The New Rules of Marketing and PR, 7th Edition

Introduction

A few years ago I was considering buying a new surfboard. I’ve been mainly riding an 8′0″ Spyder Wright over the past several years, and I wanted to get a smaller board. In an article in Surfer magazine, I read about a trend back to wooden surfboards, so I thought I’d do a little research on wood as an option for my next purchase. Like billions of other consumers, I headed over to Google to start my research. I entered the phrase “wooden surfboard.” Then I followed the link at the top search result to Grain Surfboards at grainsurfboards.com.

I was not disappointed. The Grain Surfboards site drew me in immediately with beautiful images of the boards and excellent descriptions of how the company makes them. No wonder Grain Surfboards had the top search result for the most important phrase in their business.

I learned that while surfboards were originally made of solid wood a hundred or more years ago in Hawaii, for the past 60 years machine-made materials such as polyurethane or polystyrene foam have all but replaced wood. After all, wood is heavier and harder to work with.

However, along came Grain Surfboards. The company pioneered the idea of applying boatbuilding techniques to make a hollow wooden board that is light, beautiful, and eco-friendly. The Grain Surfboards site wasn’t just talking up their products. It was educating me about the history of my sport.

The lessons didn’t stop with history. In fact, the company details its building process on the web for ...