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  Rip Curl Group Advertising and Marketing Chairman Neil Ridgway with Gabriel Medina - Photo courtesy of Rip Curl

Anyone who watched the Billabong Pipe Masters, the final event of the ASP 2014 tour and of the Vans Triple Crown of Surfing, got a glimpse of how much Gabriel Medina’s ASP World Championship could mean to Brazilian fans all over the world.

When the Brazilian native officially clinched the title, the sand at Pipeline looked and sounded like a Brazilian World Cup soccer match with fans singing and flying the Brazilian flag.

We spoke with Rip Curl Group Advertising and Marketing Chairman Neil Ridgway, who recently spent two weeks with Medina’s family in Brazil, as well as Rip Curl USA President and CEO Kelly Gibson about what Rip Curl is doing to celebrate Gabe’s win globally, and how Gabe’s win could impact business in Brazil and abroad.  

What do you have planned in Brazil for Gabe’s win?

Neil Ridgway: The party has begun for sure, but there is a blanket push to promote the win across all of our marketing channels. If you had to define the objectives of our marketing spend in the next year in Brazil it would be operation “Leverage Medina.”

There are 1,300 wholesale doors down in Brazil, so our in-store activation will be about him and his products. There are some great stores in malls and also in core surf locations in which we already have good sales and a good marketing voice, so this ASP World Title win will be a neon sign above them.

Gabriel already leads our percentage mix in advertising in both online and offline when we split the use of team riders anyway, but we will put the pedal to the metal on him for the next six months there.

The crew in Brazil are going to have a busy Christmas period. There’s a major press conference planned for when he gets off the plane and our Brazilian Marketing Manager Fernando Gonzales is travelling back from Hawaii with the family to tie all that in. It will be giant in the mainstream media.

We’re in a good position because Mick Fanning’s three world titles have shown us how powerful those wins can be across the globe. In other parts of South America, our licensees in Argentina, Peru and Chile have done a great job of leveraging that World Champ image in their markets through Mick Fanning, so now the job begins again with Gabriel.

But it is also one of those moments you just love in a marketing sense. The surfer talent is great, the core products like our boardshorts and wetsuits are great, and there’s a brand new tech product in the SearchGPS watch for customers to buy.

And the market is on fire for Gaby because of his achievements and charisma, so you basically just push the board out there and the massive tidal wave will help you do the rest.

What does Rip Curl have planned in the USA? And what sort of planning went into allowing for Viva Medina logos to be ready right at the announcement?

Kelly Gibson: The potential for Gabriel to win a world title has been very apparent for several years now. So, in the USA, we have made a conscious effort to promote him heavily leading up to this moment. Gabriel received just under 50% of our men’s advertising inventory over the last 12 months, which we feel will help make this World Title resonate in the U.S. market.

In terms of activation, we have focused our efforts digitally with homepage takeovers with our major third party media partner’s websites, as well as our own social media. We created a 100-second congratulations edit posted to our YouTube channel that has really taken off.

The Viva Medina shield can be found on tees and hats, and they’ll be both sold and used as promotional giveaways. Regarding in-store, we will be focusing on locking down prominent windows with our key retail partners to help tell this exciting story.

Gabriel represents a new era in surfing. His progressive approach to performance is balanced with his versatility in waves of size and consequence, as well as his power. We’re embracing it 100%.

What does Gabe winning mean for Rip Curl Brazil?

Neil Ridgway: In a pro surfing sense, it punctuates 25 years of work. From the first true pros of the early ‘90s like Fabio Gouveia and Flavio Padaratz, and Guilherme Herdy, into the Raoni Monteiro, Jaqueline Silva, Bruno Santos time at the turn of the century and the many hot kids that are powering through in the last 10 years now led by Felipe Toledo, Jadson Andre, Miguel and Samuel Pupo and of course Gabriel himself. This is the result of that combined effort. It takes a long time to build momentum in a world sport and that total Brazilian push is now a force.

In a business sense, it means a chance to be entrepreneurial and to drive sales and marketing hard on the back of that win. For the brand it shows that Rip Curl is the ultimate surfing company all around the world and that surfing and the beach lifestyle is where we live and work and play as a group. That’s very important to us.

I imagine the Gabriel Medina Rip Curl store in his home town of Maresias, which we co-own with his family, was doing a good business the day of the win!

See Page 2 for more about Rip Curl’s plans for the Medina win

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When did you sign Gabe and how did you see so much talent when he was so young? Tell me about working with him.

Neil Ridgway: Our Brazilian CEO Felipe Silveira signed Gabriel when he was a grommet. At the victory dinner after the Pipe Masters the other night at Turtle Bay Resort, Gaby recognized that and thanked us for seeing his talent and helping it grow. Our Founder Doug “Claw” Warbrick has an astute eye for talent and he has always helped me keep a vision for fast-tracking Gabriel. And our Pit Boss on tour, Ryan Fletcher, has always pinpointed the pluses and minuses on Gaby in his post event reports. There are never too many minuses in those reports.

Three-time ASP World Champion Tom Curren was at the victory dinner too. Tom came out of the block firing and won his first world title at 21, so Gaby beat him by a year and that’s saying something. Tom’s a really good judge of surfing and he can see the whole box and dice in Gaby. Tom just being there on the beach and then to celebrate was a great sign of respect for Gaby.

Our founder, Claw, watched every heat and gave a speech on the night too and U.S. CEO Kelly Gibson being on the beach all day at Pipe with his daughter Hannah at our tent shows how much it meant to us all.

Dylan Slater was there the whole waiting period and we started to wind up the marketing machine for either Gaby or Mick winning pretty early. We like those signs of surfing respect at Rip Curl. Surfers recognize and value them and that is part of our own brand momentum at the moment.

Personally, I first really saw Gaby’s potential under the ASP system in 2012 when he came into the tour at the mid-year cut off and won in France and at The Rip Curl Pro Search in San Francisco. He won two out of the first four WT events he competed in. That was a pretty good sign.

He’s got all the right attributes on land and off land to succeed. I travelled to his home to stay for a couple of days last month with his family and watch him prepare for Hawaii, just to build the relationship between brand and athlete because that takes a long time. I don’t profess to know him well yet, and that could take another 10 years as we plot the course between brand and athlete, and more world titles, but he is very tight with our Brazilian crew.

His family are awesome people. Simone and Charles have a home that is abuzz with family and friends, and he has a really good support unit built out of that. It’s very real because it’s his family. It’s really nice to watch.

You have to recognize the simple things though. He’s 20 years old. He’s a young man who likes doing all the things young men do. Surfing, hanging with his mates, meeting girls, having a good time. He’s one of the boys. And he absolutely rips the bag in the surf. He’s awesome to watch and to surf with.

There are certain athletes who have changed the landscape of their sport in their countries. Yao Ming, Beckham, Sofia in Peru. In Brazil, sport is everything. What are people saying in Brazil about Gabe?

Neil Ridgway: His name is on everyone’s lips. The President of Brazil was tweeting about his win minutes after the final for God’s sake. He’s huge, and surfing will push soccer aside for a while – so that’s remarkable.

But this win is good for the world of surfing, not just Brazil. Now any kid anywhere outside of the more recently dominant American and Australian pro surfing nations can look at that and think, “Yes. The dream can become a reality.” It’s going to shake things up.

How has your business in Brazil changed since signing Gabe?

Neil Ridgway: More so because we have been doing what we do everywhere in that time than any one thing. Signing Gaby was really another brick in the wall. Keeping it simple, focusing on surfing and surfing products.

Good distribution, good relationships, no discounting of the brand. Chasing ASP world titles is great work if you can get it, but it’s important work for us. We believe in it. It’s very, very potent for a surfing company, and we aren’t going to stop.