The 8 most powerful personal brands in surfing

A Tom Ford piece…

If you mind the biz gurus — if not, hats off, you furry legend — you’ll notice their current ploy to feast on our greed and insecurity is the doctrine of personal branding. The idea’s this: we’re each of us a walking, talking brand like Virgin or Volcom or Volkswagen. We gotta stand for something unique. We gotta package our personal brand and sell it to get hired, paid, laid, rich and written about. This is the tao.

Turn this lens on pro surfers and you start to see human brands all over the joint — guys (and gals!) who cultivate an image and ride it to niche celebrity.

Exhaustive research led Stab to this, a list of the strongest personal brands in our world today.

_______________

Rasta, back to basics for Electric.

Dave Rastovich (Earth Mother)

No surfer so well associates himself with the interests of our handy planet. From dolphin saving to recycled boardies to paddling for awareness on the high seas, Rasta equals green.

It helps that the man rips on hippie-era craft and planks of hewn timber, which fit the whole nature dance. Bleach-white epoxy thrusters don’t scream quite “earthy,” do they?

_______________

Mr Wright, as photographed by Vauxlair in his Narrabeen home.

Ozzie Wright (Basquiat, But Airborne)

Sir Oscar today is inseparable from his body of artwork, the signature bunny girls and bats and fangs, paintings and cartoons dating back to the steamy ‘90s. They’ve graced the gamut of flat surfaces from canvas to comic, T-shirt to surfboard, blending the art with the cult of the Oz and hence inflating both fabulous things. His distinctive, divisive surf style — so foul or so fine? — is at least as iconic.

Most importantly, Ozzie’s act ain’t contrived. He’s the rare authentic original, that holy grail of personal branding’s entire witch doctor pseudoscience. As a surfer, and as a man, there’s only one Oska.

_______________

Mr Machado. Photo: Channel Islands

Rob Machado (Soul Man)

Key to a strong brand (say experts) is consistency. A Coke can ain’t red today and green tomorrow and blue next Tuesday. A Coke is a Coke.

Rob Machado knows the rules. Everything from Rob’s hair to his speech to his silky float on a wave, to his handwriting (you seen it?) to those açai bowls to his idle strum of a guitar — the provenance of which is unknown as you swear he didn’t have that guitar just moments ago — is all in perfect concert. His brand is effortless cool, which is rarely effortless, but always cool.

_______________

Dane Reynolds, by Ryan Miller.

Dane Reynolds (Accidental Genius)

Nothing intoxicates an audience like the trope of brilliance-as-a-burden. Nash, Van Gogh, Cobain, Foster Wallace, oh god yes! Genius is a dish best served complex and conflicted.

The Dane Reynolds brand strikes this precise chord. Dane’s surfing best-ness (hardly disputed) is coupled with his discomfort from the fanfare and expectations that best-ness brings, and his reluctance to court them. Who can play hard to get quite like Mr. Reynolds? And so he’s wanted all the more.

_______________

Mr Agius, by Grady Archbold.

Dion Agius (Fahkin Heepsta)

For good or ill, Dion’s been cast as surfing’s archetypical hipster — the label his whole generation (incl. haters) all seem to chase in their dress and behaviour but which, paradoxically, no person wants to claim. (Ever hear “I’m a hipster” said proudly, or at all?)

But — hat tip Lil Wayne — that boy Dion is Ray Charles to the bullshit. At press time he’s making films and photographs, running an optics brand, a line of threads with Globe, a digital trade in vintage Americana, grooming a hirsute chin and jaw that’d make all of Eastern Europe stand and applaud, and lord knows what else he’s hustled in just the time since Stab banged these serif keys.

_______________

Mick Fanning at the Shorebreak Hotel, Huntington Beach. Photo by Steve Sherman

Mick Fanning (Swiss Baller)

Can we just pause to remember Eugene, and his glorious, doomed reign of awesome? You recall Eugene — Mick’s youthfully indiscrete alter ego, always five beers deep and actually popping the odd aerial. Who interrupted award show speeches (Slater’s) like a white, jocular Kanye.

But that sure ain’t the Mick Fanning brand today. His publicised rehab and recovery from a nasty slip in ’04, which put him on a fitness kick and saw his surfing improve outta sight, birthed the new Mick (and a thousand imitators toting coach and trainer on tour). The professional Mick. Forever synonymous with Swiss exercise balls — and world titles. Plural.

_______________

The pleasure of Ms Blanchard. Photo: Rip Curl

Alana Blanchard (Dat Ass)

Alana’s hot, but look, so are many things. George Nelson furniture is hot. A fresh Mayhem is hot. Hot doesn’t explain how Alana’s become a sexual eclipse in surfing, our default symbol for woman’s allure. She ain’t the only dime on the block, after all (meet Sage).

But like Kournikova before her, Alana’s laughed off the athlete-vs.-model rift and embraced her image, and used media to feed it. She puts her hot to work. Her hot is a brand. And it pays the bills.

_______________

Sterling, by Morgan Maassen.

Sterling Spencer (Sad Clown)

Whether you love Sterling or pray for a Chinese cyber attack to kill the Internet so you never have to see him again, you gotta recognise: Boss took his middling little surf career from the dead side of Florida, got some odd glasses and a shtick, and built a digital ever-presence that makes him hard to ignore and easy to talk about. And hence, easy to sponsor. Touché, clown.

_______________