A lesson learned the hard way.

A few weeks ago I was reading an article in the September issue of Inc. Magazine about the company Skullcandy. For those that don’t know, they make headphones and target the youth market.

In the article, Skullcandy CEO Rick Alden was talking about their marketing strategy and how his entire advertising budget goes towards reaching the “core” segment of the action sports community. He offered a quote that said, “Conservative guys buy core products, but core guys will never buy conservative.”

We learned that lesson first hand this week when a couple of pro skateboarders named Steve Berra and Eric Koston decided they really, really, really think our skating brand Fatboned sucks a fat….well, you get the point.

Their post was merciless and pretty much took us to the woodshed for not understanding the skating culture. Some of their readers even said we were trying to harm the community by popularizing skateboarding.

Our intention with Fatboned, like all of our brands, is to provide the community it supports with unique tools to make new connections and enjoy their affinity even more. We are not working to create content or position ourselves as experts (that’s what the users are for) but the way this brand was blown up by the hardcore audience goes to show what a minefield web 2.0 has become. Fatboned has not even launched yet (we are just taking beta invite requests) and already the brand is on the ropes.

Our take-aways from this are to be sure we always step back and consider how our brands will appeal to the core (or hardcore in this case) segment of the audience. Apparently we missed something on Fatboned whether it be the name, the logo, the imagery or all of the above.

I modified his expression a little by changing the word ‘core’ to ‘hardcore’ but after the Fatboned debacle I printed Alden’s saying and hung it on the wall.



As for Fatboned, we are working the PR beat to put some spin on the situation in an attempt to turn the tides of core perception. At worst, we’ll end up losing a brand while learning a great lesson. At best, we might snatch victory from the jaws of defeat and end up with an even stronger brand that weathered a pretty rough storm. Stay tuned.


In closing on this day I would just like to take a moment and say NEVER FORGET 9-11-01.

Post by: Jeff