The UK’s Independent attends a Burton Snowboards autograph signing session and brings us all up-to-date on the marketing machine zeitgeist that is Shaun White, Inc.
While his contemporaries continued to channel the sport’s core sponsors into career success, White became an overnight industry, trading niche overachievement for mainstream sports superstardom, his image used to launch clothing lines for US superstore Target, his face fronting campaigns for American Express and Hewlett Packard and his signature splattered across the covers of posters, books, DVDs, video games.
When we read stories like this we think back to the time when Shaun was just a tiny kid in a helmet standing quietly by as his mother begged event organizers to let him forerun the US Open halfpipe even though he wasn’t technically old enough.
[Link: Independent]
