Bike Messenger Marketing the New, Already Dead Fad

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"Now, Adrants reader Amanda Moorhouse reports, while on her way to work this morning in Chicago, having been handed a Starbucks DoubleShot, pulled out of a messenger bag, by a guy dressed as a bike messenger. Two makes a trend. Four make trucker hat."

Edit much??

No part of this "paragraph" makes grammatical or common sense. At the very least the last two "sentences" should be parallel (and correct) in structure and agreement. The first "sentence" makes no sense whatsoever. There are five commas for chrissakes.

BTW, feel free to remove or not post this if you like. Just have a little respect for your work and fix the grammar, for the love of jeebus.

"Puma displayed a bit of sense, and isn't exploiting the messenger community?" Yeah, right. I hope adrants readers have enough sense to know all you're doing is using the space here to continue to advertise for Puma. It's very transparent.

Did you check out their ad on the back of the event guide for CMWC? It smacked of a giant corporation not giving a shit. It displayed a pretty-boy in his boxer-briefs swooping off the page on his skateboard. HIS SKATEBOARD!!!!! Let's remember that they were at the CYCLE Messenger World Championships. Skateboards are SO 1990! The track bike is supposed to be the skateboard of the 21st century, they say. And by "they", I'm pretty sure I actually mean PUMA. Look through the Team Puma promo they put out a year ago. That kind of "we identify with street culture - cool and real" doublespeak is all over it. So why, in their opportunity to reach a tight, huge, international niche audience, did they slap a picture of a skateboarder on the one piece being distributed to all the participants and spectators? And why do they bring their HUMMER everywhere they go? Puma' Hummer being anywhere bike messengers are is just as (if not much more) insulting than any Lincoln ad that steals messengers' personalities.

So don't don't DON'T believe this hype. Someone had it perfectly right when they tagged the puma tank at Warsaw on friday night. Whoever you were - you get the "best use of a sharpie" award for the weekend.

Accept the fact that the messenger community doesn't itself give a shit about ads or advertisers. We just take their money. If you or anyone else thinks they've been influenced by ads, then you suck anyway & should try to see the world through your own damn eyes.

Skateboards were so 70s in the 80s when I rode them. They were so 80s in the 90s when you rode them, not they're 90s in the new centur because you thought you had an original thought in the 90s. What a chump, the ad guys know you for what you are, thats why they give you ads & not money.

Yeah we vandalized teh're Hummer cause they were stupid enough to bring it, it didn't mess up our relationship with them because it isn't a relationship that we care about & they know it.

I do agree that the advertising is often (at best) lame and insulting and counter-intuitive, and at worst, possibly illegal (such as where cycle courier Squid was mentioned in the Lincoln advertisement). The Humvee is a poor choice for Puma, obviously, and the skateboard reference is plain dumb. Why not a picture of a 15t track cog, which would make sense? An advertisement is supposed to sell one idea ... not ten. It would be in the advertisers interest to present an integrated idea, if as in Puma's case they are about bikes, in particular fixed-wheeled machines, then they should be about bikes, not skateboards, an image which seems completely out of place as to appear to be put there by mistake... until one realizes it has "extreme" in common with cycling, which tells the astute observer that what Puma was / is trying to sell is not cycling per se but simply an attitude or image.

I do have to say though that on the whole, Puma's sponsoring of cycling and their bike messenger's team is a step in the right direction. Whether the adrants website is indeed "shilling" for Puma I cannot say, but they at least did not use names without permission. Heck, the couriers went to Puma dfor sponsorship, apparently. The money from Puma enables the racing. What's wrong with that?

I'm not a messenger but an avid cyclist who rides daily, commutes by bike whenever possible, and has been hit by cars 5 times despite obeying the rules of the road. I would love cycling to become more mainstream if only because then drivers might look for me. In this respoect if advertising can help put cycling on the public radar good for it - provided the ads don't make riders look like jerks or use people's ID's without permission and so forth.

I do agree that the advertising is often (at best) lame and insulting and counter-intuitive, and at worst, possibly illegal (such as where cycle courier Squid was mentioned in the Lincoln advertisement). The Humvee is a poor choice for Puma, obviously, and the skateboard reference is plain dumb. Why not a picture of a 15t track cog, which would make sense? An advertisement is supposed to sell one idea ... not ten. It would be in the advertisers interest to present an integrated idea, if as in Puma's case they are about bikes, in particular fixed-wheeled machines, then they should be about bikes, not skateboards, an image which seems completely out of place as to appear to be put there by mistake... until one realizes it has "extreme" in common with cycling, which tells the astute observer that what Puma was / is trying to sell is not cycling per se but simply an attitude or image.

I do have to say though that on the whole, Puma's sponsoring of cycling and their bike messenger's team is a step in the right direction. Whether the adrants website is indeed "shilling" for Puma I cannot say, but they at least did not use names without permission. Heck, the couriers went to Puma dfor sponsorship, apparently. The money from Puma enables the racing. What's wrong with that?

I'm not a messenger but an avid cyclist who rides daily, commutes by bike whenever possible, and has been hit by cars 5 times despite obeying the rules of the road. I would love cycling to become more mainstream if only because then drivers might look for me. In this respoect if advertising can help put cycling on the public radar good for it - provided the ads don't make riders look like jerks or use people's ID's without permission and so forth.