Creative director of greatest advertisement
ever made reveals secret to success: “Knowing the rules on what we
weren’t allowed to suggest in a beer ad – no sport, bravado,
success, or prowess – it had felt like a fun game to try to bend
every one of those!”
By Chas Smith
Pure surf.
I’ll tell you, anytime, and I mean anytime, our
wonderful surfing appears in a television commercial it captivates
me completely. I’ll stop whatever I’m doing and study to see if
shaper is visible on board, if fins are in correctly, if the
essence has been captured or poorly appropriated.
Over time, I’ve become somewhat of an authority, maybe
the authority, and can say, without fear of contradiction,
that the worst is Jeep’s “Surf the World” effort.
The best?
Guinness beer’s 1999 “Surfer.”
It may, in fact, be one of the greatest commercials ever made
full stop.
The brief spoke cleverly about the audience and making ads
that moved Guinness into a broader, more accessible arena. However,
it also said: “The Guinness extended pour time shouldn’t be
mentioned, as the dwell may well be a potential barrier to a
younger demographic.”
I felt clearly that the “pour” was a treasured part of the
Guinness experience. I’d seen mates who are devoted Guinness
drinkers look at the settling glass with a distinct sense of
longing. Wanting the result of the wait and yet wanting the wait at
the same time.
Knowing the rules on what we weren’t allowed to suggest in a
beer ad – no sport, bravado, success, or prowess – it had felt like
a fun game to try to bend every one of those rules but in a way
that would still let the story get on air.
And there we have it. “…no sport, bravado, success or
prowess…”
Pure surf.
Campbell goes on to discuss the casting, making etc. and worth a
read but savor slowly, again, here.
Loading comments...
Load Comments
0
Surfer seriously injured after hit by Great
White shark at clothing optional beach near famed big-wave surf
spot Mavericks!
By Derek Rielly
Maybe the attack ain’t such a surprise given a dead
whale washed up on nearby Pacifica Beach a few weeks ago, the
twelfth since February,
A thirty-five-year-old surfer, maybe swimmer it ain’t
clear, has been hit by a Great White shark at Gray Whale
Cove,a gorgeous little clothing optional
beach just north of Mavericks and twenty miles south of San
Francisco.
The man, who was bitten on the upper leg, was treated with
“advanced life support measures” at the scene and taken to Stanford
Med Center’s trauma facility where he’s in a serious
condition.
INCIDENT UPDATE: Upon arrival at Gray Whale
Cove firefighters/paramedics found a male on the beach with a
confirmed bite to his body. Patient was treated with advanced life
support measures and transported to a local trauma center in
serious condition. pic.twitter.com/z3dcy9gTR6
Watch: Hero with no apparent care for life
or limb dramatically frees baby Great White Shark caught on fishing
line in North County, San Diego!
By Chas Smith
Notes for the apocalypse.
I wander through this life quietly making mental
notes about who I want to be around during the apocalypse.
Who cuts and runs versus who stands and faces situations dire and
scary. It’s often surprising, you know. Men standing tall and proud
will abandon a scene at a sniff that it might go sideways. Women
seemingly meek and mild will roar like lionesses and fear no
action.
That’s why mental notes and I would very much like to have the
hero who, days, ago freed a baby great white shark caught in a
fishing line on Carlsbad’s Tamarack.
The scene was captured by a beachgoer named Kelly Bailey who
told Fox 5 News, “I was walking over towards the Jetty where my son
and his cousins were exploring and I noticed a fishing line pulling
from far out in the water. I then saw a man reeling in a large
marine reel and another man running towards the water with a spear.
After the man was fighting to reel in what we all thought was a
sport fish, was told by the other man holding the spear that it was
in fact a shark.”
Yes, a baby great white shark teeth gleaming in the June gloom,
head whipping to and fro trying to find a snack.
The hero, though, is completely unperturbed and deftly goes to
work freeing the beast then dragging out to sea.
Very cool under pressure.
And while I surf the general region, and imagine this li’l
man-eater is swimming around with much rage, the hero’s poise and
desire to throw himself in harm’s way to help a creature makes me
proud.
His family and friends lucky come apocalypse time.
A surf brand inspired by WSL's Future Surf
Classic.
If you knew Joey Frizzelle like I know Joey
Frizzelle, why, you’d love him to pieces, too.
Joe was at Volcom for fourteen years, all through the good ones,
through the great float, and before getting the joint got bought
out by the French luxe group Kering, owners of Gucci, Saint Laurent
and Bottega Veneta and finally, Authentic Group, makers of Juicy
Couture’s outstanding velvet tracksuits (a personal fav.)
“It changed a lot for over that time,” says Joe, who was
Volcom’s surf trunk designer of note.
His little light bulb moment for a brand centred around pools
came when he was watching the Future Classic at Surf Ranch in 2017,
the world’s second-ever major wave pool event, a contest where
spectators were excluded.
“No one could see what was going on, it was so exclusive, so
elitist and all of a sudden everyone had a comment about it, the
death of surfing and so on. Everyone had an opinion on
it.”
Joe went out and got the Instagram handle, bought the domain, he
yelled from his Volcom cubicle, “Can somebody make a
logo?”
By the time the afternoon had spilled into evening, he had a
logo, a website, had posted photos on Instagram and had mocked up a
full range of hats and tees.
He had to keep it under wraps, howevs, at least the part where
he was in low-level cahoots with BeachGrit.
“The management were not too keen on BeachGrit and here
I am sending stuff to Chas.”
The brand started as parody but Joe is anything but anti-tub. He
hits the Waco pool when he can and even blew his money on the old
Austin tank before it got bought out by KSWaveCo, demolished, and
abandoned.
“The Austin pool was tough, that was horrible. It was like bad
San Onofre,” says Joe.
Still, even at Austin “we had a really fun day. Wavepools are so
dope, they’re sick, that’s what we dreamed about when we were kids.
You have Travis Ferré saying they’re the
worst thing ever, never do it, everyone splitting has on it,
flip-flopping back and forth. But when you go,
everyone’s rotating, no one’s hassling, everyone’s stoked. It’s
better than sitting at 56th Street and battling all the groms all
day for shitty waves. At BSR, it’s a pretty good three-footer.
You’re with your friends hooting and hollering and you’re not out
there thinking, aw, the wind just came up, the tide’s not
right.”
“Everyone is on the Bro Team,” he says. “If you want to apply go
for it. When you show up at a pool rocking a Country Club shirt, you’re in the know,
part of the club.”
Country Club Surf Club ain’t even close to
being self-sustaining, Joe’s got himself another gig
to pay the bills, but the dream is to get enough of a buzz around
it, to build relationships with the guys at the pools and get a
discount on sessions so he can take his twin five-year-old
shredders on his choline adventures without melting his card.
In the meantime, “It’s a fun spin on what’s happening in core
surf,” says Joe. “It keeps me self-entertained.”
Loading comments...
Load Comments
0
Dariel, not a man to reflect on life's what-ifs… |
Photo: @dariel_melendezd/@quekasurfer_ma
Surfers raise $26,000 to buy freakishly
talented Caribbean amputee a custom titanium prosthetic leg!
By Derek Rielly
"Team work truly is the dream work!"
Ten years ago, eleven-year-old Costa Rican Dariel
Meléndez Davila was hit by a train while trying to escape a thief,
his leg so mangled it had to be amputated in hospital, the
kid conscious the whole time.
The train shortly after running over
Dariel.
Seven years later, Dariel got hit by a different train, this
time the desire to surf.
He’d seen all the surfers around his home town of Puerto Viejo,
but it wasn’t until he spoke to a pal who’d been to an Adaptive
Surfing Camp that he realised there was a network out there of
surfers dealing with disabilities and who could help him get into
the game.
Now, thanks to the intervention of noted filmmaker Logan Dulien
(Snapt series) who created a gofundme to raise cash for a
prosthetic limb and travel to the US to get the appendage fitted,
Dariel is gonna get a custom titanium prothesis from Russ Molina,
owner of Advanced Kinematics and one of the best in the
biz.
“He will come out start of September compete in the adaptive
surf competition in Oceanside first week of September then after
the comp he will spend 10 days in Palm Springs with Russel Molina
getting a custom mold fit for the titanium leg,” Dulien told
BeachGrit. “Then after that attend the Snapt4 world premiere in HB September 25th
and then fly back to Costa Rica a few days later.”
It ain’t gonna all be plain sailing, howevs. Dariel has never
used a prosthesis.
“He will first have to learn to walk and eventually surf. Will
be work in progress,” says Dulien.
Loading comments...
Load Comments
0
Jon Pyzel and Matt Biolos by
@theneedforshutterspeed/Step Bros
