MAXIM'S SYMPOSIUM TAKES AIM AT YOUNG MEN.

Daily News Record, June, 2004

Byline: JAMIE CARRACHER

NEW YORK -- Advertising and marketing executives got a lesson in how to revive a dormant brand from Dick Baker, president of Ocean Pacific, at a Maxim magazine conference in New York earlier this month.

A standing-room-only crowd came to discuss the finer points of reaching "the elusive 18- to 34-year-old man" at the conference, which was co-sponsored by Advertising Age. What they got from Baker was the story of transforming a brand with a near-dead fashion image into a top player in the competitive surf-and-street market.

Baker said the company couldn't have been "any more uncool" when he joined Ocean Pacific as president in the late '90s. Although its name was widely known, it was associated with older people...