SOAR Blog

I pledge to reduce my greenhouse gas emissions by 450 pounds during May, which many U.S. cities, including Salt Lake City, recognize as Bike Month.

I have the farthest commute of all the SOAR team members (about 30 miles), so I’m not going to attempt to commute the entire way by bike. But I will take the bus two to three times per week, and stop asking my husband to drop me off and pick me up from my home bus stop (I learned at the Bicycle Leadership Conference that 40 percent of trips in the U.S. are just two miles and are the most polluting). If I do this during the month of May, UtahCommuter.com tells me that I can reduce my vehicle trips by 450 to 680 miles and my greenhouse gas emission by 380 to 575 pounds.

Me prepping for the Momentum bike fashion show at Interbike

I first started using mass transit because it was cheaper than buying snow tires for my 1988 California-raised Volvo. Even though the threat of snow is gone (let’s hope), I still try to commute by bus twice a week. The entire commute from point to point takes about 30-40 minutes longer than it would if I drove by myself, but I think it is worth the extra time spent. One-way bus fare cheaper than a gallon of gas and the time I have on the bus to read Newsweek and study Portuguese is priceless. Plus, I get home to my husband in a much better mood not having fought traffic for 45 minutes.

I’ll also reduce my green house gas emissions by biking around town more. I’ve been assessing every road I drive on for its bikeability and often think, “I could totally bike this. Why am I even driving a car?” I see bike trips to the gelaterie are in my not-so distant future.

You can learn how many pounds of carbon emissions your commute reduces by registering at UtahCommuter. com (hint: if you only commute by a car alone, your commute reduces NONE! Think about it.)

Well . . . it’s finally official: SOAR is now the public relations agency for Outdoor Retailer! Way, way cool!

I plan to write more about this in the near future, but for now, I’ve enclosed below the “official” text of the full news release announcing this news.

Later,

David (”Poppa P”) Politis

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Outdoor Retailer Signs SOAR Communications as its PR Agency of Record

SOAR Communications selected to manage public relations efforts for Outdoor Retailer, a division of Nielsen Business Media and producer of the leading trade show for advancing the active outdoor marketplace

DRAPER, Utah and SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO, Calif. - Oct. 21, 2008 - Outdoor Retailer (OR), a division of Nielsen Business Media, today announced it has signed Utah-based SOAR Communications as its public relations agency of record.

Under terms of the multi-year agreement, SOAR Communications (a full-service marketing communications agency), will develop and execute public relations campaigns serving each of OR’s annual events, as well as all of its year-round PR needs.

“During the past three years, SOAR Communications has generated great results for our sister shows - Interbike and Health+Fitness Business Expo - so it’s clear they understand the specialty sports marketplace and our culture,” said Kenji Haroutunian, OR’s show director. “Naturally, we’re looking for similar results from SOAR with Outdoor Retailer, both in solidifying our support for trade media journalists, while also broadening our efforts to reach consumer-focused media outlets throughout the U.S. and abroad. As expected, SOAR has already hit the ground running on some key OR and industry initiatives. We look forward to a long and successful relationship with the SOAR team.”

Formed in 2004, SOAR Communications serves the Sports, Outdoor, Athletics and Recreation industries, thus the moniker SOAR.

“After attending my first OR (Summer Market) in 2004, I soon discovered that there wasn’t a single agency in recreation-rich Utah that focused specifically on servicing the sports, outdoor, athletics and/or recreation industries,” said David Politis, chief executive officer for SOAR Communications. “That led me to form SOAR in the first place, which is why it’s so cool to now be working with OR and the great OR team. I feel like I’ve now gone full circle back to SOAR’s very first beginnings, and that’s just awesome!”

As well as being the CEO of Draper, Utah-based SOAR Communications, Politis is the president and founder of Politis Communications (a long-time strategic communications and public relations agency focused on serving technology clients).

A year after forming SOAR, Politis invited Chip Smith to take the position of president at SOAR, thus leveraging Smith’s nearly 20 years of marketing and sales experience, including 10 years with bicycle industry leaders Shimano and Specialized and three years with Ogilvy & Mather, one of the largest agencies in the world. The resulting combination of Politis and Smith has helped transform SOAR Communications into one of the up-and-coming sports marketing communications agencies in North America.

“We’re excited to take the lessons we’ve learned with Interbike and HFB and apply them to OR,” said Chip Smith, president of SOAR Communications. “Naturally, SOAR will continue to serve the media in a collaborative manner that best meets their needs, while always looking for the best ways to land positive media exposure for the show and its exhibitors. We’re also eager to help Kenji and his team achieve their goals of further strengthening the relationships between OR exhibitors and endemic media, while also expanding exposure to non-endemic journalists as well.”

About Outdoor Retailer
Outdoor Retailer (OR), produced by Nielsen Business Media of San Juan Capistrano, Calif., is a full service trade show company that creates, markets and produces high-quality expos and educational conferences. OR is the leading outdoor industry business-to-business event management company, bringing together manufacturers, retailers, industry advocates and media to conduct the business of outdoor recreation. Now celebrating more than 25 years of successful events, Outdoor Retailer (www.outdoorretailer.com) gathers approximately 40,000 attendees on a semi-annual basis for its Winter and Summer Market shows.

The next opportunity to preview the future of the outdoor industry will start at the 6th Annual Backcountry Base Camp at Snowbasin ski resort on January 21, 2009, followed by the Outdoor Retailer Winter Market at the Salt Palace Convention Center from January 22-25, 2009 in Salt Lake City, Utah. The Outdoor Retailer Summer Market will bring the best of summer outdoor brands to Salt Lake City, Utah at the Open Air Demo from July 19-20, 2009 and the Trade Show from July 21-24, 2009.

About SOAR Communications
Voted one of Utah’s top three marketing agencies of 2008 by the readers of Business Connect magazine, SOAR Communications is an innovative strategic marketing communications agency focused on the sports, outdoor, athletics and recreation industries. SOAR offers clients a variety of services including advertising, collateral development, database-marketing, graphic/web design, public/media relations, social media/networking campaigns and sales support programs. Visit www.soarcomm.com or call 801-556-8184 for more information.

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I’ve now been “officially” working in the Sports, Outdoor, Athletics and Recreation industries for slightly more than 3-and-a-half years now, and I must say I continue to be shocked at the overall lack of new media sophistication I see within these industries.

Understand that this is not meant as a slam against all companies in these markets (although it may come across as such).

I also recognize that almost every company I now find in any industry has a Web site. But for many companies, that’s it. And in some instances, companies have little more than a brochure-ware Website.

Others are beginning to step forward and are beginning to embrace newer forms of interactive media, sometimes known as Web 2.0 technologies. These solutions and tools include

• Blogging,
• Online video,
• Social networks (MySpace and Facebook being the most popular, but not the only ones),
• Microblogging (through such tools as Twitter and Pownce, to name two), and
• Podcasting.

What’s even more amazing to me, however, is the seeming lack of interactive / Web 2.0 sophistication among the media companies serving the outdoor and recreation industries. Here again, I’m not attacking every media-publishing company serving clients and/or end-users in the recreation, sports, athletics and/or outdoor industries. Just most of ‘em.

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I’m somewhere above Las Vegas headed for the relative warmth of San Diego and the annual Bicycle Leadership Conference.

Given that it was something like 8 degrees Farenheit last night in Sandy, Utah, 60+ degrees is gonna feel like heaven.

Plus, I’ll get a chance to hang out with several clients and friends, while also getting an updated pulse on the cycling industry.

I’m particularly looking forward to Lance Camisasca’s presentation Saturday morning about future location prospects for Interbike. Should be interesting.

Media now have easier access to suggested retail prices, product images (low and high res) and spec sheets for Scott USA merchandise as a result of a newly launched marketing/press only Web site and portal.

Scott USA marketing team members say they hope the site will help on-deadline media get a logo or product fact quickly without having to rely on a member of the marketing team. (See today’s BRAIN article)

From my perspective, this Web site is yet another example of bike industry leaders showing the importance of using the Internet to better communicate with media and how better business practices can improve the industry’s environmental impact, one company at a time.

A few years ago, the Interbike Expo announced its Green Steps program. The program offsets energy used to operate the show by purchasing Renewable Energy Certificates (REC), recycling aisle and booth carpeting and increasing electronic communication with exhibitors, attendees and media.

New this year, Interbike provided downloadable press kits of more than 40 participating exhibitors for the media to cut down on the amount paper used in the press room.

My hat goes off to these two companies who know how to work with the media and protect the environment as well!

Wow. It’s been a busy few months since my last post on September 20. I need to learn how to juggle blogging, while at the same time serving our clients.

I have a lot of things I’d like to blog about since my last post, for example, working with the media at Interbike, meeting my cycling hero Greg LeMond in the Media Center at the show, and taking a road trip vacation to Colorado - mountain biking and hiking along the way, etc. I’ll write about those later.

This week was a busy week, but a good one. Monday, November 12, we were in New York City for the PepCom Digital Focus media reception. We took our new client, Delta 7 Sports. They make a $12,000 carbon fiber/Kevlar reinforced Arantix mountain bike using a unique tube design called IsoTruss. Before the evening event, we met with “Popular Science” and “The Wall Street Journal.” The staff at both publications were very interested in the Arantix and its IsoTruss technology for possible stories.

Following those meetings we went to PepCom. Even though PepCom was predominately a “digital” high-tech event, we knew the media outlets slated to attend would also be interested in the IsoTruss, because of its highly engineered, science-based, well thought out design.

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So it’s already late Wednesday evening, 9/26/07, and team SOAR is four days into our Interbike 2007 experience. (Yeah, that’s my lame attempt at an excuse as to why I haven’t written anything about my Interbike experiences yet.)

Anyway . . . so Chip, Maura, Lindsay, Melea and I rolled into Vegas on Sunday in preparation for this year’s Outdoor Demo, held again in Boulder City, Nevada (although some 300 yards to the west of prior locations).

But what a nice new location. The City’s done a nice job with initial landscaping and xeriscaping of the “entry area” into Bootleg Canyon, the layout is more open and feels larger than prior years,  and the extension of the blacktop from city into the canyon area is a nice touch.

According to Interbike,  more than 3,300 show attendees braved the wilds of Nevada to participate in Outdoor Demo on Day One alone, a new record turnout.

I’ve been putting off writing something for our blog for a couple of reasons. One, life here at SOAR has been incredibly busy. Our biggest client, Interbike, is having their annual bicycle tradeshow in Las Vegas in 4 days and we have spent the last couple of months ramping up for that. The other reason is, I’m new to blogging, and I wasn’t sure I had anything interesting or significant to post.  Now I do.

I’m bummed. The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency found Landis guilty of doping (see AP story here). I haven’t ridden regularly in a while, but I’m still an avid fan of cycling and racing.  My wife and I cheered loudly at the TV during Stage 17 of the 2006 Tour, only to stare silently again later while learning that Landis was accused of doping.

I’m not even going to pretend to understand the facts surrounding the case and spout my opinion here in this post. I’m just bummed for Landis, racers in general and for recreational cyclists and potential recreational cyclists who might think twice about participating in a tainted activity.

The news about Landis will make for an interesting next few weeks, especially with the industry’s largest trade show, Interbike, and the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) World Championships taking place at the same time. I’m sure everyone will be talking about the verdict and will have an opinion.

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Check out Ergon’s new Outdoor Tourenrucksack, Outdoor Daypack fur Tagestouren and Outdoor-Allroundrucksack (the Outdoor Touring Pack, Outdoor Day Pack and Outdoor Allround Pack, respectively). Very cool!

What I love about these lightweight packs is how well they’ve been ergonomically designed to meet the needs of the active outdoor adventurer.

On page 6 of Ergon’s online product catalog you’ll note what the company calls its Flink ball joint. This feature allows the back to rotate from side to side while enthusiasts are bombing down a hill on a mountain bike, straining across an untracked meadow on cross country skis or starting mile four on a 12-mile run.

The company literature also explains that the strapping system of its packs allows users to keep the bulk of the weight (up to 80 percent) distributed to the hips rather than the shoulders, making for better posture and easier/safer activities while on the go.

Ergon’s packs will be priced at $199 and less. Look for ‘em in booth #71018 at Outdoor Retailer, Summer 2007. (Ergon will be at Interbike 2007 too.)

I love going to a trade show for the first time ’cause it always provides an opportunity to quickly gauge the pulse of an industry.

That said, my trip to the Health+Fitness Business Expo & Conference started off on a somewhat different note than most as I began the afternoon out near the Denver airport to participate in the 2nd Annual SNEWS Golf Scramble at H+FB, a charity event to benefit Augie’s Quest.

To be honest, I was a bit nervous to be out on the links again as I had not been golfing once since I had had surgery to repair labrum tendon in my right shoulder. (Not that I was a great golfer before my surgery, mind you; but I was a bit concerned.)

Nevertheless, the opportunity to support a good cause while golfing with two leaders in the recreation industry — Tim Blumenthal, Executive Director of Bikes Belong; and Joe Flynn, Vice President Sales & Marketing, Nielsen Sports Group – was a chance I could not pass up.

As it was, Tim and Joe were excellent partners for me (and each other) in the scramble, as they both hit quite well and were very supportive of me as I had a consistently inconsistent round. Interestingly, the best part of my round was my chipping game. something that’s never been a strong suit before. Who knew?

Our team finished in the middle of the pack (score-wise) which was fine for me as I wasn’t expecting to compete for top honors anyway, just mostly looking for a good time, an opportunity to make some new friends and the ability to support a worthy cause.

The tourney at Green Valley Ranch Golf Club also allowed me the opportunity to connect up with SOAR Communications clients Lance Camisasca and Rich Kelly, Show Director and Marketing Manager, respectively, for both H+FB and Interbike.

Last comment. Steve Beuerlein, former NFL quarterback and now an NFL Game Analyst for CBS (and fitness club owner), was recruited as “the” celebrity golfer for the tourney. Beuerlein set up camp at the 12th Hole at GVR, where for $20 he was available for an extra drive off the tee for each team in the tourney.

Since it was for a good cause, the members in our team each ponied up twenty bucks, which led Beuerlein to guarantee he’d drive a ball out to the 200-yard marker for us.

And doggone it, sure ’nuff, we found his ball right where he said it would be.

Anyway, thanks to everyone at SNEWS and H+FB for putting together a great event. I look forward to hitting the links once again at next year’s H+FB.