The Brand

Founded in 1985, Rusty Surfboards has a longstanding reputation for building high quality surfboards. Refining shapes and designs to the highest level of quality and performance. Close to a decade ago, the brand began building wake surfboards for the boating water sports community. Their main purpose in the category is to create boards that surf closest to true rail-to-rail ocean surfing.

Purpose

Through the trust of the brand and the founder Rusty himself, Alliance was commissioned to capture an entire suite of assets both video and still images for the MY2023 wake surfboard season. This included the responsibility of handling the overall look, art direction and logistics for the production capture and content delivery to power the brand’s social media portals (all formats) YouTube channel, website/DTC portals, print and digital catalogs and trade show collaterals.

Production

The primary production for this assignment was weighed over 2.5 consecutive days in the Orlando Florida area with 10 days of pre production lead up. This included 2 different shooting locations for both the product centric captures and in-action athlete focused performances. As this was a complete agency commission, Alliance was tasked with all capture locations scouting/qualifying, capture scheduling, talent and athletes, client product management and logistics, travel scheduling, underwater team, rated chaseboat driver and primary towboat with driver. The product centric and underwater captures took place at Juniper Springs while the in-action capturing commenced on Lake Butler. Overall this production was incredibly rewarding. Quality of content and efficiency hit the marks but most importantly the brand’s trust in our crew to deliver and exceed the expectations was the ultimate reward. Please enjoy some of the content here.

Delivery

The delivery for this video production was 1 primary 4k video showcasing the brand and 4 all-new board models in addition to cutting 32 individual social media edits (all applicable social media dimensions) and 1.5 hours of colored video stringouts.

“Super stoked I got to shoot with Alliance for the new Rusty Wake lineup! Got some insane shots and had a great time with everyone shooting the new product.”
– Chad Carlson

Results

• Over 500,000 qualified wake enthusiasts reached
• 5,000+ link clicks directly into the Rusty Wake Surfboard buying funnel

Highlights

• Shooting at the Juniper Springs crystal clear water location was amazing. The overall condition created a unique opportunity to shoot a specific look for the underwater and product centric assets. Additionally the general onlookers going to the spring for a swim were regularly entertained by our presence having a crew and what looked like surfboards in the water.

• Getting in the boat is always a blast. Professional surfer Jacob “Zeke” Szkely is one of the most positive and fun-loving people to be around. His ability behind the boat is raw and incredible. Not to be outshined, pro wakesurfer Chad Carlson has become one of the most stylish and powerful “surf style” wakesurfers on the planet. His technical capabilities speak for themselves.

• Overall the conditions for the different shoots lined up perfectly, we scored!