Compelling Choices in Start-Up Marketing

Marketing or branding is not an event. Marketing is a process. And it’s actually a cumulative process. And so we are beginning the cumulative process of building this brand for good companies called B Corporations. And so the different layers of that most importantly it's fed by the community itself. And so if you've got $650 million brand out there today that's just beginning to integrate those logos unto seven million bags of flour and half a million catalogues and 30 painting trucks, you know whatever. Three hundred fifty yard signs in suburban Philadelphia for Nolan painting. All those little things are the things that you see as you go about and live your life and you say, "Oh yes! I know I've heard of that." I might have heard about it at the bank. Or I might have seen it at this restaurant. Or I might have seen it on the hang tag of this clothing or apparel company. All that together begins to build critical mask. That's the first thing and basically that's free. That's basically the community itself saying, "We are now more than some of our parts." Beyond that is PR. And one thing that we did incredibly successfully at AND 1. So Bart and I built this company together with a lot help from a ton of other people over a decade plus. And far and away the most successful stuff we did had nothing to do with the money we were spending. We knew the Nike could outspend us everyday. And so we were going to beat them through outspending them. But what we could do is we could create compelling stories that the press would pick up on. And so we got like I think $25 or $35 million dollars with the media coverage back at AND 1 when we signed Latrell Sprewell. That's maybe like a way bad reference for this particular audience. Jay Coen Gilbert: But that being said, we ran an ad. We spent $75,000 producing an ad. We ran at once during the NBA play-offs. Costs us $400,000. So for under a $500,000 investment, we got $25 million dollars of media coverage, 60-minu...