Monday, October 23, 2006

Oh Yeah: "Freeroading"

Exploring Specialized's website to look at the Armadillo line I was reminded of another thing they did to annoy me. They tried to put their brand name on exploratory riding by calling it Freeroading and acting like they invented it.

Unfortunately, in order to attract enough revenue to survive, an industry has to try to attract the kind of consumers who fall for marketing slogans. Otherwise the activity remains too small and the consumers too intelligent to spend money freely enough to keep suppliers afloat. We who know better should all just nudge and wink about it. Sometimes I just get tired of disentangling some innocent by-catch from the marketing net as a newer rider progresses up the information stream to clearer understanding.

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