Crowd Pleasers: Threadless Gives People What They Want

Tops on Twitter

Threadless has something of a symbiotic relationship with Twitter. Early on, it was added to the “suggested follower” list that first-time Twitter users see on opening an account. That leg up means that Threadless is quite often tweeting to followers who may be encountering the brand for the first time, making it all the more important to convey not just what the company sells but a sense of what it stands for: community, sharing and eclectic fun.

So while some messages flog new T-shirts, other tweets can point to interviews with indie musicians; Nanna is plugged into the music scene and has what Balzer refers to as “an innate sense of what will engage people.” Balzer relies on him and on other musicians and performers at Threadless to keep the company's Twitter voice authentic and interesting.

“For people who use it successfully, Twitter is a very personal medium,” Nanna says. “It's a real person speaking to you and saying, ‘This is something really cool — why don't you check this out?’ People on Twitter don't expect to be spoken to by a marketing-bot. It's a way to open up an interaction that you just don't get from e-mail.”

In May, Threadless announced a partnership with Twitter to crowdsource designs for a new line of Twitter Tees. Basically it's a design contest for the verbal crowd. Tweets are submitted for consideration at www.Twitter.Threadless.com and voted on by Twitter users, just as in the graphics competition. The two concepts that win community approval each week get artified and turned into shirts with slogans like “It's not piracy if there's no parrot involved.” Within hours of the May rollout of the Twitter Tee contest, the Web site had some 200,000 votes.

Balzer and Nanna are now trying to put some of that same viral momentum behind the Threadless Facebook profile. The tool here is “Fandemonium,” a phased drive to reach the 250,000 mark by getting current followers to recruit their friends. The inducements, laid out in a menu on the page, are a mix of Threadless gear giveaways and zany experiences that are worth more than swag to the Threadless crowd. The warehouse manager was bombarded with eggs at the 90,250 mark and again with chocolate at 94,500. At 92,500 Facebook fans, Festa and the crew threw a mini-fridge off the roof. For 92,750 fans, Wilson offered a short video lesson in tap dancing; at 95,250, Nanna himself will teach the art of cooking an artichoke.

“These are just fun videos, not overly promotional, that reinforce the sense of Threadless as a fun community,” Nanna says. “They make us a good place to hang out and interact online.”

Brands Love

A fun hang it may be, but brands are increasingly interested in tapping into Threadless' creativity and community. Both those things happen with the “Threadless Loves” design challenges, in which the designer audience is asked to produce ideas for a specific theme, such as travel, horror or children, often sponsored by a brand or charity. Unlike the regular crowdsourcing process, the winners in these challenges are chosen by a panel of judges from Threadless and the sponsor.

But this is branding the Threadless way. Contest rules prohibit corporate logos and make clear that the aim is to express a theme, not sell the sponsor's product. For a Threadless Loves Pre-loved contest earlier this year, sponsored by Volkswagen's pre-owned division, the contest rules emphasized the “love” portion of the slogan. The winning design, showing an astronaut whose hands encircle the earth in a heart shape, won the designer a pre-loved Volkswagen, $2,000 in cash and a $500 gift certificate.

He was also able to contract with Volkswagen for a non-Threadless printing of his design as a showroom giveaway — this time with the corporate logo on the sleeve.

Balzer says Threadless is getting more aggressive about seeking out challenge partners but is careful to make sure the brands and sponsors are a good fit for its designer and user communities. For example, Microsoft wanted to run a design challenge offering a Zune HD player, an Xbox 360 and a stack of videogames as a prize. The Threadless team brainstormed about a contest that could incorporate the brand without blatant pitching.

What they came up with was a contest in support of BlameDrewsCancer.com, a Web-based charity founded by online personality and Hodgkins' Lymphoma patient Drew Olanoff. The challenge became “Threadless Loves Geeks,” and Microsoft agreed to throw a $2,500 donation to BlameDrewsCancer into the prize kitty.

“Microsoft had their marketing goals and their target audience, but for us it was about, is there a cool challenge here?” Balzer says. “We're getting approached constantly by brands wanting to work with us, and while we're not snobs, we always have to ask, where's the engagement in these promotions for our community?”

Most recently Threadless has found that engagement with Mountain Dew's Throwback, a limited-time revival of the brand's old '80s drink formula made with real sugar and featuring a hillbilly on the package. The challenge: to design a T-shirt with the same retro feel as the product. And the reward is to have that design added to the limited-edition T-shirt series Mountain Dew will roll out when Throwback hits stores at the end of this year.

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