.  All comments and questions encouraged.

See it here.

With Outdoor Retailer right around the corner a plethora of press releases and pitches are filling up inboxes faster than plastic cups at beer-thirty.

Assuming that PR peeps who are feverishly writing and pitching need to come up for air, perhaps they’ll have a moment to read a few lines.

In the midst of the deluge and as a recipient of many of these releases over the years, I have to say that there has been a lot of disregard for the recipients and hopeful readers of these releases.

“But I’ve got a deadline!” or “He’s on the outdoor retailer media list and therfore must be interested in our gizmo” followed by the finality of the SEND! button will often land your beloved release in the recycle bin.

From the mindset of social media and branding, I ask this question:

Are these press releases arriving through a channel that the recipients want to receive it in?

Have you considered a tweet with a TinyURL leading to the release? Could be as effective if not more so if your media recipients are following you (which assumes that there is a relationship there).

If you’re not sure about your press contacts preferred method of receiving info, OR would be a great time to find out if they twitter, plurk, facebook, friendster or whatever. The don’t call it Media RELATIONS for nothing.

So when it comes to the writing of said release, here are some things that I’d think twice about before pushing SEND.

1. What if you had to pay for each word? Seth Godin recently wrote about starting with a classified ad. You know the gig - where you pay by the word. One step further, what if you had to pay each reader of your press release for each word you sent them? I’m sure you’d get creative and concise not to mention shrinking your list in a hurry.
2. So What? Ego aside, so what? Be sure your release can pass the so what test to keep it to the point.
3. Ask Why? then ask yourself again; Why?
4. Is this Press Release one way? Valeria Maltoni had a great post about advertising being one way in which she quotes Wikipedia stating that “Advertising is a one-way communication whose purpose is to inform potential customers about products and services and how to obtain them.” Sounds like most of the press releases I’ve received. The most effective press releases cause the reader to respond and reach out and spur a conversation.

Bottom line: Be different with your PR at this OR show. Everybody sends long press releases via e-mail. It’s old, boring and I question it’s effectiveness. Doing otherwise could be a risk, but then again the risky way can be the safe way.

In our last newsletter, we wrote a little ditty on how a social media strategy should be a logical element of your brand marketing strategy. Logical meaning that first you have to understand who uses which social media channels, how they use it and how frequently.

Now Forrester Research takes a little of the guess work out of the social media strategy with their free Social Technology Profile Tool. It displays social computing habits based on age, gender and country.

“Companies often approach Social Computing as a list of technologies to be deployed as needed — a blog here, a podcast there — to achieve a marketing goal. But a more coherent approach is to start with your target audience and determine what kind of relationship you want to build with them, based on what they are ready for.”

There aren’t huge surprises (it shows younger demographics much more active in social media than older demographics), but the value is in how Forrester breaks users habits into six categories of participation. These six categories are the key to the social media aspect of your brand marketing, or the social media optimization of your current marketing properties.

If you want the full download, I recommend Groundswell. It’s a good social media overview with strategic punch lists of action items so you’ll at least feel like you know what you’re doing.