Branding the experience

Warning: all views in this post are my own.

I have had a lot of problems with this post. I wrote it and deleted it about 3 times already. I want to tell all of you how my experience was being the Brand Specialist for DICK'S Sporting Good during the Pittsburgh Marathon. Here is the problem, when I first started this blog I promised myself that I would not try to influence any of my readers when it comes to a product or company. I may suggest that you try a product because it works for me, but I would never say a product is bad. Simply I would say that it just wasn't for me. The same goes in this case as well, I do not want to influence you in anyway towards the company of DICK'S. I will try to sum up my experience in a nut shell just so you have a better understanding of where I stand.

First you need to know that when I was hired to be the Brand Specialist it was through a marketing company from Chicago. I originally never knew DICK'S was the company involved until right before I got hired. I also was being told that I would be the Running Specialist for the marathon, and my job would be to act as the face of the marathon. I was going to be the go to guy for newbie runners that may need some training advice. I was excited to do this because I have been around the running community for over 20 years and I do feel that I have a lot of knowledge that can be useful to a new runner. Unfortunately I was never given the chance to help anyone because I was there to brand DICK'S. If you follow me on Twitter you may have noticed that at the beginning of this campaign I was telling everyone where I would be for events, and later on I quit posting where I would be. The reason for this is I did not want to push product on people that I knew. Most of the people that follow my on Twitter are seasoned vets and they already know what works for them. Once I figured out that the people from DICK'S didn't care about the runners it rubbed me the wrong way. I don't mind pushing product if it is done classy and your company truly is trying to help out the runner. Sara, the other Brand Specialist and myself tried to give many different ways that we could get in contact with more runners and every time it was swept under the rug. The communication was very poor and most of the time we had no clue about any of the events that were coming up. This made it extremely hard to talk to anyone because we couldn't answer questions, since we didn't know any information. At times it was very frustrating. Someone has already said "well you were being paid, so you can't complain." First I am very grateful that I was lucky enough to be put in a position to get paid. However I never got involved for the money. I truly love the sport of running, it means a lot more to me than just going to a race and running. For me it means FAMILY. I was raised on running and have gotten to see all the great things that come with it.  So yes, I was getting paid good money but I would rather help a person cross a finish line that thought they couldn't over taking money any day.
I think the main reason things went wrong with this whole campaign was whoever designed it obviously was not a runner and didn't understand how runners think. It is a shame because I honestly believe with Sara's and my own knowledge we could of done great things. 

Now that the campaign is over this is what I walked away with. I do want to work in the running field for a company like Medi-Dyne. A company that will go out of there way to help a runner out and still tell you about their product in a classy way. The first time I ever heard of them they went out of their way to help me out. They never asked me to buy the product or anything like that, they were more interested in me running a good, safe race. There are so many small companies that are trying to get their product out on social media. So many of them are willing to let you sample the product and so many of them are ran by fellow athletes. I would say please consider giving these small companies a try, they are the ones that really care about you and they are the ones that want to see you succeed. Those are the types of companies I would love to eventually get a role in, a company that lets you help runners while selling the product. As for DICK'S I just can't look at them as a store for running. I would rather give my money to the small family owned running companies in the area. The ones that have training runs and when you are in there are really trying to help you out. Your money is your money and I can not tell you how to spend it or where. Instead I can just give you my reasons. 

On a side note I would just like to say all of the employees that we met while at DICK'S Sporting Good stores were very nice and went out of their way to make us feel more comfortable in a uncomfortable situation.