I spent Friday afternoon in Huntington Beach checking out the marketing scene on Main Street and at the Nike U.S. Open.
While several brands have elaborate window designs at Jack’s and HSS, I like to check out which companies add branding to other buildings and restaurants and have teams on the streets doing something interesting.
Overall on Main Street, the industry marketing efforts seemed fairly mellow this year.
Two brands that caught my eye were DC Shoes, a competitor of Nike, which had a huge poster for its “Rediscover” campaign on the way to Fred’s Cantina. DC has also lined the stairs heading up to Fred’s with its logo and the “Rediscover DC” headline.
Element was another stand out with its recycled board program, which was under a tent on PCH outside of Jack’s door. The No Board Left Behind initiative allows customers to turn old decks into new cruisers, and added a refreshing twist to the downtown scene.
The most innovative thing I saw the whole afternoon was on the beach at the Hurley brand experience.
The Hurley Create program incorporated technology, creativity, interactivity, social media and commerce.
Hurley Create allowed beach goers to customize their own Phantom boardshorts on iPads. The guy’s boardshort had 16 different customization options and the girls’ 10.
When kids were finished creating, they had the option to share their creation on Facebook and Twitter. If they entered their email, they got sent a link that takes them to the Hurley website where they can see and buy the boardshorts.
A big digital display in the brand experience showcased the boardshort styles with the most votes that day, and the winners received the pair of boardshorts they created for free.
They could also get their boardshort projected on a big screen and have their photo taken under it, and then use that photo to post on social media to boost the number of votes they got.
After the visitors went through the steps to create the boardshorts, they received a free hat.
The idea was to elevate the brand experience above the carnival vibe, said Hurley VP of Marketing Evan Slater.
I have lots of photos of everything I saw – and the many industry people I ran into – above in our slide show.
