The Rip Curl Virtual Pro was the world’s first global surfing competition powered entirely by Rip Curl’s Search GPS watch technology.

Throughout the competition duration we collected active Search GPS surfer data and created a unique algorithm to formulate a score for every wave and every surf session. With that data we then created nearly 2,000 unique custom particle visualisations to help surfers relive their best sessions throughout the competition window. This visualisation formed the competition entry mechanic when shared to the user’s social media channels.

Rip Curl’s watch the Search GPS 1 hadn’t been updated since it launched in 2013. While other brands are constantly rolling out new features, surfers everywhere were leaving the brand behind for gnarlier competitors. To launch our Search GPS 2, we wanted to give surfers a reason to come back to the brand, while celebrating every sesh they wore their watch.

What could we do with surfer’s data to surprise and delight without being invasive in data conscious world? Creating the world’s first digital surf comp and launching it by not telling anybody about it, seemed like a sure fire way to tap into that ‘Locals Only’ surfer mentality whilst also gaining widespread talk-ability and earned media. Proving that when it comes to wearable surf tech, Rip Curl is still ahead of the game.

Even though surfing is the fastest growing sport in the world, the sub-culture is still difficult to break into and is strongly driven by the idea of “surfing localism”.

Even for a brand founded by surfers, like Rip Curl, it’s hard to connect with the counter culture driven community if you don’t play by the rules of the community. We took the cultural nuances of surfing and applied them to key mechanics of the Rip Curl Pro:

1. Locals Only: Territorial at the best of times, surfings stick to the breaks they know best. So while the competition was global, you only needed to surf local to take on the rest of the world.

2. No kooks: Surfing is hard to break into as a beginner (Kook) and we didn’t want beginner’s on our breaks. So only surfers who owned the GPS1 or 2 could compete.

3. Share the surf: We didn’t share locations, but we did share stats surfers care about. We ensured all the data was easily compiled and enabled to be shared within the surfing community and outside of it.

To launch the Rip Curl Search GPS 2 we needed to show off how the watch worked, how it tracks your surf and how that data could make you a better surfer. But surfers care more about style than do about decimal points. So we needed to connect it with something they do care about, competing.

We created the “Rip Curl: Virtual Pro”, the only global surf competition you didn’t know you were a part of. The Virtual Pro was powered through the watch itself and took the data that surfers didn’t used to care about and pitted those stats against every single person on the planet who wore the watch in the water. The data created a total score for each surfer forming a global leader board. We then crowned the winners at the end of the comp and sent the surfing world and Rip Curl sales into frenzy.

Rip Curl's Search GPS 2 tracks surf data like nothing else on the planet. And while surf data is cool and all, getting surfers, even the pros to care about the science of surfing is a hard ask. But outside of cultural nuances in the surfing community the one thing they do care about is competitions. And funnily enough, every data point the watch collects, is a key indicator of surfing ability. The idea of the Virtual Pro was born from this insight, and the tech not only enabled surfers to compete digitally through their watch, but allowed them to share and communicate with elusive surfing communities all without ever leaving the waves.

Organizing a global surfing competition posed a daunting challenge: how to fairly measure and score every wave and session for a worldwide surfer leaderboard? We analysed average Search GPS surfer data, comparing it globally and across different surf conditions. Experimenting with various scoring algorithms, we aimed for fairness in ranking sessions, considering factors like wave type and location.

Exploring diverse ways surfers challenge themselves, we sought to recognise those pushing boundaries with high wave counts and exploration of new spots. Selecting key data points for the competition window, we aimed to represent them uniquely while staying true to the Rip Curl brand. Our innovative approach included dynamic particle animations reflecting ocean dynamics, adaptable to different data types and scales.

This endeavour resulted in nearly 2,000 personalised data visualisations, tailored to each surfer's unique dataset.

The Virtual Pro gave surf wearable tech a whole new dimension, reason to purchase and cemented Rip Curl at the forefront of surfing culture and ingenuity.

The competition was such a success it’s now an annual fixture on the WSL global surfing calendar ( Just like Pipeline or Bells Beach.) After the competition period Rip Curl saw a 220% rise in people using the Search GPS device regularly and 36% increase in search GPS Watch sales.

From a tiny $50k media spend we reached over 14 million people globally.

The campaign received over 3 million dollars in earned media and Rip Curl brand love spiked higher than it has in the past 10 years.

The Virtual Pro was picked up by national and international press including segments on SunriseTV in Australia as well regular segments in internationally renowned surf mag ‘STAB’.