Marketing women’s surfing

Is it conceivable that female surfers (not their physically abler, aerially contorted male counterparts) might be the ones who move the chains of the sport in the next five years? Even after decades of sideshow status, during which it’s been all but concluded that female pros are as relevant to performance surfing as seagulls?

Yes, definitely.

I’d argue, at least, that women have a golden opportunity to expand their influence in the sport — that they could gain major “significance share” off of the men — and that in so doing, the successful ones would position themselves as marketing powerhouses for endemic sponsors and non.

The rub, as the women should understand by now, is that none among them can compete with the men in terms of surfing ability. To resist this genetic truth is to squander the chance women have to be personalities and ambassadors of an enviable lifestyle, one that isn’t predicated on progressive surfing. Technology offers the smart, attractive, stylish, worldly surf chick a chance to broadcast herself in any fabulous context she should choose. Alton Brown and Anthony Bourdain have done it with food; Rob Dyrdek has done it with skateboarding; Obama did it with “change.”

A girl like Carissa Moore, with her ear to the technological ground, could leverage any combination of platforms and media to bolster her — here it comes — personal brand, and thereby be light-years ahead of the women who bang their heads against a performance wall trying to gain legitimacy. Just recognizing which battle to fight, and which weapons are available, would be a major victory for women’s surfing.

— Stuart

Old fashion

The Great American Apparel Diet has nothing to do with Dov Charney, and nothing to do with his revolving line of trendy basics. But maybe it should. The “diet” is a challenge voluntarily taken up by a group of women who’ve pledged to buy no new clothing for a year, in hopes of saving planet and cash, and maybe having some revelation about consumption = evil.

This experiment should be a prerequisite for college admission; it should be a cultural institution, or should perhaps be rewarded with tax credits — not for the obvious reasons mentioned, but rather to drive home an ugly truth of industrial fashion: that it survives by a process of planned obsolescence. A style is only “in” if contrasted with whatever preceded it, which by then must be “out.” No secret, but it’s a notion worth instilling in the youth before we embark on an adulthood of repeatedly buying the latest textile garbage. We’re lulled into a false sense of timelessness via the “out of closet, out of mind” policy, but being forced to keep that cardigan or fedora on heavy rotation long after the novelty has worn off might make us think twice about choosing quality in fashion.

The Great American Apparel Diet brings up another concept worth considering, namely that when we say someone has “style,” we’re most likely making a comment on

a)    the recentness of his purchase (a temporal observation, as in, you happen to have been to the mall lately compared with other people) or

b)   his clothing budget, in that he has enough money to frequently make new wardrobe acquisitions.

In neither case does true style enter into the equation. It’s the rare person who employs real creativity or original thought in conjuring a remarkable outfit — and that, as one woman involved in the Diet noted, becomes obvious when new clothes are outlawed. Writing on the project’s blog, she said she hoped the Diet would, “provide a good exercise in discipline, using what I have to create new looks.”

Which is more admirable than reaching for the credit card.

(via PSFK)

— Stuart

Cities as brands

Clothes are put on and then stripped, coffee cups are drained and discarded, but the city in which a young person lives is a brand that he or she must rock at all times. It’s a pervasive symbol of how we choose to live, what values we embrace, and of the types of people with whom we associate. Even while traveling away from home, we have to carry into every conversation and new acquaintance the connotation of being from LA or living in Boston. Below are some of the geographic “brands” connecting most strongly with young Americans today.

Portland: This city’s social connotations read like an encyclopedia of Gen-Y buzzwords: environmentalism, cycling, microbreweries, direct-trade coffee, and Nike, just to name a few.

NYC: The original city-as-identity. Young, native New Yorkers still find the place impossible to leave, and outsiders remain drawn to vague notions of “lofts” and “the Village” and to high-powered futures in a tailored suit. Or, alternatively, whatever is the polar opposite of a tailored suit.

Orange County: Specifically the southern coastal portion, which — as a bastion of new money not encroached upon by industry/serious academia and insular in its conservatism — is free to embrace the character of its televised self (Laguna Beach, The OC etc.).

Silicon Valley: Self-associating with the place (and thereby the Web 2.0 community at its rawest, its most funded and its most innovative) is an intellectual tag somewhat akin to Ivy League enrollment. For its particular niche, no physical workspace carries the same aura.

San Francisco: South Park did a whole episode about SF, during which the word “smug” played heavily in describing its populace — but that’s only an assessment from the Green angle, which is not only a point of pride to Gen-Y, it also ignores the foodie, gay, design and professional elements that make young San Franciscans want to scream their allegiance from the roof of a restored Victorian.

— Stuart

Era of restrained consumption?

People my age have Depression-era grandparents, and the experience of living through that decade (+/-) seems to have stuck with them. Despite enjoying the spoils of postwar expansion and the Technological Age, their memories remain tethered to bread lines and the Dust Bowl. They don’t like to waste much, regardless of their current means, and they seek a good value from all products and services.

Will Gen-Y be similarly marked by this Great Recession? Allstate insurance thinks so. In one of its TV spots, the actor/pitchman Dennis Haysbert says, “Allstate has seen 12 recoveries, but this one is different because we’re different. We realize our things are not as important as the future we’re building for the ones we love.”

I find Dennis’s voice comforting, but I wouldn’t be so sure about his conclusion.

Gen-Y is often described by experts as being wary of over-consumption for environmental and economic reasons, and in theory, this should be reflected in the kind of world we shape for ourselves. We care less for possessions than for experiences; we value work-life balance above salary figures.

But young people are also fiercely insecure, heavily co-dependent in decision-making, and relentlessly driven to embody some ideal of personal fulfillment. Right now, popular consciousness is saturated with high-minded notions like “voluntary simplicity.” It’s easy to get onboard the non-consumptive train and feel like part of a community — but what happens if the community starts to splinter? What happens if Gen-Y does as the ‘60s generation did in turning yuppie? Line-drying your single pair of organic denim jeans next to the herb garden is nice and all, until you have kids who need braces and a college fund. It’s not hard to imagine a lot of us relapsing into the old pattern: work for the weekend, self-medicate with a new flat-screen. Repeat as needed.

I hope this doesn’t happen, but at the moment, not consuming smells suspiciously like any other status symbol by which young people define and categorize themselves — suspiciously like a trendy product or brand-name. As such, it’s as susceptible as to being outmoded and forgotten as MySpace.

— Stuart

Travis interviewed on Runamuk Visuals

Travis gives an expletive-laden diatribe on the state of surfing as part of Runamuk Visuals’ “A Note From the Editors” series. Asked who he would sign to his own imaginary surf team, Travis says:

I’d sign Craig Anderson and make him go live in Europe, date models, and bring the surfing lifestyle back to a place it was in the ‘50s and ‘60s: iconic.

Why are we here?

Travis (26 / nearly-professional surfer / magazine editor) and I (21 / surfer / observer) regularly noticed glaring weaknesses in many brands’ approach to our demographic. We saw them reaching out through misguided marketing initiatives, sub-par visual elements, ineffective copy and an overall poor understanding of the core consumer. Faced with a large disparity between the quality of the brands’ product and of their marketing communications, we saw an opportunity to bridge the gap. We knew that, with our network of like-minded and complementary young creatives, we could comprise a liaison between keen marketers and the core audience.

Out of that realization, black&quickly was born to serve the brand, group or individual seeking to make an authentic connection with influential early adopters in the surf / fashion / art / music worlds.

Here you will find an outlet for thoughts, ideas, insights and analysis from the minds behind black&quickly. Nothing would make our day more than hearing from you, so please contact us or leave a comment with thoughts of your own.

— Stuart