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Building
A Brand
Salomon's Lisa Vinciguerra recently dropped by the SNOWboarding Business offices and informed us all that she had just been promoted from marketing director of the snowboarding division to brand marketing manager for the United States. We decided to ask her about her new job and about what's going on with the snowboarding division: Congratulations with your new job. Tell us about how you're overseeing the different products that Salomon offers. I'm overseeing how each individual sport fits into the overall Salomon brand image. I'm making sure each sport helps build the overall picture and identity of the company. Will each sport still advertise to its own customers? Yeah. Each sport is completely different. With snowboarding, they'll do their own snowboard ads. But I'll make sure they'll keep a consistency, so they are all speaking about the same top-line message. Are all the logos the same or are you just looking for a compatible message? Compatible message. For example, at Salomon, we think the product is at a high level that really enhances your performance. You're doing your sport and that's what you're all about. Hopefully, our product helps you feel that epic moment when it all comes together-whether you're hiking or making that powder turn. The athlete does it and the product responds to do what you need it to do. That's the fundamental basis of the brand message, just to make sure within each individual sport that it's fitting into that. When the higher-ups at Salomon decided to promote you into this position, did they know you had a pro model with Checker Pig snowboards back in the day? Yep. Do you still have one in your office? Not in my office, but in my dad's basement. Did your parents ever ride it, because I know your parents are into snowboarding? Yeah, my mom did. Were they freaking out when you got it? It was the first women's signature model freestyle board in snowboarding. Yeah-you know how parents are-they're just like that. They're stoked because it's their kid, you know what I mean? Last year all Salomon Snowboards came in solid colors. This year the graphics have two colors.Are you just adding a color a year to the graphics? It's all in our art guy's mind. Our initial step into snowboarding was to be really clean, identifiable, and to let the product speak for itself. We didn't want to let the graphic create a different image than the product could create by its performance. That's really where the solid-color idea stood apart. As the line develops, we felt there was a need to differentiate the products a little more. Did you just run out of colors? There are a lot of colors out there. But you're at the point where only some people can really identify the difference in the shades. They'd say, "I'd like the maroon, but not the mauve." Others who can't really distinguish colors would just say, "I want the purple board." We needed to differentiate more, but still stay clean and basic and we've got a lot of fades and tonal things going on. The art guys could explain how the colors fit into to the whole image of the products. So you're in town for the X-Games? Yeah. The big part of the X-Games for Salomon is inline skating. I don't know much about it, so I'm trying to learn more to help with my job. None of Salomon's snowboarders are competing? Mike Michalchuck is on the waiting list. The X-Games management was a little unclear as to what the qualifier was for it. Apparently it was the Vans contest at Kirkwood. Thanks for coming by and good luck making those mini ski and inline skaters look cool. |
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