Curtis Kitchen has a pretty impressive sports resume, most recently covering the Big 12 and Kansas State sports. He does segments on KCSP 610 AM and has worked at sports talker WHB 810 AM in between enhancing a freelance writing portfolio for several media outlets and publications.
In addition, his blog curtiskitchen.com features a variety of stories on a wide range of topics. It receives a respectable amount of visitors each month in the range of 14-30,000, depending on the season.
Like many bloggers, Kitchen sometimes gets a decent response to stories he posts. Other times, not so much.
But a recent story generated responses he was not really expecting.
Kitchen wrote a story recently about a football helmet introduced this year called “Vengeance” by Schutt Sports (link), which claims to be the world leader in football helmets and faceguards. Kitchen wrote that in an age when the hot football topic involves concussions maybe naming a helmet “Vengeance” might not be sending the right message.
Kitchen also added that a questionable marketing tactic 12 years ago cost Schutt a $12 million verdict against the company, and the marketing of this new helmet might repeat history.
Shortly after the story appeared there was a response from Robert Erb. Was this THE Robert Erb, the CEO of the Litchfield, IL, company? Maybe it was someone simply using Erb’s name.
A short while later another commenter posted under the name of Glenn Beckmann. Was this really Schutt’s director of marketing communications responding on his blog?
The answer to both questions is “Yes!”
Erb and Beckmann, in fact, monitor social media outlets and personally respond when they feel it is necessary. Talk about taking a hands-on approach to social media issues!
“These replies were from Robert and myself,” Beckmann confirmed to Bottom Line. “We do monitor social media and we respond to anything, positive or negative, that we believe is noteworthy.
“Normally we do not respond to critical pieces just because they’re critical of us. We respond if there is an error or oversight or bad information that needs to be corrected,” he added.
To say the least, Kitchen is still stunned that two top officials from Schutt Sports were involved in some lively discussions on his relatively small blog.
“I am shocked at the response I received, both in terms of who it was and how it was handled,” Kitchen told Bottom Line. “My initial piece was a simple one of interest at the marketing strategy. It was worth exploring how a company, through no fault of its own, is trying to sell a brand new helmet in an increasingly uneasy environment, and whether it might be treading a pretty fine line on repeating a past costly mistake.”
Kitchen also was surprised at some of the responses he received from the Schutt duo.
“The condescending, awkward technology and football history lesson response that came back from them was a surprise,” says Kitchen. “That coupled with the elementary public relations mistakes like the CEO saying product names do not matter along with the product’s release lead where it claimed users could take on foes “head-on,” just stunned me.
“On their worst day, that sort of stuff should never happen.”