Jake Burton on Building a Brand

I love the way things happen lately and how I got from updating a profile and adding ’snowboarding’ to my interests to getting a very well targeted ad from HP printers: Burton, the history of a brand. Obviously most of the things Jake says about it are part of the ‘little handbook of branding and starting a business‘ but I have to give it to him for inventing a sport that consists of surfing snow on a wooden board.

Unfortunately there’s no YouTube of the whole video but thank God American advertising agencies have their own channels so people don’t get their videos deleted because of some pretentious bastards.

Jake Burton from Goodby, Silverstein and Partners

And a teaser from HP’s big movie on their Burton dedicated page which I recommend watching

Yes, I hate HP because I own both Burton and HP products. I reckon this one is probably aimed at both young board designers with their industrial printers and plotters and the home user that goes snowboarding (fancy paying £289 for your Burton boots?) and thinks ‘damn, HP printers made my board a tiny piece of art, I’ll definitely get one of those if I want to print in colour‘. And indeed, until today I have yet to find better board designs. Not even at Salomon or Head or anywhere else. And if Burton ever makes a board design contest like Salomon, guess who’ll be benefiting from it. That’s right, HP. Clever. Very, very clever.