I Surf Because… it’s amazing, it’s the only thing that is a constant in my life, it’s the thing the strips me of stress and fills me with serenity, it’s awesome and if you don’t surf you should def start.

I Surf Because… is a new campaign from Billabong, not your typical – action shot, product shot, sell, buy – campaign. But more of a campaign that hits home emotionally. Why do you surf?

It’s a concept that should connect with most core surfers, I reckon anyway. When was the last time you sat back and thought to yourself – why do I surf? So here is an opportunity to strip it all back to basics and share stories (to an extent) that will get you psyched on surfing – like that time you saw Jonny blow that barrel and get stitches, or when you saw Bob get a crazy standup in Indo, or seeing Shags do cartwheels down the face of a ten footer hahahaha…. Do you remember that feeling of pure surf stoke? I do, and it still gets me up every day and into the ocean – even down here.. hahaha…

After seeing bit’s n pieces of the campaign floating around, you get the feeling the it is more about surfing then selling product. A surf company selling just the thought and idea of surfing? WOW, thought that idea was dead in the water…. So fresh to see something go beyond the everyday one page full of product and then an action shot next to it. I love surfing more then most, so you will have to excuse my current stage of stoke with this campaign…

For those product minded advertisers, I’m sure there is a product message within the campaign but it’s seems more about the gear being used in the environment it was intended rather than posing on a street. So I sent the brains behind the concept an email looking for some answers on the campaign… One answer in particular -

What was the main mindset behind the campaign? “We all know the world is in a weird place at the moment, so connecting with people through a simple positive message was important. There was also a desire to break away from the common thread of advertising that exists in our industry at the moment and take it back to surfing. Gordon Merchant had a theory of best shot wins and we wanted to honor that.”

Even the surfers got deep on it as well with Stirling telling us
“One of the coolest parts about creating the campaign was getting our team involved. A lot of them had never articulated why they surf, and when they started to break it down there was a certain spark in their eyes and the more they talked about it the more they realised how layered the question/statement is. Sometimes people have this perception that pro surfers are just doing it for money etc, but surfing is a whole lot more to these guys than just that. After interviewing them, and surfing with them it became real clear that they’re all just amped kids at heart… we all are. This part of the process was inspiring and insightful, maybe in Wade Goodall’s case just straight up funny.”

We have a whole bunch of questions that Stirling answered for us, but we might save that for a later post… And I’m not going to spill the beans on how the website works either, I’ll leave it for you to click thru and hopefully get that grom stoke back while your clicking…

For now, enjoy the screenshots above and click on thru to the website at 1pm today and let the world know why you surf…

The Website > I Surf Because…