ASR Blog

What is your water footprint?

It seems like the more I learn about the environment, the more I get bummed out. We’ve all been aware of our carbon footprint for a while, and trying to make changes to minimize our individual impact on mother earth. Now, thanks to Surfers Village we can understand our individual water footprint. The Water footprint of an individual is defined as the total water used for the production of the goods and services consumed by the individual. It can be estimated by multiplying all goods and services consumed by their respective virtual-water content. Check out the article and get freaked out. As the population continues to grow, and as we continue to make a mess of the planet, our water demand is outpacing what the planet can replenish. You can find some examples of the water footprint for individual products and get a better understanding of what’s happening. Everything is listed in Litres. Unless you recently brushed up on the metric system, here’s how a Litre converts. One litre is slightly more than one U.S. liquid quart. There are two pints in a quart. So, two pints at Hensley’s equals one Litre. Now that I know my water footprint on a Friday night is over 200 litres I need to change some other things in my life.

Read the article, check out the examples and calculators, and spread the word. If it’s yellow let it mellow.

Matt

Clean up!

Wow, it’s July 1st. That means we’re just a few days away from the Fourth of July. Nice! Paid time off, BBQ’s, and fireworks. What are you doing on July 5th? Nothing cures a fireworks hangover better than picking up trash. Seriously, the beaches look like a junkyard the day after the 4th of July. Thankfully, Sun Diego pulled together 6 meeting points for Beach Clean Up Day in San Diego…

Del Mar with Volcom
Pacific Beach with O’Neill
Ocean Beach with Quiksilver
Ponto Beach with Billabong
Mission Beach with Ocean Minded
Oceanside Pier with …Lost

Pick your spot and pick up trash. Check out the flier for more info.

Click here to view the flier.

I’m heading to the O’side Pier to clean up. Anyone outside of SD, spread the word about your own scene on July 5th. Clean up your beach, your local park, or your neighborhood after the ragin’ block party.

Matt

This is goodbye

I'm sad to say that this is my last entry for the ASR blog. I want to thank everyone who read and commented to my entries this past year, I appreciate everyone taking the time in doing so. The hardworking staff at ASR will continue to write the blog themselves, so please make sure to keep checking it and making reading the blog part of your daily routine.

Have a wonderful summer!
Alex

NSSA attacks Lower's

The NSSA Nationals are running wild at Lower Trestles. The event has been running since Tuesday, with the championships taking place tomorrow. If you’ve never been to Nationals, you should really try to make it down. It’s a circus—the sponsor’s tents are set up running down the beach for what seems like miles and each company tries to outdo the other with the coolest activities for the kids in between heats. Foosball tables are brought down, there are full on BBQ set-ups with team managers cooking lunch for their team, and games (the wackier the better) are in full force. The beach gets crowded with parents, photographers, media and lots of umbrellas, so claim your sand early. You can try and get a surf in at Middle’s—try meaning you hope a grom (who out surfs you even though they are more than half your age) doesn’t snake you. It is a great time and it will take your breath away to see these kids perform on the waves.

For more NSSA Nationals info, click here.
To see the event live, click here.

Insight's ad creativity

As you probably heard back in May, Insight was the recipient of two SIMA Image Awards— Breakthrough Brand of the Year and Men’s Marketing Campaign of the Year—the latter of which is what I wanted to talk about.

For two year's running, Insight has had fantastic campaigns, and 2008 is no exception. I’m sure you’ve seen the ads, they are insane. Shot by D. Hump, each ad features an underwater scene—from surfer Jared Mell surfing over some orange egg like things to Malia Jones and Bunnyman watching Kai Otton do an off the top over them. You can check out the whole series of photos on the Insight site.    

In a related note, for those of you who are as mesmerized by this type of photography as I am, I was reading an issue of Smithsonian Magazine when an article on photographer Bruce Mozert caught my eye. He did the same type of photography to promote Silver Springs, Florida in the late 1930’s and forties. Although Mozert’s differ from D. Hump’s because the viewer can only see the scene under the water (D. Hump’s are a “split view”—you see the surfer above as well as the scene below), the set-ups are just as interesting. If you’d like to see the article, click here.   

*Insight photos taken from the Insight site.
**Bruce Mozert shot taken from the Smithsonian site.

Surfers get rowdy in Malibu

By now you’ve probably heard about the Malibu incident that happened over the weekend—paparazzi were on the beach trying to get the money shot of Matthew McConaughey surfing, and local surfers told the cameramen to get out or else. What followed was an all out brawl between the two while Matthew was surfing, with no clue as to what was going on (so says his agent). On Saturday, surfers had their day—chasing paparazzi, dragging them in the water, ruining camera equipment. The tables turned on Sunday though, as paparazzi returned, with bodyguards. It’s not clear what the paparazzi were trying to get done, but the surfers approached them again, only this time, the bodyguards beat up the surfers.

In my opinion, the entire thing is ridiculous. If you watch the video, you can see one guy drinking, so I’m sure that some of the violence was fueled by alcohol. I’m also wondering if these locals are all being typecast as surfers—were some of the guys involved just sitting on the beach? Does the news have to call them all surfers and give the sport a bad name? Anyone have some insight from a first hand source on what went down?

Best advice on growing your company

My first job out of college was working in the production department of Surfing Magazine, and one of my many duties was to collect ad film (you can see it was a long time ago—we actually used film) from our advertisers. I can’t tell you how many start-up clients came in big—with spread ads—only to be canceling their contracts a few issues later. Point being—these little guys would come in huge, with no budget, hoping to grow their brand, only to go under a few months later. So, when I was at the Group Y function last week, and Rob asked the panelists what the best piece of advice was in growing a company, I was interested to hear their answers. . .

SkullCandy Chairman Jeff Kearl said, “Surround your company with smart people.” He made a big deal about this, pointedly saying don’t hire anyone off the street just because they are cool or used to be pro. He said that SkullCandy is really careful on whom they hire, and it sounds like the potential employee has to go through some rigorous interviews. Jeff also brought up the point of not being afraid to get advice from industry leaders. He routinely calls people such as Paul Naude from Billabong, asking his opinion on SkullCandy expansion ideas. Of course not everyone has a black book full of CEO’s numbers, but it shows that networking and getting yourself out there is not a bad idea.

Dan Levine, president of RVCA says, “Own your backyard before layering on new regions, territories, and accounts. Conquer the 60 mile radius from where you are based and branch out from there.” This advice can be seen in the success of companies such as Volcom or Nixon. Volcom is synonymous with
Newport Beach—one of the first things Richard Wolcott did was get the locals on board with the Stone, the brand grew underground from there. Nixon owns Encinitas—it seems as if everywhere you go, there’s a Nixon logo somewhere. They even sponsor the surf forecasts on the lifeguard towers—genius.

The last piece of advice came from Bruce Beach, co-founder and CEO of Electric: “Running your company should be a passion—you love it and have fun doing it. Once it becomes a job, get out. In good times and bad, keep looking at the vision.”

Bruce’s advice is my favorite—it’s something we should all stick to, whether we are the CEO or the grunt making deliveries. Love what you do.

International Surfing Day

Today is International Surfing Day, and after driving around and checking out my local beaches, it seems as if everyone is doing just that—surfing. The day was created by Surfing Magazine to give, “a chance to promote and celebrate the sport while bringing awareness to the state of our oceans and beaches.” The magazine works with Surfrider, and the two held a series of beach cleanups (at least 100) throughout the world. For more info, you can click on the official website.

As I said above, my local beaches are crowded with people taking advantage of the day. (It probably helps that it’s currently 80 degrees and there’s a swell hitting.) Lower Trestles about 40 people sitting on the peak, and there was a 30 minute wait to get into San Onofre at 9:00 this morning. So, what did you do to celebrate the day? And, out of curiosity, what do you think of today, International Surfing Day, and tomorrow, Go Skateboarding Day—do you think they’re good to have? That they promote the sports? Or, just insiders are in the know?

Group Y discusses how to market your brand during a recession

One of the most interesting questions that Rob Campbell asked the three panelists (click here on the Group Y event that took place Monday night) was, “How do you market a brand in times of economic recession?” Obviously, everyone is stressed, budgets are tight, and the knee jerk reaction of most people would be to cut marketing and advertising. However, Bruce Beach, Co-Founder and CEO of Electric Visual, and Dan Levine, President of RVCA, said that one must do the opposite.

Bruce told the story of launching Electric—the company was founded in 2000—the same time as the dot com explosion and downfall. They weathered that storm, but then 9/11 happened, and they had another tumultuous time to get through. In Electric’s third year of business, the product finally caught up, and they were driving in the fast lane. The one thing that Electric never scaled back on? Marketing. During these tough times, Bruce said they kept on advertising and they kept their team. He believes this is the number one thing to do to get your product flying off the shelves.

Dan agrees. He said that in times like today, you’re tempted to, “cutback and be influenced by conditions. But your brand needs to tell a story—your accounts and fan base are counting on you to do that.” Dan goes on to say that your marketing has to be concise and tell the same story, and this gets done by your advertising campaigns—both print and online. He says the number one thing to do in a recession is to, “never lose sight of why your audience is coming to you.”

Good advice by both—and something that all print and online sales reps will love to hear.

*Photo taken from Transworld Business website. From left to right are:Skullcandy Chairman Jeff Kearl, Panel Moderator (and Publisher of Transworld Business Rob Campbell, RVCA President Dan Levine and Electric Co-founder and CEO Bruce Beach

Group Y gets the networking done

Last night the Group Y Network presented a discussion on the building, growth and maintenance of successful niche brands. Set in a panel format, the panelists were three industry heads which included, Dan Levine, President of RVCA, Bruce Beach, Co-founder and CEO of Electric Visual and Jeff Kearl, Chairman of Skullcandy. Moderated by Rob Campbell, Publisher of Transworld Business, the night provided some interesting details on what these three men believe is the core of a successful company during the current economic situation. Check back later this week for more information on what was said. In the meantime, here are some pictures of the night.

It’s been almost a year since I’ve attended a Group Y event, and I was amazed at the amount of people who came compared to last year. The crowd was varied—a sampling showed ex-professional surfers, photographers, retail owners and people from design and PR firms in attendance. It truly does make for a good networking night.

Mark Sperling and Liz Randall, Group Y Founders

Bruce Beach, CEO of Electric with his lovely wife, Kristen

Left to Right: Robyn Lass, who is now jobless since the closing of Future (anyone need a writer?), with Lindsay Tredent, Music Marketing and Content for MySpace and Adryan Roane Ritter, a freelance writer and photographer

Left to Right: Keri Gross, Sales and Marketing for Innovate Partners, Angie Smith, Group Y, and Peter Campbell, Sales Operations for DC

The scene outside. . .

. . .with the scene inside

Left: Matt McClain, Director of Marketing at Surfrider with Wally Fox, Creative Director of Boost Mobile

Noleen Lovell and Zach Lyons of ChopShop

Nicole Grodesky--ex-WQS surfer and currently a Communications student with her boyfriend Bobby Shadley, a freelance writer