The SnowSports Industries of America (SIA) recently released their annual end of the season survey from their Consumer Panel. The headline: Most consumers rely heavily on consumer-generated reviews and opinions when considering which brand/product to purchase.

I’m just going to cut/paste the first couple of paragraphs from the release as it speaks for itself:

An online survey was sent to over 3,300 Consumer Panel members to find out how consumers use online product reviews when researching and purchasing snow sports products. According to the Panel, the majority of snow sports participants (86.4%) said that they take the time to read online product reviews that other consumers have written before purchasing new products. These reviews are even more important to consumers getting ready to purchase big ticket items like snowboards, apparel, and skis. More than 88% of panel members said they seek out and read these reviews before purchasing expensive snow sports equipment and apparel.

Snow sports participants claim to be directly impacted by these consumer reviews. Almost 7 out of 10 consumers have decided not to purchase a product because of a review another consumer has written. On the other hand, the impact of a bad review only goes so far, 61.6% have purchased a product even after it received bad consumer reviews.

It gets even more interesting when SIA breaks it down by gender, age and geographic location, but…all the percentages are super high. There isn’t any mention or comparison between traditional media review influence versus consumer review influence…that would be interesting to see. You can download the entire report here.

So What? Crappy product can’t hide behind great marketing anymore. The people will call you out in plain, direct language.

 We’ll keep it real short here:

 Who: 25 sickbird riders of all ages and locations on everything from town cruisers (who didn’t fare well) to single-speed, fixed gear bikes (who killed it)

What: Kickass Alley Cat Race video

Where: A burly course though the streets of downtown Monterey, California

When: Friday night April 18, 2008 during the Sea Otter Classic

Why: For fun and bragging rights

How: By pedaling hard and knowing there was cold beer and the coolest swag at the finish line

How, How: Thanks to sponsors Princeton Tec, Dirt Rag magazine, Swobo and Robbie and the boyz at Aquarian Bicycles

Oh yeah, all those bright red blinking lights you see, that’s Princeton Tec’s new high-powered Swerve bike tail light - check it out here at www.swerveyourbike.com. Enjoy!

In the rapidly changing world of new media, here’s a interesting twist. If you’re an unsigned band, music videos are expensive to produce. A British band, the Get Out Clause, got creative.

They filmed their video by setting up under a number of the omnipresent video surveillance cameras that are a part of modern life (there are, for instance, a reported 200-plus around Times Square alone), then requisitioned the footage via Freedom of Information requests. Awesome.

And we thought we were clever using the Wyoming Highway Department web cam to scout ski conditions.

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

Ah, the big city. Particularly poignant when you live in a mountain town. Tall buildings, busy streets, millions of people, thousands of Blackberrys, crazy cab drivers (now with touch screens in their cabs so you notice what’s going on during your trip less), the smell of street vendors’ lamb kabobs and hot dogs, bars open till 4, and, yes, the media.

NYC is the place to be (or at least visit) if  you’re in the media biz any way. Hence the regular pilgramage to the Big Apple, media center of the universe. This time Dave and I did the midtown two-step.

During our first night, we were given some good advice for negotiating the concrete jungle with oversized wheeled luggage filled with the lastest samples and demos to show. This from our friends at Verde PR who, coincidentally, were finishing up a NYC visit of their own, and who we met for a quick beverage the first night we were in town. 

The key: send out your best-looking (read: female) member of your staff (sorry Kris) and have the rest of your crew, bags in hand, wait in the shadows. Once the cab has been flagged down, everyone can come scurrying out, bags in tow. Needless to say, while this was sound advice, we were just two dudes without the benefit of the opposite sex.

We fared OK, though, since we based ourselves not too far off Times Square and most of the publications where we were headed are relatively close to one another, some even in the same buildings. Rodale’s New York office, for instance, houses Women’s Health, Bicycling and Men’s Health (Keith takes a breather by the elevator). Men’s Fitness and Shape are in the same digs - which also houses the National Enquirer and National Examiner (yes, we caught up on our celeb dirt). And Popular Science, Outdoor Life and Field & Stream all share a floor.

 Thanks to suggestions from our savvy city-dwelling friends, we also got uptown and downtown efficiently (knowing what time of day to take a cab vs. taking the subway is definitely key, thanks Joe and Judy), which helped keep things on time for visits to Urban Climber, Men’s Journal (Dave couldn’t resist the tourist photo by the collection of Rolling Stone covers), National Geographic Adventure and ForbesLife, among others. That, and a little speed-walking, city-style (Dave has been practicing).

In NYC, two days go by fast - as fast as those cabs that blew by us at every curb. A whirlwind filled with late nights, early  mornings, Brazilian and Korean cuisine (thanks Christian!), and lots of talking. But there’s nothing better than a little face-to-face with the people with whom you deal regularly.  That, and, at the end of the day, a visit to Arlene’s Grocery.

One of the cornerstones of powerful marketing is to do things that people have a strong reaction to, positive or negative. You want real emotion, ‘I love them/that!’ or ‘I hate them/that’, you don’t want, ‘Meh, they’re ok, I guess.’

If people have no feelings about you, your category, your brand, your products then there is zero emotional investment. You are invisible. So Why Be?

Nau struck a nerve. Witness the love/hate language in the media and blog response to their announcement that they were shutting down. “Audacity”, “tragedy”, “clueless”, “devastated”…the language is concrete on both ends of the love/hate spectrum. Few people are indifferent.

Nau’s marketing and PR is just one of the many things they did exceptionally well. Actually it was great…and I’ll leave the punditry to everyone else.

I’m about to hunker down to write a release. The client requests that it be one of our “irreverent” kind, which is always a little tricky. Our releases are irreverent because they are true. We cut through corporate B.S., spurn franken-quotes and report on the real experiences and activities that take place behind the scenes of whatever the news happens to be, usually in a light-hearted manner.

In business it is tempting to try to compete and impress by benchmarking what the big, corporate, category leaders do. It is easy to sound big by doing this but remember that these are the same businesses that have to get their press releases approved by their legal department… and talk about risk averse, dry, and not creative. “Let me run this by legal,” is the kiss of death for any kind of brand-differentiating press release.

When you strip away all the corporate happy crap and speak truthfully about what the news is and what it means to you and your company, throw in a dash of self-deprecating humor to show that your company realizes that they haven’t found the cure for cancer, the chances that the release will actually be read and remembered improve dramatically.