How Did I Get Here (8 page)

As the tours progressed, we experimented with more complicated routines that included BMX and skate simultaneously. Andy, Lincoln, K-Rob, and I even attempted a quadruple stack, in which we tried to ride above and below each other on the same side of the ramp at the same instant. Kevin came down on Andy’s back and severely rolled his ankle. I ended up carving too far trying to dodge the other three guys and went off the side of the ramp. That was our lone attempt at a four-way.

But there were emotional high points as well. We sometimes arranged with the Make-A-Wish Foundation to arrange VIP seating for severely sick children. At a pre-show meet-and-greet, I promised one of the terminally ill kids I’d do a 900 for him. It took me a few tries, but I made it. On my way back up to the ramp deck, I pointed at him, and his older brother burst into tears. After the show, I went backstage and found a quiet place to cry myself.

By the end of the second tour, we decided to do away with the big-name bands and create our own house band to play covers of our favorite music. That worked out well, and the whole thing started to hum like a well-tuned engine. It wasn’t easy, spending seven weeks on the road each year, but the road has its own allure once you get into the rhythm.

HuckJam Happy Meals?

In 2004, we spent a long time negotiating a contract with Fox Sports to film a one-off HuckJam show in Phoenix for a 60-minute special to air on Fox’s new cable channel, Fuel TV, the first-ever 24/7 action-sports channel. We also cut a deal with Fox to film and create an eight-part reality series,
Tony Hawk’s HuckJam Diaries.
It was mutually beneficial: Fox wanted original programming for their new network, and we needed sponsorship dollars to keep the tour alive. Also, I was (and still am) a fan of Fuel TV.

That same year, I was offered a hefty two-year endorsement deal with McDonald’s and Powerade. McDonald’s wanted to create a Happy Meal with small skate-related toys, and we talked them into using the Boom Boom HuckJam brand. I knew I’d take flak from some core skaters, but I wasn’t being duplicitous: My kids were fiends for Happy Meals and McNuggets. McDonald’s also agreed to sponsor the 2005 summer tour. They were promoting Powerade as one of their “well” drinks, so Powerade came in as a major sponsor as well. We decided to book another tour, and McDonald’s sold 22 million Boom Boom HuckJam Happy Meals that year. And the toys were actually some of the coolest they’ve ever sold.

McDonald’s interpreted the many disciplines of the Boom Boom HuckJam tour into what turned out to be a very popular Happy Meal toy set.

As the tours progressed, it became increasingly clear that our audiences, primarily families, were there to see the action, not see bands, so we ditched the live musicians and created an original pre-recorded soundtrack. Pat’s husband, Alan Deremo, an accomplished studio musician, arranged the music and wrote many of the tracks.

The tour kept morphing. In 2006 and 2007, we restricted it to Six Flags amusement parks across the country: eight stops, four shows per stop. The next year we went crazy with a manic 24-city tour that almost killed us all.

Meanwhile, Pat was out pitching the Boom Boom HuckJam to various licensees, which enabled us to extend the brand into markets beyond the core skate world, without placing my name front and center: school supplies, DVDs, bedding, linens, party supplies, room décor, vitamins, flash drives, toys, pool toys, bikes, skateboards, helmets, and safety pads. I’m grateful that those products have kept the show alive and continue to generate income even when we’re not actually touring.

But—and I can’t say for sure the other athletes agree—I’m jonesing to get back out there. There’s nothing like skating in front of an appreciative crowd filled with people of all ages, especially when you can do it without worrying about how you’re going to get scored by a bunch of judges.

6

“EXTREME” IS A FOUR-LETTER WORD

“This is how we do it in our world”

In 2002, we cut a sponsorship deal with a marketing agency for a Hershey's-branded chocolate milk product. My name and image were going to be all over the campaign: TV commercials, print ads, point-of-purchase displays, and packaging. Even though I didn't have any contractual control over the “creative,” as it's called, I decided to push for at least a modicum of authenticity, since I'd be skating in the TV spot.

I really wanted the ad agency to get a director for the TV shoot who had experience filming skaters, so I steered them toward Stacy Peralta, my former team manager and co-creator of Powell Peralta Skateboards. Stacy's star was rising in Hollywood at that point, having directed the well-received documentary
Dogtown and Z-Boys.
They said okay, and I was stoked to be working with him again.

As a longtime user of the T-Mobile Sidekick, I was excited when I got to design my own personal signature model.

Courtesy of T-Mobile
®
USA, Inc.

But when we got to the set in L.A., we noticed that the extras were dressed in dorky orange and brown outfits. Somebody had decided to color-coordinate the wardrobe with the package design. Fortunately, I'd brought along my recently hired brand manager, Jaimie Muehlhausen, who politely asked the stylist if they could dress everyone in real skate clothes. They agreed, and the shoot went well. I even managed to pull a 900.

Not long after the commercial was in the can, the agency sent us samples of the product's proposed packaging. Like the extras' wardrobe, it was cheesy—an artless Madison Avenue–like incarnation of “extreme” graphics. Jaimie took their template and specs, sketched out his own version, and sent it to the designers as an example of a more credible direction, saying, “This is how we do it in our world.” We hoped his version might influence their finished product, but it did more than that: They used it untouched.

HuckJam bedding.

That story illustrates one of our fundamental business tenets: Gravitate toward sponsors and licensees that are willing to collaborate on, or even give our team control over, the look and feel of marketing material, no matter how seemingly insignificant. It's allowed us to weave a thread of graphic continuity through a wide range of products. The same hawk skull that adorns a Birdhouse skateboard also smiles out from a T-Mobile Sidekick or a back-to-school portfolio. It benefits both sides: The retail goods receive a stamp of credibility, and my logo (and thus the brand attached to my name) remains intact and recognizable as it gets adapted to an ever-growing range of products.

When Not to Trust Your Gut

I've learned to trust my gut reaction when it comes to rejecting or considering offers from potential licensees. Every now and then, though, my gut blows it.

For example, a few years back I was asked if I wanted to attach my name to a line of BMX bikes that would be made by Dynacraft, the mass-market bike manufacturer. I initially resisted because I worried that I'd look like an interloper. I imagined what my reaction would have been if a famous BMXer came out with a line of skateboards. But Pat pointed out that we'd already developed a wide range of HuckJam products, like bedding and party supplies, using imagery from skating, BMX, and Motocross. Ultimately, I agreed to put the HuckJam name on the bikes on the condition that the styles and features would be consistent with professional BMX bikes. I also insisted that they hire a professional BMXer (Mike “Rooftop” Escamilla) as a consultant.

I had no idea how successful the Tony Hawk HuckJam Series bicycles would turn out to be.

My confidence in the line grew as the bikes moved through R&D, but my fear returned when I found out that Dynacraft planned to launch the line at the annual InterBike Trade show in Las Vegas by installing a huge booth in the middle of the show's “core” BMX section—and that I had to make an appearance. It was particularly awkward because we were doing a lower price-point line, and our booth was adjacent to Dave Mirra's. I worried that the hardcore BMX industry would accuse us of stepping on their toes. I did an autograph signing, and even though we felt a bit out of place, the reception was surprisingly positive. I was really glad Rooftop was there for moral support.

Bottom line: My fears were misplaced; the HuckJam bike line boomed.

The Last of the Flimsy Pink Backpacks

The licensing boom for Tony Hawk Inc. began around 1997. Before that, it had been fairly easy to maintain authenticity because my only enterprise, Birdhouse, was a skate company run by skaters. Almost everyone in the building had been skating since they were kids; it was what defined them. As a result, they were hypersensitive about producing any kind of graphic or marketing material that hard-core skaters might mock. But as I began to gain mainstream recognition, companies with zero knowledge of our world wanted to capitalize on all things extreme. We quickly realized that they'd embarrass themselves, their product, and me if we didn't gently (and sometimes not so gently) push them in the right direction.

The first mass-market product with my name on it was the
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater
video game series by Activision. I spent a lot of time with Neversoft, the game's developer, making sure the characters, brands, shops, and venues scattered throughout the digitized landscape were the real deal. Luckily, some of the Neversoft guys were skaters, and I like to think that the franchise has accurately represented the skate culture.

Things got much more complicated after the video game's success, as companies of all kinds began courting me with sponsorship and endorsement offers. I was eager to avoid mistakes I'd made early in my career—like the time in the 1980s when I allowed my name and image to be used on a line of flimsy canvas pink “skateboard” backpacks. To gain proactive control over the way my image would be used on disparate products, we eventually created a graphic style guide. We initially contracted with an outside design company that had done similar work for such entities as Warner Brothers and NASCAR. They helped us develop new logos, then assembled all the collateral (artwork, font styles, Pantone colors, photos, and so forth) on discs for licensees. But outsourcing was expensive, so we decided to look for an in-house brand manager.

A couple of years earlier, at my brother Steve's suggestion, we enlisted Jaimie Muehlhausen to create the program for our first Boom Boom HuckJam tour. Steve knew Jaimie from his days at
Surfer
, when Jaimie had been art director at
Surfer
's sister publications
Snowboarder
and
Skateboarder.
Jaimie's a funny guy of many talents: musician, artist, and writer. (He also created the very funny websites
menwholooklikekennyrogers.com
and
redneckwordsofwisdom.com
.)

Many mainstream design teams simply try to reach too far when they venture into the action-sports world: too much graffiti, too much color, too many distressed fonts. Our initial advice is to let the sports speak for themselves when it comes to craziness. We've certainly done our share of punked-out, edgy looks, but always with some overall design constraint.

Jaimie quickly became a linchpin in the THI team, helping one outside company after another incorporate my existing logos and designs into their packaging and marketing material. His approach is gentle and simple: give them art they can actually use, that's as good or better than the stuff they concoct on their own, and then politely say, “This is how we do it in our world.”

An example: Six Flags, the amusement park chain, approached Pat in 2006 with the idea of creating roller coasters with my name on it: Tony Hawk's Big Spin. I love roller coasters, and I love taking my kids on roller coasters, and Six Flags makes the best ones, so when we got the call, I didn't hesitate. The idea was to make a giant skateboard-shaped car that spins like a platter while it speeds along the track. They also wanted to dress up the waiting area to give people standing in the queue an action-sports “experience,” with video, photos, audio, and artwork.