Innovative marketing on YouTube makes a racket

There's a couple of great new marketing initiatives from the PSA and a couple of racket manufacturers up on YouTube.

The videos from Tecnifibre and PSA/Dunlop involve a number of PSA pros and are a step forward in the promotion of the sport.

A Usual Day with Tecnifibre features stablemates Thierry Lincou and Wael El Hindi "acting out" a supposed day in their training regimes.

The main section where they play in the urban surroundings hints at a "street" element to squash. I found this particularly interesting, as it suggests a new direction in moving the game's image away from the stuffy associations that many think it still retains.

The film makers could have skipped the first couple of minutes or so where the players are hanging around the conventional court as the dodgy scripting cheapens the concept somewhat. But well done to Lincou and El Hindi for experimenting like this for the good of the game.

The PSA film Racket Evolution , which seems to have been put together in partnership with Dunlop, has Frenchman Greg Gaultier and world number one Amr Shabana from Egypt talking about the evolution of squash rackets from the wooden models of yesteryear to today's carbon fibre composite models.

The concept is not as innovative as the Tecnifibre film, but production standards are much higher.

Both players talk eloquently about the equipment they use - Gaultier recalls a particularly amusing exhibition that he agreed to play "retro" - and the technical jargon usually associated with racket technology is pulled apart by Toby Marcham from Dunlop.

The film has been slickly produced by Pro Active Television.

So, a bold concept on one hand and slick production on the other - the next step is to marry the two and make sure more people see the end product ...

A Usual Day with Tecnifibre
Racket Evolution