Enter the 99%

Is nothing new?  Godzilla is back….which is just to say that the lowest-risk piece of entertainment today turns out to be…an old piece of entertainment.  Grumpy cat is back…but with a summer hairdo.  And the rich get richer…as the 1% has a 101% say.

Big companies are no longer cool.  Google and Apple are now big companies at the top of the Fortune 500.  You don’t even need Pythagorean theorem to solve that one.

Marketers scramble to understand the end of Blackberry and the end of downloading songs for $1.99 from iTunes.  Then, those same marketers continue to…advertise on cable TV…blast mass emails…spend millions on print…in the old gray lady…!??!   Like ESPN says,  “C’MON MAN!

Too bad it’s not football season

Then in early March, the menswear brand Gents did a new, cool thing.  Teamed up with a cool thing.  To offer a cool thing.  In a cool way.

Limited Edition Men’s denim.

OK, that’s cool, but NOT new – C’MON MAN!

Fine, fine, fine, take it easy there, Tiger.  You might pop a vein or something.

Crowdfunded, Limited-Edition Men’s Denim.

C’MON MA– wait whaaaa???

Well, thank you dear reader, with your kind permission, I will continue….

Gents is a company about baseball hats.  Nondescript, simple baseball hats, worn only by celebs up until the last several years.  I’m talking Madonna, Leo DiCaprio, Bradley Cooper, Charlize Theron.  Not no-talent ass clowns like the Jersey Shore cast or Judge Judy.

Gents figured out to expand quickly they had to get beyond the 1% (the 1% who have a 101% say).  They decided to extend their brand.

Brand extension, dear readers, is when you take your brand, (because it is already very strong with significant awareness), and extend it to like categories.  Think Febreze room fresher goes household candles and car vents.  Think Allegra allergy medicine does Allegra Anti-Itch Allergy cream.

So Limited-Edition Men’s Jeans.   OK, not that big a stretch from baseball caps.  Not new.

What IS new and cool is the HOW, not the WHAT.

Gents started their limited edition men’s denim line via Kickstarter by inviting brand enthusiasts to pledge money for the project in exchange for the first pairs off the line six months before the jean launches this fall.  The pair would be signed, of course, and sold at the discounted wholesale price of $150.

Gents, Lookin’ Good

Heard of Kickstarter?  Me neither.  I was as utterly confused and clueless as the guy in the Gents ad above, and was embarrassed to find out they are a crowdfunding platform that’s been around since 2009.  Not new.

Kickstarter gathers money in the form of pledges from the public (via Amazon Payments, who, not surprisingly, takes a 3 – 5% cut) to fund inventive projects over a short time frame to circumvent traditional investment sources.  Cool, right?

Cool.

What’s also cool is that they promise to maintain total project ownership by the project’s founders.   The Gents Denim goal was $5K, they made $23K (check it out here). Kickstarter allowed this innovation to flower.  The exclusive email that Gents sent to a limited group of their brand advocates went viral.  New, and cool.

Are we finally having our own Renaissance in 2014?!?

No, dear reader, don’t get carried away.  This is simply good marketing, smart brand extension, with a little exclusivity and power to the in-the-know masses, in an age when the 1% has the 101% say.  Finally the 99% can make one small, meaningful vote for what goes forward.

Well, at least maybe 10% of the 99%.  It’s a start.