The Come-Up

So I'm onto my 5th week of blogging, and still haven't managed to run out of sites that I visit on a more-often-than-not daily basis. Who knows if this is a good thing but I'm running with it.

This week, we venture farther into the world of action sports, and The Come Up comes up in our address bar. TCU is a BMX blog where users can submit videos or anything to do with BMX, and a ultra-picky moderator decides what makes the front page. It is one of the premier places to keep up with what's going on the world of BMX riding. Not only does it cover riding, but also the culture and hype that goes with it.

A growing trend lately in action sports is the huge jump in popularity of webisodes and short, to-the-point edits. Companies, teams, and individual riders upload their most creative works, hoping to promote themselves, their company or their message.

United Bikes used quality filming and editing to promote a new collaboration they did with Etnies Shoes on one of their latest complete bikes. Advertising in a creative way like this allows the viewer to get a much better view of the product (rather than a crappy, zoomed out internet or magazine photo.) It also sets itself apart from other bike manufacturers, and took little extra effort.

The time and effort riders put into their edits obviously shows through, and creates a much more lasting impression. Although low quality edits don't usually make it to the front page, a few sometimes poke through and really stand out. Of course, on the other hand, high quality ones really do a good job in getting kids stoked on the rider, team or product that they are trying to promote in the video.

Although this example might not be the fairest one, as it was made by one of the original and most respected professional film companies, it shows that well thought out editing and camera shots easily stick out to the viewer. The team here, G-Sport, got a ton of great promo for their team and products in this edit.

A reoccurring theme of my blog entries is that more and more customers are spending a lot of their time online, and aren't looking at the Facebook and other "hot" social media pages that companies are investing millions into developing and promoting. If marketers took the time to find out where the truly "hot" sites are in an industry, the ones where the kids and true fanatics are frequenting, they would find their message being much more accepted and passed on with word-of-mouth. Creative sells.