EBNY Blogvertising : Rapanui Eco-Brand

We started this blog a couple years ago because we were three surfers working in the same Manhattan office, babbling about surfing, babbling about not surfing, comparing notes and ho-humming. We'd seen some other surf blogs and figured there were scant that actually approached the topic of not surfing and how one might find oneself in the unfortunate circumstance of not surfing. Basically the whole thing was a self-inflicted gimmick to get ourselves in the water more. We figured the more we talked about it, the more we actually put it out there, the more we'd see the ridiculous nature of our predicament and do something about it.  Pretty much as soon as we set up for "business" we started getting queries about advertising.  Apparently surf blogs seemed like a good way to get word out about one's brand.  Some sort of street cred kind of thing.  We sort of sidestepped most of them on principle that that wasn't our deal, that we didn't really care so much to align ourselves with anything.  Our intentions were pretty basic, pretty personal.  That's not to say these were soul sucking automatons looking to make a dishonest buck, how should we know?

Recently, Will Fox from Rapanui contacted us with sounded like the standard spiel about their product and our blog and so forth.  We didn't think so much of it, but then we saw that this was coming from the Isle of Wight in the UK. Huh.  Then we noticed their eco-mission statement thing.  Nice.  Then we looked into it all a little further and realized these guys have some good values and a neat, unassuming product that doesn't look like crud and has a point.  Well, yeah, alright.

The big mega buzz word in business right now is sustainability.  It's the once and future ad campaign being cooked up in the Madison Avenue meth labs.  Is this a bad thing?   A good thing?  Will this lead to a revolution?  A devolution?  Something else? Only time will tell, and by that time, it's likely all the wild animals will be dead, the people will be burned to a crisp and the only thing surfing will be of the 100% plastic variety.

This is all to say: support your local people.  Support your nonlocal people.  Support the small guy with an idea, big or small.  Make the big guy support them too.  How?  We've no clue.  In the end, this blog has helped get us in the water,  and somehow connected us to a whole slew of good people all around the world. So it's working for us, continuing to do the trick, mas o menos.  Not sure what lesson is in there, but enjoy Rapanui if it suits you!

Rapanui