Surf Culture’s No Lightweight

Denise Denison-Erkeneff, president of the Orange County Ad Club, and her husband, Rick, want to get the message out that surfing represents serious business and is a major contributor to the economy. The pair, who run their own ad agency, R&D; Graphics and Marketing in Dana Point, are organizing an Ad Club event Thursday night called Tapping the Source, in which they’ll discuss the ways surf imagery is used to sell products, both inside and outside the surf world.

“It’s a program my husband has been asking me to do for a long time,” said Denison-Erkeneff. A former executive at a large New York advertising agency, she said that the surf culture is widely misunderstood and inaccurately portrayed by the mainstream media.

Surf-related companies are “so entrepreneurial,” she said. “It takes ideas to form new businesses. Our lifestyle, our culture, our climate--it’s a real conducive environment to doing business.”

Rick Erkeneff noted that many major companies, such as QuikSilver, as well as possibly hundreds of small apparel and equipment firms, have arisen from this entrepreneurial breeding ground. “The characters and the lifestyles get a lot of notoriety,” he said, “but there are a lot of people who depend on these industries.”

The Costa Mesa-Newport Beach area is the heart of this wellspring of surfing entrepreneurs, he said. “There are a lot of talented people in this business, and this is the core of it,” he said.

The event starts at 6 p.m. at Vorhees Studio, 866 W. 16th St. in Newport Beach. The cost is $10 for Ad Club members and $20 for nonmembers. For more information, Denison-Erkeneff can be reached at (949) 493-5019.