As you may already have noticed, I’m starting this season with a new look: a new website, a new logo, new photos and this blog, where I’ll keep you up to date. Here’s why.

Everyone who knows me knows that I want to make a name for myself first and foremost through results on the slopes. But being close to my fans – that’s you – matters a lot to me too. With the new look and more updates on my channels, I want to give you a better insight into my world and let you share in what’s going on. So I’ll check in with you before races – and of course after them – and give you a look behind the scenes of ski racing. On top of that, there will be plenty of news from my everyday life away from the slopes.

A lot has changed in sport. Everything happens on social media now, and that connects us even better with fans all over the world. Today’s fans want to be right in the middle of the action, and athletes become brands. You have to stand out without getting carried away. I promise: new “brand” or not, I’ll stay the way I am – down to earth. I couldn’t pretend to be someone else even if I tried. That’s why it was really important to me that the new look is authentic and fits me 100%.

My new helmet for the season is ready ✌🏼😀

Posted by Michael Matt on Sunday, October 7, 2018

Authenticity runs through everything I do. It starts with choosing sponsors: I have to stand fully behind a sponsor, otherwise it doesn’t work. And it carries on through the pictures I share on Instagram, my Facebook posts and this blog. A brand helps make you recognisable, and the new logo and design now do exactly that.

As part of the branding process we also shot loads of photos and action pictures. I admit it: being a “model” is more exhausting than it looks, but the photo sessions were mostly great fun (you can see the “outtakes” on the website). With a professional photographer who knows what he wants, standing in the flashlights away from the slopes can actually be fun. It’s the same with everyone I work with: the chemistry has to be right. Between me and the photographer, the agency Factory that ran the branding process, and my sponsors. With my head sponsor that matters most of all – after all, my face stands for his company.

Of course it isn’t easy to go from athlete to brand and stay completely authentic, but I think we pulled it off really well. What do you think?

Yours, Michi