I Don't Work for Trek Bicycles

I refuse to allow car dealers to make me advertise for them on the back of my car with a nameplate or license plate frame, and last night, I'm looking at my bicycle in the garage and I see branding every few inches.

There's the giant Trek logo on the down tube, the model number on the top tube, some sort of bragging about special aluminum on the seat tube and then the Trek emblem on the head tube. Besides the emblem on the front, which popped off with little effort, the rest of the markings are decals which are fairly impossible to remove, buried under a few millimeters of ClearKote. But Trek is not alone in advertising on my bike. Bontrager decides they need no less than seven logos on the seat and seat post, five per hand grip and multiple placements on the tires. Shimano naturally will not be left out and brands the shifters and the front and back derailleurs in multiple places. The local Trek dealer also placed a couple of super-adhesive, nearly impossible to remove stickers on the frame. After looking at this a while it started to piss me off.

I love my bike and have blogged about it fondly in the past. It's a low-end hard-tail but it's durable and has served me well over the few years I've owned it. But damnit, I'm not Lance Armstrong and these manufacturers aren't sponsoring me. I'm not a paid shill for Trek or any of the components Trek uses in the manufacture of their bikes. So I went about blackening-out or painting over every single logo today.

One family member has already dubbed it "the junkyard bike." I prefer to think of it as some sort of post-apocalyptic Road Warrior.

Now I guess I need to remove the swoosh from the shirt I wear when I ride.

Get Your Basketball On - Or Don't

Charlie Murphy's got a new website called Get Your Basketball On in which he plays a Bozo-haired motivational speaker who does it all.



As in most things of this nature, I'm trying to find the corporate sponsors behind it. Though you can't find it on Charlie's site, which is disguised as a poorly created web designer's nightmare a la Borat's old MySpace page, a quick "Who Is" search reveals what I should've guessed: NIKE, Inc.

It's nowhere near as funny as they're hoping and the clowning done by Murphy seems over-the-top. This thing will be short-lived, I'm sure. Nike seems to stab out in a dozen directions lately, often going for the viral two-minute video. Most of the offerings on the site are pretty lame and I almost feel bad for Murphy. Expect to see appearances of Charlie's character "Leroy Smith" during the NBA Finals in the coming weeks, with the slow reveal by Nike. I would not be surprised if Nike trotted out Jordan for an appearance in the series.

More Things The Obamas Like

During the campaign, we found out that Barack Obama likes fancy snacks and wussy teas. When he did eat—which was often an uncomfortable sight, not unlike watching an anorexic supermodel being force-fed a bacon cheeseburger—we noted his preferences. We learned of his bicycle, his clothing, his cars and his sunglasses. And sales of those things went up after they were revealed. So now the Obama girls have a new swingset.

In these trying times, a business needs all the exposure it can get, and hitching your wagon to the Obama train has proven successful for many fine merchants. I wouldn't recommend Rainbow Play Systems of South Dakota be super-shameless about the fact that the Obamas chose their company for a swingset, but maybe they could do some Direct Mail/Email Marketing along these lines.

Le Large

Olympics? We Have Other Games to Prepare For

John Madden, the former Oakland Raiders coach, sufferer of aerophobia, free agent for EA Sports, sometime pitchman for Verizon Wireless, Rent-A-Center, Miller Lite, Sirius Satellite Radio and Tinactin (and popular radio and television sports announcer), in association with the Southland Corporation, (dba 7-11), in association with Brett Favre, the Wrangler-endorsing former subsidiary of the Green Bay Packers, Inc. and now the property of the New York Jets, (a wholly owned property of Johnson & Johnson), in cooperation with the National Football League with assistance from PepsiCo, proudly announce the "Sack Madden Meal" at 7-11, which comes with a playable DVD demo of the popular Madden NFL game, updated with alarming regularity, by EA Sports.
EA Sports has quickly updated their website to include this image, reflecting yesterday’s sale of Favre to Johnson & Johnson. 7-11 is stuck with these old Favre in-store displays announcing the Madden/EA/7-11/Packers/Pepsi/NFL meal. But if Madden is endorsing a meal, you can bet it will fill your gut—and then some.

And I have two words for any Jets fans that think Favre might help their team: Joe Montana.

More Scary Endorsements

Pat Robertson ceased being influential with any real segment of America many, many years ago. His "endorsement" of Giuliani means nothing, other than it's a chance for Robertson to remind everyone that he still lives and breathes. Pat has been mixing politics and religion for years, and he's got some strange notion that Jesus was not only an American, but a Republican as well.

Sometimes, endorsements backfire, as this article in today's New York Times points out.

This got me to wondering who some would-be stars from a bygone era were endorsing. (These images "come from a heap of discarded studio photographs, found in a Venice alleyway." More are here.)

Moonfast:

"We are very jazzed by the Ron Paul candidacy. He's a real wild cat. He's got some groovy ideas and some ways that we, as brothers and sisters in this great country, can start being real with each other and feeling the love."

Hope Parcell:

"As a woman, I should be for Hillary, I suppose, but I really like Barack Obama. He's the dark horse, and I don't mean that in a "dark" way, ya know? And I also don't mean that in a horse, like "stud" way, ya know? But he has a nice smile and he seems friendly."






Tim Tukker:

"Duncan Fuckin Hunter, muthafuckahs! All the way with the Dunkinator. Duncan is a man's man and he won't blink in the face of danger. My money, my time, even my music are all about The Dunk. DUNCAN! WOOOOOOO!"