A Team Effort

It was recently brought to my attention that there was a head hunter reward to fellow snowboarders who could “poach” one of the remaining FOUR resorts in North America that have policies against snowboarding. Presented by none other than, Burton.

1. Mad River Glen, VT*

2. Deer Valley, UT

3. Alta, UT

4. Taos, NM

To all the 700,000 menace kids out there, I feel bad for the newly created position at each of the following resorts, titled “Burton Poacher Competition Regulator” who is going to have to deal with numerous incidences over the next 3 months of this contest.

You have two sides to the story here.

Side A. Snowboarding has made huge steps over the last 15 years overcoming the gap between skiers and snowboarders. Snowboarding has become socially acceptable at the majority of ski resorts and has become a globally recognized sport. Exactly. SO what makes these resorts so special to set policies keeping snowboarders off the state land. I do not have the answer to this. But apparently Burton does. A marketing campaign by the name of “Sabotage Stupidity or Poaching for Freedom” encouraging kids to wage an all out snow assault on each resort, video it, enter a Burton sponsored contest and then cross their fingers that their creation was good enough to win them a smooth $5k. This being a good thing and hopefully the resorts will decide to change their mind (or should I say ritual) of only allowing skiers on mountain.

Not bad.

Side B. Kids getting arrested. Kids taking things to far. Disturbance of the peace. A bad rep for Burton? (doubt it) As I was recently informed from a fellow co-worker, RedBull does bail athletes out of jail if arrested during a brand building/awareness stunt. Maybe Burton will take on the same reigns. I’m not saying that I wouldn’t participate in this event, but for a company that now partners with HP and WalMart, you would think that they would stay away from such a liability pit like a poaching/breaking rules contest. But I guess that’s what makes snowboarding cool. It’s a rebellion. At least it was in the 80’s.