Dan Knutson

When your store provides customers with their favorite candy during the summer months, it’s hard to decide what to do during the other three seasons. That’s the obstacle The Chocolate Ox faces. Their dedicated fans line up around the block for their celebrated sweets, but are left wanting more during endless Midwestern winters. To capitalize on this opportunity we built an on-brand, hip and fun e-commerce store, accessible through any device from smartphone to desktop.

A brand with fans as fanatic as the Chocolate Ox attracts requires a design worthy of their praise. Teaming up with the one of our favorite designers, David Schwen, we gave The Chocolate Ox a site that puts candy on a pedestal and leaves out the filler. From logo to lettering, the new store reflects the freedom and nostalgia of a weekend at the cabin. With a lot more sugar.

The site launched on May 21st, just in time for the 10th anniversary of The Chocolate Ox.

With almost 50 millions users, Pinterest has carved out a sizable niche in the corner of the social media playground. Yet with an overwhelming majority of pinboards dedicated to food and drink recipes, DIY crafts, apparel, and home decor, it’s hardly an all-inclusive platform. For instance, where do skaters, motocross riders, hunters and other extreme sport fanatics get to surf the web? Evidently, they’ve found a place to call home in the form of the Minneapolis-based start-up Thrill On. The site, which launched July 2012, enables users to interact with videos and photos of sports and adventures, and consequently organize and share them. Imagine pinboards made up of skateboarding and mountain climbing videos.

The proverbial rubber met the road when Shayne Mitchell and Brian Howe teamed up to create a social platform that encouraged people to advocate for their favorite sports or flaunt their greatest adventures. Having explored the site, we couldn’t agree more with its co-founder, Mr. Howe, when he described it as “Pinterest meets GoPro.’’

Areas of interest within Thrill On run the gamut from skateboarding and fishing to golfing. Users simply create a profile, select their interests and then start posting and sharing. As the Star Tribune reports, Thrill On has 100,000 users thus far and quadruple that in Facebook fans; no wonder they’ve grabbed $2 million in investments.

Now, however, the real obstacle presents itself — as with other social media platforms, the question of how to make money is not easily answered. While Thrill On currently boasts over 2,200 different brand pages (Under Armour and Cabela’s, to name a few), big business patronage alone doesn’t necessarily guarantee steady income. Though the crew at Thrill On has long debated the best means of advertising for the site, the challenge is finding ads that aren’t distracting or spammy. Until then, they’re going to stick with what they know best: adventure and social media.

Over the course of the past year, we’ve dedicated a fair amount of time to covering the major players in online apparel — from e-thrift stores like Tradesy and Threadflip to the designer clothing rental platform Rent the Runway. These were the companies revolutionizing the way we buy (or borrow) clothes.

But a lot has changed since then. Take for example Sasha Koehn, the LA-based ad man/entrepreneur/producer/inventor/creator with whom we’ve had the pleasure of speaking.

The last time we wrote about Mr. Koehn’s endeavors, he had teamed up with Ion Skillrud to create SoCurio, an impressive social medium for connecting artists with buyers and art lovers, and vice versa. Art gallery meets e-commerce with a dash of social media. Today, we had the pleasure of hearing from Sasha about his newest company, Buck Mason, which mails rotating packages of quality, American-made apparel to your doorstep.

Andy Kelly: You’re the type of dude that always has several irons in the fire. Now Buck Mason? Where does this seemingly superhuman motivation come from?

Sasha Koehn: I have a somewhat controlled form of ADD. I’m pretty good with multi-tasking and looking for new things that inspire me, but also recognize when something needs 100% of my attention. I’m motivated by disrupting ideas and concepts, what ever the industry, platform, or medium is.
With Buck Mason, we are simplifying a man’s shopping experience and changing the way men can shop. We’re offering rotating packages of timeless men’s clothing. There’s free shipping both ways and we give our customers 10 days to decide on which products they’d like to keep before charging them.

AK: What’s Buck Mason’s advantage over leading e-commerce giants like Amazon or discount designer sites like Gilt Groupe?

SK: I think what we are trying to sell most in the beginning here is our story. My partner, Erik Schnakenberg and I met while neighbors in Venice, CA years ago and started Buck Mason today because we felt the men’s clothing shopping experience was too complex and overly inundated with unwearable apparel. We set out to create the simplest possible shopping process, something that could help guys achieve style without all of the time and pain it takes to sift through websites, blogs and shopping malls. The end result – We created an online retail store that offers guys a timeless wardrobe consisting of quality essentials. We kept it simple: Only offering classic styles like oxford woven shirting and basic tees. You’ll only find black, white and an assortment of blues, tans and grays. You’ll never find a “trendy” piece at Buck Mason; we keep the assortment curated tightly, always in the “Safe Zone” as we like to say. Everything we do complies with the “form follows function” principle. We’re curating comfortable, wearable, functional pieces that are timeless, encouraging guys to go for a timeless look instead of searching for the newest trend.

AK: That name, damnit! What inspired the moniker “Buck Mason”? It’s perfect for the timeless, American, fair-priced brand.

SK: Ha! We went a lot of different directions with the name. At the end of the day, we wanted to create this iconic unknown American hero that we could build a brand around. We chose Buck Mason because we liked the way the two words sounded together. My partner Erik’s father and grandfather were stonemasons and my father is a wood sculptor and it felt perfect the first time we said it.

AK: What draws you to your collaborators and co-workers you surround yourself with when launching a new project? You seem to consistently find a crew that shares your vision and work ethic.

SK: I think its all about finding partners who are better than you at certain things. The beauty with the partnership that Erik and I have is that we come from totally different backgrounds which allows us to fill so many gaps when starting a company like this.

AK: In 30 words or less, how is the world wide inter webs changing the clothing game and/or what does apparel shopping look like in 2025?

SK: The internet will continue to make the retail shopping experience more accessible and transparent.

AK: When will you take a vacation or a break from all this entrepreneurship?

SK: I think the most important thing for me right now is to find those breaks in my day / week / month where I can take a step back and recharge the creative energy that is needed to keep executing things like this. This is not my first and certainly not my last company, so I need to continue to stay balanced and creative, that is my main focus right now.

Sasha likes creating and problem-solving. With Buck Mason, it looks like he got to add a little fun to the mix.

Interact with Buck Mason:

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Interesting fact: while a good average is only about 35 characters, subject lines might be the most crucial aspect of email copywriting. And though it certainly doesn’t have to be, it’s an interesting trend.

So how do we define a “good subject line”? It’s hard to elucidate this qualification in black and white terms, but we try to summarize it like this: a good subject line is one that captures the attention of readers even (or especially) in a crowded inbox.

Whenever writing about email copy, I like to preface the issue with this: In 2006, SubscriberMail produced a brief guide that has since become an essential sidekick to email and web copywriters: The Seven Dirty Words You Can’t Say in Email Subject Lines (Plus 100 Others You Shouldn’t Use, Either). As the explanatory title suggests, it’s a list of the magic words that, when included in a subject line, will land your email in one of two folders — Spam or Trash. Today, I have a hardcopy of this brochure printed out, sitting on the desk next to me during any email venture.

Moving on. There’s no existing formula for compelling or attractive subject lines. There are only trends and best practices which, when combined with some creativity, have proven to lead to successful email campaigns.

Intonation is one of the most important, time-tested ingredients of a successful subject line — most notably a casual or friendly tone. Most people will read an email that looks like it landed it their inbox from or on behalf of a friend. “Join us for the holidays,” for example, looks like it could double as the subject line for your uncle’s yearly email thread inviting that entire half of the family to his house for Christmas. That’s why it’s just as effectively used as, say, the subject line for a Christmas sale at Target. It’s worlds more effective than “Click here for your free discount” (see: Seven Dirty Words).

Email should be the bearer of good news, not the messenger you want to shoot — so pen the subject line accordingly. Personally, I can spot a sales pitch from a mile away. However, I still open an abundance of marketing emails; usually, sales at the handful of online stores I shop at, music updates, and showtimes for movies I want to see. “Is [movie title] worth the cost of admission?” “Announcing the [musician] MN Tour.” I cannot wait to open those emails. Why? Because their subject lines seem like they make explicit mention of my interests, things I wanted to do or buy: movies, music, clothes.

While the chummy subject line or the interesting announcement get readers to at least take a second glance, it also needs to align with the overall message of the email. The average reader will exit even the best, most sharply written email if they deem it to be deceptive. So if the aforementioned holidays tag has your reader thinking one thing yet leads into an unrelated message about a free iPad, it’s getting spammed. Guaranteed.

The National Day of Civic Hacking is a countrywide event that aims to unite citizens, software developers, and entrepreneurs alike. The goal? “To collaboratively create, build, and invent new solutions using publicly-released data, code and technology to solve challenges relevant to our neighborhoods, our cities, our states and our country.” In other words, smart solutions with a civic duty. And on June 1, 2013, the National Day of Hacking is coming to the City of Lakes.

While our community has long benefitted from advances in technology and information sharing, June will be the first time developers from across the U.S. band together with the sole purpose of addressing and solving the challenges that face Minneapolis.

The National Day of Civic Hacking combines the values participation and collaboration while encouraging education and action in science, technology, and engineering. The resulting “hackathon” allows citizens and programmers to create mobile apps, websites and APIs that could help reshape anything from transportation and law enforcement to education.

Some day the group hopes to have an event in at least one city in all 50 states. We’re glad to have made the list.

Most people have experienced at least one of those Murphy’s Law health scenarios, when anything that can go wrong with your body, does go wrong — at the worst time possible. These untimely ordeals seem to conveniently crop up amidst weddings, business functions, vacations, flights, and foreign travels.

Thanks to the new app Better, these kinds of situations don’t have to be as dire anymore. Forget the phone call and being put on hold. Just by opening the Better app, you have your own doctor on call, 24 hours a day.

In a powerful collaboration, backed by the Social+Capital Partnership and drawing from the Mayo Clinic’s limitless database, Better is promising to provide a better standard of health care through your smartphone. Mayo, the first and largest integrated not-for-profit medical group practice in the world (based in my home town of Rochester, MN), flaunts the services of over 3,800 doctors and 58,000 health staff. When it comes to providing care and medical research, Better couldn’t have teamed up with a stronger ally.

The beta version of Better is currently available, with its complete version expected to launch this summer. While it’s currently for iPhones only, the Better crew says the Android counterpart is coming soon.

Pricing seems to the primary hurdle for the new app thus far. There is a free version, which simply grants you access to the Mayo Clinic website and enables you to create health records for you and your family members. The proposed subscription plans, however, are a little less simple.

The cheapest proposed plan would include a personal aide to coach you through challenges such as dieting, exercising, or smoking cessation. Another would include all-hours access to Mayo staff who handle appointments and prescriptions. The most expensive tier would include the aforementioned 24/7, on-call Mayo doctor along with travel booking in emergency situations.

So what are the actual numbers? Founder Geoff Clapp offers a ballpark range of $90 a month up to several thousand dollars a month. With the current health care costs in the U.S., these prices may not sound ideal to the average American.

Regardless, even the cheapest plan could be of significant help to many users, offering users the functionality of submitting a picture of a skin condition or tips for getting through nicotine withdrawal. Sounds a bit more promising than self-diagnosis through WebMD.

Social is synonymous with engaging, and media platforms should be no exception. And while not every brand has the budget or the clout to trigger 58,000 #Clydesdales hashtag mentions over the course of a sporting event, the principles and techniques behind them can be used at little/no cost. That’s not to say that reading the remainder of this article will get you half a million followers by the end of the day. However, it points you in the right direction.

Brands often cling to Twitter or Facebook or any number of platforms before they’ve even embraced their strongest benefits: they are, as their title so aptly suggests, social tools—more so than any channel before them. Used smartly, they encourage consumers to become creators, sharing and exchanging information and ideas across that vast worldwide web. Used poorly, they create online “noise” and clutter.

The true social butterflies as of late are photos, showcasing just how charismatic media can be. At one point thought to be reserved for sharing inspirational posters and workout mantras foregrounding muscle-bound bodies, the game has truly changed. The website we covered recently, Litterati, challenges Instagrammers to document litter they encounter—the photos of which are later arranged into a “digital landfill” where followers can view them. Or another stunning example, a contest in 2012 led by the ad agency MKG gave three of Instagram’s top users full press passes to the U.S. Open. How much more engaging can you get?

While we can’t emphasize the power of images enough, it’s just as important (if not more so) to give your followers opportunities to engage with you and with each other. Twitter and Facebook are probably two of the best examples of social media, in every sense of the term, due to their ability to let followers talk to you, about you, and on your wall or feed. For many brands this function is a red flag, a signal to put up the defenses against hecklers and trolls. But rest assured, the most successful brands using social media today are those that actively engage customers, the angry ones as well as the content ones.

With very little cost and effort, your website can have a discussion platform add-on in no time. So far, you’ve probably already had the chance to do the talking part of a social interaction; discussion platforms remind you to listen to the needs and complaints of your audience. It’s 21st century customer service.

The bonus for brand? When your engagement becomes charismatic enough that they share your activity with their peers on their own profiles. In the world of marketing, nothing sells a brand more than an endorsement from people around you. So keep your brand social.

Litterati, as its website so eloquently describes it, is at the intersection of “technology, social awareness and art.” If that sounds pretentious or lofty, hold your criticism for a moment and continue reading.

Founded by entrepreneur Jeff Kirschner, Litterati is a vehicle for change, simple as that—in fact, this simplicity is half its appeal. Using Instagram’s hashtags and geolocation data combined with an eco-conscious agenda, Litterati is uniting people throughout the globe in the war against waste.

It works like this: Whenever and wherever you see a piece of litter, just snap a picture of it and give it a #litterati hashtag on Instagram, along with location. The rest is done for you, as Litterati arranges said photos into a “digital landfill” where followers can go and observe the artsy photos of trash. Each photo is also pinpointed on a world map, to see where litter is building up as well as where people are joining the cause.

The downside? Taking pictures of rubbish may leave you less time to Instagram photos of your dinner, feet on a sandy beach, or gym selfies. With that being said, there is really no drawback to this eco initiative.

As this article is written, Litterati already flaunts some 5,000 pieces of litter photographed within the United States. Our hats our off to Mr. Kirschner and the crew at Litterati, and we look forward to watching them continue to build a movement.

I think we’re going to take their advice and “Join the Litterati.”

Since it’s introduction in 1937, Spam has been the quintessential lunch meat in America. BBDO Proximity invited us to help design the user experience for a mobile representation of the brand phenomenon.

We aimed to bring as much of the desktop experience to the small screen, providing an optimal experience for mobile users. Unable to replicate the entire site, we broke it down, brought Sir Can-A-Lot along and pieced together a usable mobile solution.

Today Spam’s mobile website is as fun and easy to use as the product itself, cementing Spam as a household name for a new generation. We’re humbly honored to be a part of it.

When the first iPads fell into the hands of eager consumers in April 2010, magazine publishers were faced with the proverbial choice to sink or swim. They needed to find a consistent way to generate revenue from tablet users, which meant embracing the new frontier of interactive features.

As time has shown, some magazines (see: Wired) have risen to the occasion and welcomed the change of pace, while others have treaded water for the past three years with unfavorable results. Now the American monthly men’s magazine GQ is joining the list of fortunate publications enduring the technology age, and revolutionizing the iPad magazine game while they’re at it.

What’s their secret? The magazine took personalization to the next level, in the form of MyGQ. As Ad Week reports, MyGQ rewards tablet readers primarily by letting them personalize the magazine’s iPad app. It lets GQ readers save and share content, and even export ads to their social networks.

The proposition put forth by MyGQ isn’t without criticism from advertisers—its charge for ads is insanely steep ($5,000 per link), especially next to other e-magazines that include ad links for free. However, a big-name supporter goes a long way in this industry, so the fact that Procter & Gamble have signed up to be the first advertiser to use MyGQ has given the technology a sizable advantage.

While the advertising benefit of MyGQ is undeniable, GQ also believes the app will build a stronger brand relationship with readers and increase traffic to GQ.com once they start utilizing the content-sharing functionality.

MyGQ launches with the April edition of GQ, which debuts today.