Francis Zierer
Merch-as-marketing
My thesis on corporate merchandising is that whatever you’re making should drive a bidding war on eBay in 30 years. Overpriced, tightly curated vintage stores should be hawking that T-shirt, paperweight, or coffee mug for whatever the 2053 equivalent of $200 turns out to be. $11,322?
Earth Day:
I wanted to make a shirt for Earth Day and give the proceeds to charity. We’d just signed the perfect customer in The Red Hook Initiative, who run a couple of urban farms in Brooklyn.
The resulting shirt became our most-liked Instagram post ever and we raised $5,000 for the farm. I’ll be checking eBay in 30 years to see if I really did a good job.
Nalgene:
I worked with a different artist that summer to create a Nalgene as part of an all-staff gift. The artist’s Instagram followers were clamoring for open sales, so we had him publish a post saying we’d give the bottle to anyone who fit certain criteria and would be willing to talk to our sales team. We booked 22 demos.
A.I.R.:
I mocked up a T-shirt riffing on the classic D.A.R.E. design, this one using the company name and taking a jab at one of our competitors, Dropbox. We posted it to Twitter — anyone want this? We made 50 shirts and gave them away in exchange for demo bookings, securing 19 at a cost per lead of less than $40 each.
Role: Copywriter, Producer
When: 2022
Company: Air
The items I’ve written about here are no longer available, but the artists we commissioned make other great stuff. Check out Danny & Jo Make Shirts and Goodbye Press for all the goods.