Stuff We Like: Old Oakley Ads

Classic ads from the near-future

From the dusty, petrol-soaked pit area of a motocross meet to an almost Stargate-esque vision of the future, Oakley has had quite the narrative arc since founder Jim Jammond first started selling motorbike grips out of the back of his car back in 1975. 

From grips to goggles to glasses and beyond, the groundbreaking (and usually pretty bonkers) products were backed every step of the way with serious advertising ingenuity.

Perhaps the brand’s first stroke of advertising genius was to hook up with the clever folks at Chiat/Day, the Venice Beach agency responsible for the now-classic Apple ads of the mid-80s. Whilst Chiat/Day were too big time to work on Oakley officially, the people at the agency loved the brand, so were happy to lend their talent incognito… which explains those Apple-flavoured ‘Garamond type/white background’ ads.

By the 90s the brand had surged full bore into the future. In an amped-up era when outdoor sports were breaking into the mainstream (helped perhaps by high-octane blockbusters like Point Break, Cliffhanger and River Wild), Oakley chose to ignore the obvious tropes of picturesque mountain backdrops or crashing waves and instead built a dystopian world that wouldn’t look out of place in a Moebius comic or a Terry Gilliam film. 

Perhaps their most definitive advertising statement was their TV spot featuring the cleverly-named Max Fearlight, a scientist living on the scorched earth of the future—a pair of Oakley’s his only protection as he steps out of his bunker and into the blazing sun.

Meanwhile, in print, stark headshots of the sports stars of the day (often photographed by Jammond himself) were combined with short ‘n’ sharp sentences talking of mysterious materials like Iridium and the infamous ‘unobtainium’. 

These ads must have worked—in 2007 Jammond sold the brand to eyewear behemoth Luxottica for $2.7 billion. Google what his house looks like if you want to see where a fair chunk of that dosh must have gone.

Today’s obsession with rose-tinted 90s nostalgia often does disservice to the sheer forward-thinking nature of the era as the world hurtled full-speed towards the new millennium. The fact that Oakleys—and their ads—still look futuristic some 20 years later shows how far ahead they were. 

Want more classic ads? Here’s our article on our favourite adidas running campaign.