Febreze Sport launches!

I can't say too much about the details, but I am sooooooooooo excited to see that Febreze Sport is now visible to the public. I did a ton of work on the design part of this brand extension, along with awesome people from Grey, Landor, SMG, Integer and other agencies, and it was by far the most rewarding project I've ever worked on. I don't say things like this often or lightly, but everybody on the team, both at P&G and the agencies, was super, super cool and we did an amazing job of working together. That's pretty rare in the competitive world of consulting, especially where there is some overlap, but I always felt like we were 100% aligned. A ton of credit goes to the design managers on the project, who I probably shouldn't name, but were both great to work with! It might sound corny but I seriously consider them friends after this, and again I don't say that often. Thanks!!

Visit Febreze Sport on the web, and keep your eyes peeled for it in stores. Buy a whole case!! Buy 10!

Zines are back??

I was poking around the interwebs yesterday looking at pictures of graffiti and shoes and came across several zine projects. Honestly I had no idea anybody still made zines, but as someone who spent a lot of time in the 90s zine world, it's pretty cool to see. Obviously I love blogs and other forms of digital DIY publishing, but there is definitely something to be said for the feeling of holding a printed piece in your hand. There's no substitute for it, so I can totally understand why some people are getting nostalgic and bringing them back.


I mentioned Nike Sportswear's Beautiful Losers campaign before, with Aaron Cometbus on board. There's also Quiksilver's "digital skate zine," Roam, which is really nicely done, if a bit short. Finally, The Flopbox sells quite a few really cool artsy zines. Now if only someone would bring back Lifesucksdie, my favorite mag of all time, bar none!

What makes social media initiatives successful?

Whew! What a busy few weeks! I've been fortunate enough to be super busy at my day job, doing lots and lots of new business pitches, which is awesome in a rough economy like this one. I'm not sure anybody cares, but if so, apologies for the lack of posts. In any case, I was going to clean this up, but since I'm still busy, I'm just going to post this exactly as I sent it to Dave Knox, P&G brand manager and brains behind the excellent blog Hard Knox Life. Hope it's helpful!

hey dave-

hope the new year is treating you well! i just wanted to pass on a couple of thoughts- they may be super old news to you, but i thought i'd share in case they're not!

i don't think i mentioned it to you, but i do a blog with some friends about old metal that is roughly 100x more popular than anything else i've done. we're currently getting about 60K views a month, which isn't a ton by P&G standards, but considering that until recently we had done literally NOTHING to promote it, isn't too bad. i just recently decided to put more effort into getting more traffic, started reaching out to labels for reviews/interviews (i did zillions of both in my past in publishing), etc. you can check it out here (be warned that it's pretty crass!):
http://metalinquisition.blogspot.com

i haven't looked in detail on technorati, but i think it's fair to say it's one of the more popular metal blogs, for whatever that's worth. the part that excites me most is that we get between 20-70 comments on every post, which is a much more meaningful measure of "engagement" to me. i've also gotten tons of last.fm friend requests and comments, which is also cool. anyhow, from contrasting my experiences with Metal Inqusition with the various other blogs and social media projects i've worked on, i've learned a few things that i wanted to share.

1. build on your existing equity
this seems obvious, but it honestly is probably the most important part. between the 4 of us that do MI, our knowledge of metal is pretty much unparalleled (i'm not sure if that's something to be all that proud of!!), and it shows. you have tons of credibility as a brand manager, and people respond accordingly. if either one of us started a gardening blog, though, i'm not so sure anybody would pay much attention. so the big takeaway is that what's good for the goose isn't always good for the gander: a gardening blog is a great idea, just not a good fit for ME, you know? of course, the same goes for brands.

2. who you are matters just as much as what you know
my good friend chase is a fairly famous photographer and has one of the top 10 photo blogs ( http://chasejarvis.com/blog )- and he had never blogged until about 12 months ago. is his content all that much better than the other 9 zillion photo blogs? yeah, it's definitely better, but the real reason his blog (and youtube, twitter, etc) took off so quickly is because he's chase jarvis, famous jetsetting sports photographer. in other words, someone less famous could do the same blog with much less impressive results.

in our case, all of us have been in the punk/hardcore/metal scene since the late 80s, so we know tons and tons of people in "the scene" between us. i can't exactly operationalize how that drives traffic, especially since we're anonymous on the blog, but there is some kind of magic juice there for sure. oftentimes we'll get a comment from someone we knew back in the day and it's a chance to reconnect ("hey i remember you from that Internal Bleeding show in 97!"), which i think gives the readers a really personal connection that helps?? i don't know, i'd like to explore this topic more... but i think it's really the most critical determinant of success.

3. it's all about fit and authenticity!
put those two things together and it tells me that social media is all about finding the right fit for you/your brand. it must be real and authentic, or nobody will pay any attention. it's why some random kids from colorado or whatever can make a music video in their basement and get 2 million views but a megabrand like Saturn or something could spend $500K and get tumbleweeds in response. again, that's not some earth-shattering revelation, but after doing several different social media projects over the last couple of years, it's not just words on paper to me, i've completely internalized it. as much as we wish we could attach ourselves or our brands to whatever we wanted, it just doesn't work that way. it has to be an organic extension of the authentic core or it will fail, period.

for example, i am pretty much at the head of the class if you need to know about fighting, graffiti, and hardcore/metal. i sure wish that i was an expert on some things that were a little less sketchy and a lot more lucrative, but you know what? i'm not, so i need to work with what i've got! ditto for tide or whatever... you just have to take what you've got an make the most of it, and perhaps over time you'll get there.

anyway, sorry to go on for so long, but i thought i'd share! and by the way, don't miss BJ Penn vs GSP this saturday, it should be a barnburner. here's a great video to get you amped!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cl-beMYQ-K0

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RVCA's MMA moves not so popular with everyone

Thanks to Robert Joyner from MMA Payout for this story from 5ones, Day of Reckoning Has Arrived for RVCA’s Brand Image:

What I want to point out here is not the brutal nature of fighting because that’s obvious, but rather what I see as a blatant contradiction on the part of RVCA and their marketing strategy between what they claim to be and what they actually are. I see no potential for balance in the juxtaposition between mellow California surf culture and life altering MMA knockouts. Furthermore, if RVCA is a brand “free from passing trends” like they claim to be on their website, why then have they recently jumped on the MMA bandwagon in an obvious attempt to capitalize on this increasingly popular sport?

So what’s next for RVCA? What new trends can we expect to see in their ad campaigns and sponsorship decisions now that they’ve tackled MMA? Maybe they’ll sponsor that Japanese dude who can eat 300 hot dogs in under an hour and use proceeds to fight hunger in developing countries. I guess some distinctions aren’t worth celebrating at all.

My take
I've been stoked on RVCA's presence in MMA since they started working with BJ Penn a few years ago, and of course I wondered how MMA fans would react. I guess it's just naivete on my part, but it never occurred to me that surfers might be the ones who had a problem with it. In retrospect it's not surprising, though. Anyone who's worked in the industry will tell you that action sports fans can be pretty tough to please, especially when it comes to anything they perceive as inauthentic or non-endemic polluting their sport.

I guess the one thing I can take away from this is that if you're not part of the core, you really have no idea how the community is going to react. I like surfing and I know a bit about it, but I'm hardly core, so my perspective on all of this is definitely that of an outsider's. This is a good reminder that before making moves like this, you need to very carefully think about how the core is going to react, because their opinions and attitudes are your most valuable asset.

Glamour Kills

If you're not familiar with them, Glamour Kills is a clothing company for the indie/emo crowd (see Forever The Sickest Kids). There are a few companies doing something similar, but I'm sharing GK because they are one of those special companies that gets it so, so right that they are the benchmark by which all competitors are measured.

Aside from really awesome designs, what makes GK so great is all their endemic marketing initiatives. For example, few other companies would be able to do something like their signature band shirts (with bands like Cute Is What We Aim For, Four Year Strong, and The Maine) or their All Time Low studio blog. They pull it off in a way that seems completely authentic for both the bands and GK, which isn't exactly easy given how incredibly sensitive indie kids are to anything that smells of a sellout.

Do yourself a favor and check out Glamour Kills if you like awesome shirts or great youth culture marketing!

Nike Sportswear does DIY with Beautiful Losers

This may or may not be new, I don't know, but I just came across Nike Sportswear's collaboration with Beautiful Losers. Nike Sportswear is unique in that it doesn't have a sport to attach itself to like the rest of their businesses, so it seems like they've chosen to associate it with DIY streetwear culture in lieu of a sport. I can't think of a better way of doing that than this partnership, and I have to admit that I'm pretty impressed with the cast of characters (Aaron Cometbus?! Holy early 90s flashback), although I'm a bit concerned that they aren't relevant to people under 30.

Anyhow, I am really stoked on Nike Sportswear, and I'm sure they're going to hit this one out of the park like they always do.

Metal Mulisha sponsors Dan Henderson

MMA Payout reports that freestyle motocross icons Metal Mulisha will be sponsoring Dan Henderson at UFC 93:

In yet another sign of a non-endemic brand branching out into MMA, Dan Henderson has signed on Metal Mulisha as one of his sponsors for his UFC 93 match with Rich Franklin. Henderson looks to be the highest profile endorser they have signed on to this point and his deal may portend of a deeper involvement by Metal Mulisha to MMA in the future. Metal Mulisha has made their brand in the motocross and action sports fields but obviously see the shared demographics of those sports and the exploding MMA scene as an ideal vehicle for selling their gear. In our coverage of the ASR Virtue trade show earlier this year, we mentioned that these two groups seem like natural areas for expansion and this may be one of the clearer signs yet that this is taking place.

My take
MMA Payout's analysis is spot on. Of all action sports, FMX is the one that's probably the closest fit with MMA in terms of culture and demographics, so it makes a lot of sense to see this kind of crossover. I don't know a whole lot about FMX, but Metal Mulisha certainly seems like the perfect brand to do it, too. If you are familiar with them and their crew, you know that they are no strangers to scrapping, so this is an absolutely authentic brand extension.